At least 36 killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid in Gaza, hospital says
The Israeli military said it had fired warning shots at suspects who approached its troops after they did not heed calls to stop, about a kilometre away from an aid distribution site that was not active at the time.
Gaza resident Mohammed al-Khalidi said he was in the group approaching the site and heard no warnings before the firing began.
"We thought they came out to organise us so we can get aid, suddenly (I) saw the jeeps coming from one side, and the tanks from the other and started shooting at us," he said.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed group which runs the aid site, said there were no incidents or fatalities there on Saturday and that it has repeatedly warned people not to travel to its distribution points in the dark.
"The reported IDF (Israel Defence Forces) activity resulting in fatalities occurred hours before our sites opened and our understanding is most of the casualties occurred several kilometres away from the nearest GHF site," it said.
The Israeli military said it was reviewing the incident.
GHF uses private U.S. security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a U.N.-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the accusation.
The U.N. has called the GHF's model unsafe and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards, which GHF denies.
On Tuesday, the U.N. rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in Gaza - the majority of them close to GHF distribution points.
Most of those deaths were caused by gunfire that locals have blamed on the Israeli military. The military has acknowledged that civilians were harmed, saying that Israeli forces had been issued new instructions with "lessons learned".
At least 50 more people were killed in other Israeli attacks across Gaza on Saturday, health officials said, including one strike that killed the head of the Hamas-run police force in Nuseirat in central Gaza and 11 of his family members.
The Israeli military said that it had struck militants' weapon depots and sniping posts in a few locations in the enclave.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza.
The Israeli military campaign against Hamas in Gaza has since killed around 58,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians according to health officials, displaced almost the entire population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis, leaving much of the territory in ruins.
Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks in Doha aimed at reaching a U.S.-proposed 60-day ceasefire and a hostage deal mediated by Egypt and Qatar, though there has been no sign of any imminent breakthrough.
At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages in Gaza are believed to still be alive. Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was kidnapped from his kibbutz home and is held by Hamas, urged Israel's leaders to make a deal with the militant group.
"An entire people wants to bring all 50 hostages home and end the war," Zangauker said in a statement outside Israel's defence headquarters in Tel Aviv.
"My Matan is alone in the tunnels," she said, "He has no more time."
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Sky News
2 hours ago
- Sky News
Rows of decomposing bodies that haven't been buried because of fierce fighting in Syrian city
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Telegraph
10 hours ago
- Telegraph
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BBC News
10 hours ago
- BBC News
'They shot patients in beds' – BBC hears claims of massacre at Suweida hospital
Syrian government forces have been accused of carrying out a massacre at a hospital during sectarian clashes which erupted just over a week ago. The BBC has visited Suweida's National Hospital where staff claim patients were killed inside This story contains descriptions of violence The stench hit me before anything the car park of the main hospital in Suweida City, dozens of decomposing corpses are lined up in white plastic body are open to the elements, revealing bloated and mutilated remains of those who were killed tarmac beneath my feet is greasy and slippery with blood. In the sweltering sun, the smell is overwhelming."It was a massacre," Dr Wissam Massoud, a Neurosurgeon at the hospital tells me."The soldiers came here saying they wanted to bring peace, but they killed scores of patients from the very young to the very old."Earlier this week, Dr Massoud sent me a video which he said was in the immediate aftermath of the government it, a woman shows you around the hospital. On the ground in the wards are dozens of dead patients still bundled up in their bloodied bed sheets. Everyone here, doctors, nurses, volunteers say the same last Wednesday evening, it was Syrian government troops targeting the Druze community who came to the hospital and carried out the Abu Motab, a volunteer at the hospital, said of the victims: "What is their crime? Just for being a minority in a democratic country?""They are criminals. They are monsters. We don't trust them at all," Osama Malak an English teacher in the city told me outside the hospital gates."They shot an eight-year-old disabled boy in the head," he said."According to international law, hospitals should be protected. But they attacked us even in the hospitals."They entered the hospital. They started shooting everybody. They shot the patients in their beds as they slept."All sides in this conflict have been accusing each other of committing Bedouin and Druze fighters as well as the Syrian Army have been accused killing civilians and extra judicial killings. There is not yet a clear picture of what happened at the hospital. Some here estimate the number of people to be killed last Wednesday at more than 300 but that figure cannot be Tuesday night the Syrian defence ministry said in a statement it was aware of reports of "shocking violations" by people wearing military fatigues in the country's predominantly Druze city this week Raed Saleh, the Syrian Minister for Disaster Management and Emergency Response, told me that any allegations of atrocities committed by all sides would be fully investigated. Who are the Druze and why did Israel attack Syria?Bedouins tell BBC they could return to fighting Druze in SyriaBBC sees fragile ceasefire holding in Syria's battle-scarred Suweida province Access to Suweida City has been heavily restricted meaning gathering first hand evidence has been city is in effect under siege with Syrian government forces restricting who is allowed in and get in we had to pass through numerous we entered the city, we passed burned out shops and buildings, cars that had been crushed my City had clearly seen a serious battle between Druze fighters and Bedouin was at that point that the Syrian government first intervened to try and enforce a ceasefire. Although numerous Druze villages in Suweida province have been recaptured by government forces, Suweida City, home to more than 70,000 people, remains under full Druze we left the hospital, we found eight-year-old Hala Al Khatib sitting on a bench with her face is bloodied and bandaged. She appears to have lost an tells us that gunmen came and shot her in the head at she was hiding in a cupboard in her doesn't know it, but both Hala's parents are dead.
