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Gaza Civil Defence Says Israeli Attacks Kill 26 Near Two Aid Centres

Gaza Civil Defence Says Israeli Attacks Kill 26 Near Two Aid Centres

Gaza's civil defence agency on Saturday said Israeli gunfire killed 26 people and wounded more than 100 near two aid centres, in the latest deaths of Palestinians seeking food.
Deaths of people waiting for handouts in huge crowds near food points in Gaza have become a regular occurrence, with the territory's authorities frequently blaming Israeli fire.
But the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is the main distributor of aid in the territory, has accused militant group Hamas of fomenting unrest and shooting at civilians.
The Israeli military said it was "looking into" the latest reports when contacted by AFP.
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the deaths happened near a site southwest of Khan Yunis and another centre northwest of Rafah, both in the south, attributing the deaths to "Israeli gunfire".
One eyewitness said he headed to the Al-Tina area of Khan Yunis before dawn with five of his relatives to try to get food when "Israeli soldiers" started shooting.
"My relatives and I were unable to get anything," Abdul Aziz Abed, 37, told AFP. "Every day I go there and all we get is bullets and exhaustion instead of food."
Three other eyewitnesses also accused troops of opening fire.
"They started shooting at us and we lay down on the ground. Tanks and jeeps came, soldiers got out of them and started shooting," said Tamer Abu Akar, 24.
Nine people were killed in gunfire at the same centre in the Al-Shakoush area northwest of Rafah on Friday, the civil defence agency said.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the agency and other parties.
The war in Gaza, sparked by militant group Hamas's deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people who live in the coastal territory.
Most people have been displaced at least once by the fighting and doctors and aid agencies say the physical and mental health effects of 21 months of conflict are being increasingly seen.
"We are receiving cases suffering from extreme exhaustion and complete fatigue, in addition to severe emaciation and acute malnutrition due to prolonged lack of food," the director of the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in Khan Yunis, Sohaib Al-Hums, said on Friday.
"Hundreds" of people were facing "imminent death", he added.
The World Food Programme said nearly one in three people in Gaza were not eating for days at a stretch and "thousands" were "on the verge of catastrophic hunger".
The free flow of aid into Gaza is a key demand of Hamas in the indirect talks with Israel for a 60-day ceasefire in the war, alongside a full Israeli military withdrawal.
Following a more than two-month total Israeli blockade, GHF took over the running of aid distribution in late May, despite criticism from the United Nations, which previously coordinated handouts, that it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.
GHF said 20 people died at its Khan Yunis site on Wednesday but blamed "agitators in the crowd... armed and affiliated with Hamas" for creating "a chaotic and dangerous surge" and firing at aid-seekers.
The previous day, the UN said it had recorded 875 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food, including 674 "in the vicinity of GHF sites", since it began operating.
Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel led to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Of the 251 people taken hostage that day, 49 are still in Gaza, including the 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory military action has killed 58,667 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
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Israel-Hamas war: Gaza's humanitarian crisis in numbers – DW – 07/25/2025
Israel-Hamas war: Gaza's humanitarian crisis in numbers – DW – 07/25/2025

DW

time20 hours ago

  • DW

Israel-Hamas war: Gaza's humanitarian crisis in numbers – DW – 07/25/2025

The situation in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic: scant aid supplies are trickling in while international organizations warn of a famine. Here are the key numbers at a glance. Most of the buildings have been destroyed, hospitals have had to close and food is scarce. The reality in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic. Around 90% of the more than 2 million inhabitants have now fled within the territory, and some have already been forced to move several times. With the latest evacuation order for the city of Deir al-Balah, 87.8% of the Gaza Strip is now under evacuation orders or within the Israeli military's restricted military zones, according to the UN emergency aid office OCHA. The population is now crammed into 12% of the Gaza Strip, it said on Tuesday. International pressure on Israel is growing, with 28 states, including France, the UK and many other Western nations, calling for an end to the war. According to OCHA, 58,380 Palestinians (as of 15 July 2025) have died since the war started in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, including many women and children. OCHA, which is responsible for coordinating humanitarian affairs, cites data from the Health Ministry in Gaza. The ministry is run by Hamas, which Israel, the US, Germany, the EU and other organizations designate as a terrorist organization. The United Nations and Israeli intelligence officials deem the numbers reported by Gaza's health ministry as reliable. Given Israel's ongoing military operation in the small enclave, numbers cannot be independently verified. Several third-party studies have indicated the true death toll could be nearly twice as high. According to a study by an international research team, more than 80,000 Palestinians are said to have been killed by January of this year. The scientific journal reported on the study, which was conducted under the direction of Michael Spagat from Royal Holloway College, University of London, in late June 2025. The scientists worked closely with the research organization The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), which is funded by the European Union, among others. PCPSR staff surveyed 2,000 families about deaths within their household and then extrapolated the figures. A study published in the Lancet in January of this year also found that deaths in Gaza were being underreported. For this study, obituaries on social networks were compared with the Health Ministry's lists. The war in Gaza was triggered by a terrorist attack Hamas led on Israel on October 7, 2023. Around 1,200 people were killed, and Hamas abducted 251 people as hostages in the Gaza Strip. According to official Israeli information, 50 people kidnapped from Israel are still being held in the Gaza Strip, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive. According to the on Tuesday, 895 Israeli army personnel have also died in the war. After almost two years of war, the lack of basic goods entering the Gaza Strip has had dramatic consequences. Many Palestinians are suffering from hunger, often lacking most basic necessities. According to Welthungerhilfe, a German non-profit humanitarian assistance organization, the 25 remaining bakeries had to close at the beginning of April. Most of the 177 community kitchens have also run out of supplies, Welthungerhilfe told DW. Almost one in three people eat nothing for days on end, the UN World Food Program (WFP) told DW. For most of them, food aid is the only way to get any food at all. According to the latest IPC report from May 2025, which many aid organizations also refer to, according to DW research, the entire population of the Gaza Strip is now affected by acute food insecurity (IPC level 3). According to the definition, this means that the choice of food is limited, and people have to work extremely hard to get the calories they need. According to the IPC, 470,000 people in the Gaza Strip are at risk of catastrophic hunger (IPC level 5). This corresponds to acute danger to life due to hunger; there is an extreme lack of calories per person per day. The IPC system (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) is an internationally recognized instrument for measuring and classifying hunger and food security. Five levels are defined, ranging from phase one, "minimal," to "stressed," "crisis," "emergency," and phase five, "Famine." It is also forecast that more than 71,000 children and an estimated 17,000 mothers will require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition in the coming months. According to UNICEF, the UN's children's humanitarian agency, children are considered to be acutely malnourished if their weight is less than 80% of the appropriate weight for their age. Teams from the aid organization Doctors Without Borders also noted a sharp rise in cases of "acute malnutrition" in mid-July. According to the nongovernmental organization, hundreds of women and children with severe and moderate malnutrition are currently being treated in health centers, and the numbers are clearly on the rise. According to Gaza's Health Ministry, people are dying of hunger every day, most of them children. On Tuesday, for example, 15 people died of starvation. This cannot be verified independently. Providing medical care in Gaza is also becoming increasingly difficult. According to an assessment by the aid organization Doctors Without Borders in July 2025, no hospital is fully functional at the moment. The facilities that are still in operation are completely overburdened. According to the NGO, the conditions for treatment are catastrophic: most hospitals no longer have electricity or running water. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 18 out of 36 hospitals were still partially operational at the end of June. Almost 40% of the points of contact for basic medical care — doctors' surgeries, outpatient clinics and aid offered by NGOs — were still operational. The field hospitals are also limited; only two are fully intact. Israel blocked humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip for 11 weeks in the spring, aggravating the situation even further. All supplies are increasingly scarce: food, water, medicine and fuel, which is necessary for the operation of hospitals and public community kitchens. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which Israel and the US support, has been distributing food at a few distribution centers since the end of May. However, there have been repeated reports of fatal incidents near the GHF distribution points, including in recent days. For a long time, aid organizations have been pressing to be allowed to resume their provision of relief supplies to the region. In an interview with DW, the World Food Program explained that since the end of the aid blockade on May 21, an average of 20 to 30 WFP trucks with food have reached the Gaza Strip every day. The amount delivered is only a small fraction of what the more than 2 million people in the Gaza Strip need to survive. During the ceasefire, 600 to 700 trucks crossed the border every day.

Aid Groups Warn Of Starving Children As European Powers Discuss Gaza
Aid Groups Warn Of Starving Children As European Powers Discuss Gaza

Int'l Business Times

time21 hours ago

  • Int'l Business Times

Aid Groups Warn Of Starving Children As European Powers Discuss Gaza

Aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in war-ravaged Gaza as a trio of European powers prepared to hold an "emergency call" Friday on the deepening humanitarian crisis. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, a day after the United Nations said one in five children in Gaza City were suffering from malnutrition. With fears of mass starvation growing, Britain, France and Germany were set to hold an emergency call to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and discuss steps towards Palestinian statehood. "I will hold an emergency call with E3 partners tomorrow, where we will discuss what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need while pulling together all the steps necessary to build a lasting peace," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. The call comes after hopes of a new ceasefire in Gaza faded on Thursday when Israel and the United States quit indirect negotiations with Hamas in Qatar. US envoy Steve Witkoff accused the Palestinian militant group of not "acting in good faith". President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that France would formally recognise a Palestinian state in September, drawing a furious rebuke from Israel. More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that "mass starvation" was spreading in Gaza. Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis, which the World Health Organization has called "man-made". Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later. The trickle of aid since then has been controlled by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, replacing the longstanding UN-led distribution system. Aid groups have refused to work with it, accusing it of aiding Israeli military goals. The GHF system, in which Gazans have to travel long distances and join huge queues to reach one of four sites, has often proved deadly, with the UN saying that more than 750 Palestinian aid-seekers have been killed by Israeli forces near GHF centres since late May. An AFP photographer saw bloodied patients, wounded while attempting to get humanitarian aid, being treated on the floor of Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis on Thursday. Israel has refused to return to the UN-led system, saying that it allowed Hamas to hijack aid for its own benefit. Accusing Israel of the "weaponisation of food", MSF said that: "Across screenings of children aged six months to five years old and pregnant and breastfeeding women, at MSF facilities last week, 25 per cent were malnourished." It said malnutrition cases had quadrupled since May 18 at its Gaza City clinic and that the facility was enrolling 25 new patients every day. Aid groups and medics have also warned that a lack of food is preventing the sick and wounded from recovering. On Thursday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that one in five children in Gaza City were malnourished. Agency chief Philippe Lazzarini said: "Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they don't get the treatment they urgently need." He also warned that "UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all". Lazzarini said that the agency had "the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies" ready to send into Gaza if Israel allowed "unrestricted and uninterrupted" access to the territory. Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,587 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. Hamas's October 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Of the 251 hostages taken during the attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead. Yasmine, a 22-year-old Palestinian mother, holds her malnourished tw-months-old daughter Teen as they await treatment at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis AFP Most aid in Gaza is now distributed by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation AFP The war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel, has raged for more than 21 months AFP

Gaza Today: Under Debris And In Darkness
Gaza Today: Under Debris And In Darkness

Int'l Business Times

time2 days ago

  • Int'l Business Times

Gaza Today: Under Debris And In Darkness

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