Gaza Health Ministry Says Israeli Military Killed 32 in Attack Near Aid Site
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports, as did the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israel-backed group that operates the food distribution site. The main hospital in southern Gaza, the Nasser Medical Complex, said in a statement that it had received 29 bodies 'from the aid points,' without explaining who had killed them, how they had died or where the other bodies had been taken.
It appeared to be the latest episode of violence connected to a new and deeply contentious food distribution system in Gaza that was introduced by Israel nearly two months ago. The United Nations said this week that more than 670 Palestinians had been killed near sites built under the system.
Since the system was implemented in late May, the Israeli military has mandated the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a group partly developed by Israeli officials and businessmen, to distribute food to Palestinians from a handful of sites in areas under Israeli control. The system largely replaces one run by the United Nations, which previously distributed food from hundreds of points, mainly in areas controlled by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Israel says the new system is necessary to prevent Hamas from stealing, stockpiling and selling the food at high prices to civilians. Aid groups say it has turned the process of seeking food into a near-daily death trap because it brings crowds of desperate and hungry civilians into regular proximity with Israeli troops.
Israeli soldiers have repeatedly shot in recent months at crowds of Palestinians walking toward the foundation's food distribution points, seemingly as a crude and lethal form of crowd control.
Israeli officials have acknowledged that troops have fired on crowds approaching the aid sites but have also suggested that the death tolls have been inflated. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said that violence rarely occurs at the sites themselves and has accused Hamas of both encouraging the unrest and of attacking Palestinians employed at the sites.
More generally, aid groups say that the new system has yet to prevent widespread hunger, which surged in Gaza following Israel's 80-day blockade on all food and fuel between March and May.
This week, one of the main United Nations agencies in Gaza, UNRWA, said that it screened more than 10,600 children in the second half of June and found that more than 900, or nearly one in 10, was suffering from malnourishment.
Ameera Harouda contributed reporting.
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