More than 80 killed trying to reach aid in Gaza, health ministry says
And there was new alarm as Israel's military issued evacuation orders for areas of central Gaza, one of the few areas where it has rarely operated with ground troops and where many international organisations attempting to distribute aid are located.
One aid group said several groups' offices were told to evacuate immediately.
The largest toll was in northern Gaza, where at least 79 Palestinians were killed while trying to reach aid entering through the Zikim crossing with Israel, according to the health ministry and local hospitals.
The UN World Food Programme said 25 trucks with aid had entered for 'starving communities' when it encountered massive crowds that came under gunfire.
A UN official said Israeli forces opened fire towards the crowds who tried to take food from the convoy. Footage taken by the UN and shared with the Associated Press showed Palestinian men running as the sound of automatic gunfire could be heard.
'Suddenly, tanks surrounded us and trapped us as gunshots and strikes rained down. We were trapped for around two hours,' Ehab Al-Zei, who had been waiting for flour, said.
'I will never go back again. Let us die of hunger, it's better.'
Nafiz Al-Najjar, who was injured, said tanks and drones targeted people 'randomly' and he saw his cousin and others shot dead.
Israel's military said soldiers had shot at a gathering of thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza who posed a threat, and it was aware of some casualties. But it said the numbers reported by officials in Gaza were far higher than its initial investigation found.
The military said it was attempting to facilitate the entry of aid, and accused Hamas militants of creating chaos and endangering civilians.
More than 150 people were wounded overall, with some in critical condition, hospitals said.
Separately, seven Palestinians were killed while sheltering in tents in Khan Younis in the south, including a five-year-old boy, according to the Kuwait Specialised Field Hospital, which received the casualties.
The killings in northern Gaza did not take place near aid distribution points associated with the recently created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US and Israel-backed group.
Naem Ahmed's family hugged the last bag of WFP wheat flour they received – a small celebration amid desperate conditions.
Everyone in #Gaza is hungry.
It's time to flood the Strip with food and reach ALL families, everywhere – safely and without interruption. pic.twitter.com/9dUovbKz0L
— World Food Programme (@WFP) July 19, 2025
Witnesses and health workers say hundreds of people have been killed by Israeli fire while trying to access the group's aid distribution sites.
The new evacuation orders cut access between the central city of Deir al-Balah and the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis in the narrow territory. The military also reiterated evacuation orders for northern Gaza.
The United Nations has been in contact with Israeli authorities to clarify whether UN facilities in the southwestern part of Deir al-Balah are included in the evacuation order, according to a UN official.
The official said that in previous instances, UN facilities were spared from evacuation orders.
The latest order covers an area stretching from a previously evacuated area all the way to the Mediterranean coast and will severely hamper movement for aid groups and civilians in Gaza.
The Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) group said in a statement that several humanitarian organisations' offices and guesthouses had been 'ordered to evacuate immediately' and nine clinics, including the MAP one, had been forced to shut down.
Military spokesman Avichay Adraee called for people to head to the Muwasi area, a desolate tent camp on Gaza's southern coast that Israel's military has designated a humanitarian zone.
The announcement came as Israel and Hamas have been holding ceasefire talks in Qatar, but international mediators say there have been no breakthroughs.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly asserted that expanding Israel's military operations in Gaza will pressure Hamas in negotiations.
Earlier this month, Israel's military said it controlled more than 65% of Gaza.
Gaza's population of more than two million Palestinians are in a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, now relying largely on the limited aid allowed into the territory. Many people have been displaced multiple times.
Hamas triggered the war when militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Fifty remain in Gaza, but fewer than half are thought to be alive.
Israel's military offensive has killed more than 58,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, which does not say how many militants have been killed but says more than half of the dead have been women and children.
The ministry is part of the Hamas government, but the UN and other international organisations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘We are dying slowly, save us': starvation takes hold in Gaza after a week of appalling milestones
The people of Gaza did not need this week's official confirmation from UN-backed hunger experts that the 'worst-case scenario of famine' was unfolding there. For months they have watched as their children waste away. 'All my children have lost nearly half of their body weight,' said Jamil Mughari, a 38-year-old from Maghazi in central Gaza. 'My daughter, who is five years old, now weighs only 11kg. My son Mohammad has become just skin and bones. All my children are like this. 'I myself used to weigh 85kg, and now I'm down to 55.' He was struggling to sustain the strength required to find food for his family. 'Sometimes, while walking in the street, I feel dizzy and that I'm about to collapse, but I force myself to stay upright. I also sometimes experience shivering,' he said. Over the course of the week, Gaza passed two appalling milestones. The official Palestinian death toll passed 60,000, although the real figure, including those buried under the rubble from Israeli airstrikes, is likely to be far higher. The human cost is likely to continue to rise steeply as starvation catches up with bombs and gunfire as an indiscriminate killer. On Tuesday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a panel of experts from the UN and other aid organisations, which had long warned of the threat of famine, confirmed that the line had been crossed. 'The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,' the IPC said, as it called for a ceasefire to prevent further 'catastrophic human suffering'. The 2.2 million people of Gaza have long been experts in hunger, forced to scavenge for food each day in the face of Israel's deliberate and severe restrictions to aid deliveries. Mughari said that food was almost nonexistent: 'We can go for a week or two without any flour. Sometimes we only have one meal a day, which is lentils, and sometimes we find nothing at all to eat – we spend the day drinking water just to feel full.' His family has had to move seven times since the war began, forced to flee repeated Israeli offensives. But there was no way to escape the hunger that now grips the entire territory. 'Sometimes we get lentils from donations or charitable people, or we borrow some money to buy them, that's it,' he said. 'We don't receive any food aid from soup kitchens; those are only for certain camps, in small quantities. 'They [Israelis] spread news about aid coming in, but only the strong and those with weapons seize the trucks and sell the goods at extremely high prices. How can the poor afford to buy them at such prices?' The four food distribution sites across Gaza run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are open for only a few minutes a day, leading to huge crowds of desperate people, who have come under Israeli fire while seeking humanitarian assistance, leading to mass casualties. Mansoura Fadl al-Helou, a 58-year-old widow, is too frail to go to the distribution points and refuses to let her son go, for fear he would not come back alive. 'The situation there is terrible and very dangerous. The worst part is the chaos among the men – people pushing and throwing each other to the ground,' she said. 'Only my one son is here, but I always stop him from going near the aid trucks because of the danger posed by the army. I couldn't bear to see him come back to me as a martyr.' Mughari has undergone open-heart surgery and all his children are under 12. Even if they wanted to risk their lives for the chance of finding food, they are unable to. 'I try to remain steadfast so I can provide my children with anything to eat,' he said. 'We have sent many messages to the world, but no one has moved. We no longer know what to say. All I can tell the world is that we are dying slowly, save us from this tragedy.' Among the horrors the Israel-Gaza war has brought to its people, the torture of parents seeing their children starve and being powerless to save them is surely one of the worst. 'My youngest daughter is 14 years old, and her ribcage bones are clearly visible due to extreme weakness and malnutrition,' said Abu al-Abed, a father from Deir al-Balah. 'I have four daughters and three sons. They suffer from dizziness and fatigue because of the lack of food. If I, their father, feel this way, how much worse must it be for them?' He said they did not receive any aid and that the food market was expensive and they could afford to buy only a little there. 'The prices are extremely high; they haven't reached such levels of inflation even in European countries. And here in Gaza, there is no source of income at all. 'There used to be soup kitchens in the area, but now they no longer exist. There are no places that provide free food any more. He said he no longer believed the world had any sense of responsibility. 'For years, they boasted about human rights and the protection of lives. What I see now is that all of this was a lie, we were deceived by these slogans. 'If we had asked them to protect the rights of animals in Gaza, they would have responded immediately and done the impossible. But when it comes to the rights of the Palestinian people, no one remembers us or feels for us, not the Arabs, not the Muslims, not the Christians, no one.' The official IPC recognition of what the people of Gaza knew only too well – that they are starving – brought some faint hope that the outside world would finally stir itself to act, though long experience did not bring much confidence that would happen. Al-Helou said: 'We have been suffering from this famine for a long time, and no one has acted. I hope that through this message, the world will finally move to help us and save us from this slow death.' The news of the UK's pledge to recognise Palestine in September, barring a ceasefire and a fundamental change in direction from Israel, impressed her even less. 'I don't know what would change if the British government recognises the state of Palestine. What kind of state has no sovereignty, no right to self-defence?' she asked. 'It's a good step to recognise us and the state of Palestine, but it should be a real recognition – not symbolic. A state with real rights, real sovereignty, and a people with rights like any other nation.'
The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Viral photo of 'starving' child in Gaza is misleading
This has led President Donald Trump to say he wanted to boost U.S. humanitarian efforts in war-torn Gaza. Hamas terrorists in Gaza started the war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they attacked Israel, slaughtering and kidnapping hundreds of Israeli citizens. Palestinian civilians are now paying the price for those atrocities. Opinion: Trump is racking up GOP wins no one else could. What do Never Trumpers say now? "We can save a lot of people," Trump said July 28, while meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland. "I mean, some of those kids are - that's real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can't fake it." But what if you can? New York Times does damage control after misleading image The photograph of one mother and child in particular has created a firestorm. The New York Times published a lengthy report online about alleged starvation in Gaza on July 24, featuring 18-month-old Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq. Photos show a child in distress, with his bones painfully visible. His mother tries to comfort him. The Times then ran the story on its print front page July 25, with the photo of the child and his mother as the leading image. The caption says the child was "born healthy" but is suffering from "severe malnutrition." Yet, it turned out there was more to the story. Five days after the story was published, on July 29, The Times issued an editor's note (buried at the bottom of the article) as well as a brief statement on its communications social media page that offered readers much-needed context. The note "clarifies" that the child suffers from serious "pre-existing health problems." "We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems," a Times spokesperson said in the statement. "This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation." That's putting it mildly. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. The Times certainly wasn't alone in running images of Mohammed. Others, including CNN, did as well. After all, a picture paints a thousand words. And these photos went viral, making Mohammed the face of starving children across Gaza. It also buoyed the narrative pushed by the media and progressives that Israel is at fault for blocking aid from flowing to the Palestinians in need. Opinion: Sydney Sweeney's jeans ad triggers liberals. She looks good. They don't. Too many journalists have abandoned truth for advocacy But thanks to the reporting of independent journalists and pushback from Israel officials, the truth has come out. The state of Israel posted on social media another photograph of the mother and child, which features the child's older brother, who appears healthy. The contrast makes it clear that there's much more contributing to Mohammed's condition than lack of food. "BBC, CNN, Daily Express, and The New York Times spread a misleading story using a picture of a sick, disabled child to promote a narrative of mass starvation in Gaza - playing into the hands of Hamas's propaganda war," the post states. Share your opinion: Are you concerned about starvation in Gaza? Should US do more to help? Tell us. | Opinion Forum Americans deserve the full story. For instance, David Makovsky, director of the program on Arab-Israel Relations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, recently pointed out on X that a United Nations report shows that "87% of its 2,010 food trucks in Gaza (85% by tonnage) from May 19-July 29 were 'intercepted' - either peacefully by crowds or forcefully by armed actors." In other words, Hamas is intercepting food meant for civilians. That's worth reporting. Trump is right to feel empathy for the innocent civilians in Gaza, especially the children. But it's Hamas who deserves the blame for their plight - not Israel. As Trump noted in a July 31 Truth Social post, "The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!" The truth is that Hamas is using the suffering of those who live under its grip to try to achieve its aims. That's the real tragedy. Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@ or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques
The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
In Gaza, Israel is starving us. US refuses meaningful help
I have lost 55 pounds since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, which a growing number of human rights groups and other experts have concluded is a genocide. I feel exhausted and dizzy all the time. But I have a household to provide for and three children who are equally fatigued from hunger. They are lethargic, unable to concentrate and sleep much of the day. I can barely find flour for my family. With the help of my wife, we divide the bread we bake among the five of us, in small quantities that are not nearly enough to stave off the intense pangs of hunger. I tell the children that this is all we have for today. Meat and fruit are completely unavailable, and we can't afford the $40 that a 2-pound bag of tomatoes costs. We usually eat the bread by itself or sometimes, if we're lucky, with some basic legumes, once or twice a day. In the evening, my children go to sleep hungry. They wake up in the middle of the night with gnawing pain in their stomachs, asking for food. Sometimes they dream that they're eating their favorite dishes. Our 8-year-old, Ayla, dreams about okra stew with rice and sometimes shawarma. The pain often awakens 6-year-old Seela in the middle of the night, crying. I save some of my bread ration in order to have something to offer her, but she refuses. "Save it for morning, Baba," she tells me, "So that my brother Karim can eat it with me. He's hungry, too." Malnutrition is rampant in Gaza. Those who don't starve will have generational wounds. As a parent, it's heartbreaking to see my children suffer like this, and knowing it will likely have long-lasting consequences for their health and development. And as a nutritionist, I know that my family's experience is a microcosm of the catastrophic level of starvation being experienced throughout Gaza. Extreme malnutrition is now rampant. In addition to blocking almost all food, water and other humanitarian aid from entering since March, the Israeli military has also systematically damaged, destroyed or otherwise rendered unusable the majority of Gaza's food and agricultural infrastructure. Share your opinion: Are you concerned about starvation in Gaza? Should US do more to help? | Opinion Forum More than 150 people have died from malnutrition since the fall of 2023, meeting the criteria for Level 5 famine. About 90 of those who have died of malnutrition are children. If Israel continues to block the entry and distribution of food, thousands more will die or experience irreversible damage to their organs. Those who face the highest risk are the most vulnerable among us: children, the elderly, pregnant women and those with chronic diseases. Opinion: I run a soup kitchen in Gaza. The horrors of starvation here are indescribable. Before the war, I had a private clinic for therapeutic nutrition and weight treatment north of Gaza City, in Beit Lahia, which the Israeli military destroyed in December 2023. When the war started, we were displaced to Rafah in the south, then again several times to other places. In January, during the ceasefire, we returned to Beit Lahia, before being displaced again four months later to Gaza City. We now live here, in a tent close to the beach. I was injured by an Israeli missile while trying to feed my family. All we ask is to live. A few weeks later, I was badly injured when I was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli missile while I was out searching for food for my family. I am still unable to walk due to the complex nature of the injury and nerve damage, which is untreatable due to Israel's destruction of Gaza's health sector. Recently, I was accepted to study for a master's degree in public health at the University of Washington and received a full scholarship. However, I am unable to leave the Gaza Strip to complete my studies in the United States. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. I now work as part of a team with an American nongovernmental organization providing nutritional support to displaced people. As I make my way back to my tent at the end of each day in my wheelchair, I pass by traumatized, skeletal children. Some beg in the streets. Others search piles of garbage to scavenge what scraps of food they can. Due to decades of Israeli military occupation and blockade, Gaza had a very high rate of poverty and unemployment even before Israel's brutal war began, yet I have never witnessed anything close to this level of desperation. Images that make it to television or newspapers can't even begin to convey our grim reality. Opinion: People are starving in Gaza. Why are we so comfortable just letting that happen? Israel's actions in Gaza have violated all humanitarian norms and agreements, making a mockery of international law and the very notion of a rules-based order. Though the official death toll just surpassed 60,000 people, studies done by The Lancet medical journal and others put the actual death toll at 40% higher, not accounting for those buried under the rubble, or who have died from hunger, disease and lack of access to medical care. Despite the growing horror and outrage globally over Israel's starvation campaign and genocide, the international community, particularly the U.S. government and Israel's other Western backers, continue to refuse to do anything meaningful to pressure Israel to open the land crossings and allow unrestricted entry of food and other aid, issuing occasional statements of condemnation while maintaining the flow of weapons to Israel and diplomatic shielding. I write these words with the desperation of a father watching his children whimper from hunger as they try to sleep. I write them with the urgency of a nutritionist watching his people grow ever more emaciated and die. Every person with humanity - every government with a conscience - must do all in their power to break Israel's cruel and illegal siege. Let Gaza eat. Let our children live. Mohamed Hammoudeh is a nutritionist and father of three sheltering in Gaza City.
