Israeli forces fire on people waiting for aid in Gaza, killing 25, witnesses and hospitals say
Israeli forces and drones opened fire toward hundreds of people waiting for aid trucks in central Gaza early Tuesday, killing at least 25 people, Palestinian witnesses and hospitals said.
Responding to an Associated Press inquiry, the military said it was reviewing reports of casualties from Israeli fire after a group of people approached troops in an area adjunct to the east-west Netzarim corridor, which bisects Gaza.
The Awda hospital in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp, which received the victims, said the Palestinians were waiting for the trucks on the Salah al-Din Road south of Wadi Gaza.
EU says there are 'indications' Israel is breaching human rights agreement in Gaza
Witnesses told The Associated Press that Israeli forces opened fire as people were advancing eastward to be close to the approaching trucks.
'It was a massacre,' said Ahmed Halawa. He said tanks and drones fired at people, 'even as we were fleeing. Many people were either martyred or wounded.'
Hossam Abu Shahada, another eyewitness, said drones were flying over the area, watching the crowds first, then there was gunfire from tanks and drones as people were moving eastward. He described a 'chaotic and bloody' scene as people were attempting to escape.
He said he saw at least three people lying on the ground motionless and many others wounded as he fled the site.
The Awda hospital said another 146 Palestinians were wounded. Among them were 62 in critical condition, who were transferred to other hospitals in central Gaza, it said.
In the central town of Deir al-Balah, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said it received the bodies of six people who were killed in the same incident.
Palestinians in Gaza take dangerous journey to get food as death toll near aid sites rises
Palestinian witnesses and health officials say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds seeking desperately needed food, killing hundreds of people in recent weeks. The military says it has fired warning shots at people it said approached its forces in a suspicious manner.
The deaths were the latest in Israel-Hamas war in Gaza which killed about 56,000 Palestinians, according to the strip's health ministry.
The ministry doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants but say more than a half of the dead were women and children.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 251 hostages.
Most of the hostages were released by ceasefire agreements.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
Donald Trump's F-word and his discovery of some hard truths about the world
The sportswriter Bill Simmons coined the phrase 'the Tyson Zone' to describe the rarified state of being – named after Mike Tyson – in which a celebrity's behaviour becomes so unglued that nothing you hear about them seems impossible anymore. It was almost 20 years ago in his ESPN column that he originated the idea, but Donald Trump was a little later in discovering the powerful sorcery of occupying the Tyson Zone in politics. He does and says whatever he wants to such extremes that none of it shocks or even matters anymore. The more outrageous his actions, the more he expands the comfy cocoon of the Tyson Zone around himself. And yet, somehow, the F-word was a new bridge to cross. This he hadn't done before; this was a surprise. There was something in this reaction that mattered. How Trump's Israel-Iran ceasefire agreement came together in a chaotic 48 hours Trump pivots from budget bill to big, beautiful Middle East settlement On Tuesday as he prepared to leave for a NATO summit in the Netherlands, Mr. Trump faced a barrage of questions about the ceasefire he had declared the previous night between Israel and Iran, which had been breached immediately and explosively. 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing,' Mr. Trump snarled, physically leaning into the end of the sentence. He finished by barking 'Do you understand that?' at the reporters crowding around, before stalking away to his helicopter. It read like a true temper tantrum: naked, overwhelmed, a bubbling over of the insides. On one hand, Mr. Trump may have been simply expressing intense frustration about a long-running conflict that is intractable, destructive, bloody and, yes, incredibly frustrating on a geopolitical scale. There appeared to be an element of aggrieved surprise, as though he had thought he could quell a roiling sea just by saying so. He didn't seem to have accounted for 75 years of conflict in the Middle East, burning even hotter in the past few years, and still more in the past couple of weeks. But Mr. Trump's reaction to the world around him – particularly his most energetic responses – are never about the world, but rather about the centre of the universe: Donald J. Trump. What we saw on Tuesday was the President discovering in real time that some forces in the world will not be bent to his will, no matter how badly he wants to claim a big win. Around 1 a.m. ET on Monday, Mr. Trump posted on his social-media network, Truth Social, 'THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!' The prim, limp politeness of that was overshadowed in strangeness only by the way he signed it, like an official, enforceable order, 'DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!' By the time day broke in Washington, the ceasefire had been breached and Israel and Iran were each blaming the other. During the same press gaggle in which he launched that expletive, the President said he 'didn't like the fact that Israel unloaded right after we made the deal.' Mr. Trump thinks of himself as the consummate dealmaker. And here he was trying to broker the biggest deal imaginable – what could be more consequential or difficult, after all, than peace in the Middle East – and the whole world could see it failing. It's plain that Mr. Trump sees the ability to end conflicts as a demonstration of authority and negotiating prowess. He has repeatedly asserted that Russia's invasion of Ukraine would not have happened on his watch, and in the last several days, he's taken to listing off all the accomplishments for which he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. On Monday, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who had nominated Mr. Trump for the Nobel for brokering negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv withdrew the nomination. Then a Republican congressman stepped in on Tuesday to nominate him for the hours-old ceasefire. Re-posting that nomination letter was among the manic blizzard of social-media activity Mr. Trump mashed out aboard Air Force One as it hummed toward The Hague, following his meltdown on the White House lawn. He posted a praise-filled message from the NATO Secretary-General, he wrote a long tirade that combined the alleged stupidity of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a flex about his own cognitive testing, and he shared multiple posts about his approval ratings and various brownnosers declaring he should win the Nobel Peace Prize. In the decade that he's dominated world news, Mr. Trump has said and done so many things that breach unthinkable boundaries that it's not even worth trying to count them. But he's never dropped an F-word before. Consider how many times the President – who grew up as a boy with a rich and ruthless father who paved New York City for him, before he became a rich and ruthless man himself – has been told 'no' in his life. How often has he not gotten something he really wanted? How many times in the past 10 years? (Once at least, in November, 2020, and we know how that went.) How many times since election night last fall? Later in the day on Tuesday, Iran and Israel confirmed the ceasefire, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pronounced that 'Donald Trump is the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.' By the time he gaggled with reporters aboard his plane, Mr. Trump seemed to be feeling more optimistic and in control. 'Israel, as you know, turned back. They didn't do that raid this morning,' he said. He added, 'So the ceasefire is very much in effect and I think we're going to keep it there for a very long time.' Now, the President figured he was on his way to NATO to 'solve a new set of problems.' He answered more questions, and then when he'd had enough, he turned away from the reporters to walk back to his private section of the plane. 'Do you think you'll get the Nobel Peace Prize now, sir?' a reporter called after him. Mr. Trump mustn't have heard her, because he didn't turn back.
National Post
3 hours ago
- National Post
American attack only set back Iran's nuclear program by months, U.S. intelligence report suggests
WASHINGTON — A U.S. intelligence report suggests that Iran's nuclear program has been set back only a few months after U.S. strikes and was not 'completely and fully obliterated' as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment. Article content The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran's nuclear facilities. According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Article content Article content Article content The U.S. has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear program entirely, but some experts fear that the U.S. strikes — and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities — could push Tehran toward developing a functioning weapon. Article content Article content The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran's highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the U.S. strikes and survived, and it found that Iran's centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people. Article content At the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant, where U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found. The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo. Article content Article content The White House strongly pushed back on the DIA assessment, calling it 'flat-out wrong.' Article content Article content 'The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. 'Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.' Article content The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the DIA assessment. ODNI coordinates the work of the nation's 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries. The Israeli government also has not released any official assessments of the U.S. strikes.
CTV News
3 hours ago
- CTV News
Trump administration will provide $30 million to Israeli-backed group distributing food in Gaza
Palestinian youth and children are seen at a tent camp set up amid war-damaged infrastructure in Gaza City, Monday, June 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi) WASHINGTON— The Trump administration is providing $30 million to an Israeli-backed group distributing food in Gaza, a U.S. official said Tuesday. The request is the first known U.S. government funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's aid distribution efforts amid the Israel-Hamas war. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue involving a controversial aid program, confirmed that the U.S. authorized the funding. The Associated Press reported Saturday that the American-led group had asked the Trump administration for the initial funding so it can continue its aid operation, which has been criticized by the U.N., humanitarian groups and others. Matthew Lee And Ellen Knickmeyer, The Associated Press
