Gaza civil defence says 'Israeli' fire kills 93 aid seekers

Roya News

3 days ago

Gaza's civil defence agency said 'Israeli' forces opened fire on crowds of Palestinians trying to collect humanitarian aid in the war-torn Palestinian territory on Sunday, killing 93 people and wounding dozens more.
Eighty were killed as truckloads of aid arrived in the north, while nine others were reported shot near an aid point close to Rafah in the south, where dozens of people lost their lives just 24 hours earlier.
Four were killed near another aid site in Khan Yunis, also in the south, agency spokesman Mahmoud Basal told AFP.
The UN World Food Programme said its 25-truck convoy carrying food aid "encountered massive crowds of hungry civilians which came under gunfire" near Gaza City, soon after it crossed from 'Israel' and cleared checkpoints.
'Israel's' military disputed the death toll and said soldiers had fired warning shots "to remove an immediate threat posed to them" as thousands gathered near Gaza City.
Deaths of civilians seeking aid have become a regular occurrence in Gaza, with the authorities blaming 'Israeli' fire as crowds facing chronic shortages of food and other essentials flock in huge numbers to aid centres.
The UN said earlier this month that nearly 800 aid-seekers had been killed since late May, including on the routes of aid convoys.
The WFP condemned violence against civilians seeking aid as "completely unacceptable".
'Israel' on Sunday withdrew the residency permit of head of the OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) office in 'Israel', Jonathan Whittall, who has repeatedly condemned the humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
'Israeli' Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a post to X, accused him of spreading lies about the war in Gaza.
'Expanding' operations
Most of Gaza's population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war and there have been repeated evacuation calls across large parts of the coastal enclave.
On Sunday morning, the 'Israeli' military told residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area to move south immediately due to imminent operations in the area.
Whole families were seen carrying what few belongings they have on packed donkey carts heading south.
The displacement order was "another devastating blow to the already fragile lifelines keeping people alive across the Gaza Strip", the UN OCHA said on Sunday.
According to the aid agency, 87.8 percent of Gaza is now under displacement orders or within 'Israeli' militarized zones, leaving "2.1 million civilians squeezed into a fragmented 12 per cent of the Strip, where essential services have collapsed."