Israeli attacks kill over 60 in Gaza as hunger crisis deepens

Qatar Tribune

5 days ago

Agencies
Gaza
Israeli attacks have killed at least 64 people across Gaza, the Health Ministry said, as starving Palestinians struggle to access the limited amount of aid supplies that have entered the coastal enclave.
At least 23 people were killed on Thursday in a series of Israeli attacks on residential buildings in the Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza, according to Gaza's civil defence.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum said casualties from the Bureij attack were transported to al-Awda Hospital and Al-Aqsa Hospital.
'There has been a state of alert in the emergency department as emergency services said they spent at least 30 minutes recovering casualties from the site of the strike,' Azzoum said.
At least seven people were killed in strikes on a kindergarten and a home belonging to the Azzam family in Jabalia, northern Gaza, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Later on Thursday, multiple explosions were reported near a newly opened aid distribution point, run by the previously unknown United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), at the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts and there were no immediate reports of casualties.
The explosions came after 10 people were killed when Israeli forces shot at Palestinians seeking aid at another GHF site in southern Gaza in separate incidents on Tuesday and Wednesday, Gaza's Government Media Office said.
Dozens of people were injured when thousands of hungry Palestinians rushed the GHF site in the first incident on Tuesday.
The GHF has been accused of helping Israel fulfil its military objectives, while excluding Palestinians, bypassing the United Nations system and failing to adhere to humanitarian principles. The UN and other international aid groups have boycotted the foundation, which they said undermines the principle that humanitarian aid should be distributed independently of the parties to a conflict and based on need.
'This new scheme is surveillance-based rationing that legitimises a policy of deprivation by design,' senior UN aid official for the occupied Palestinian territory, Jonathan Whittall, told reporters in Jerusalem.
'The UN has refused to participate in this scheme, warning that it is logistically unworkable and violates humanitarian principles by using aid as a tool in Israel's broader efforts to depopulate areas of Gaza,' he said.
Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told the Security Council on Wednesday that Israel would allow aid deliveries 'for the immediate future' via both the UN and the GHF.
Danon said the UN should 'put their ego aside and cooperate with the new mechanism'. According to the foundation, it handed out the equivalent of 840,262 meals on Tuesday and Wednesday.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, the World Food Programme said 'hordes of hungry people' broke into the al-Ghafari warehouse in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, looking for food supplies.
'Initial reports indicate two people died and several were injured in the tragic incident,' WFP said in a statement on X, adding that it was still confirming details. After ending an 11-week blockade last week following growing international pressure, Israel has allowed limited humanitarian supplies to be delivered, but aid groups have warned that the amount is not nearly enough.
Sigrid Kaag, the UN's special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the Security Council that the amount of aid Israel had so far allowed the UN to deliver was 'comparable to a lifeboat after the ship has sunk' when everyone in Gaza was facing the risk of famine.