Palestinians injured in an Israeli strike are brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip. AP
Palestinian witnesses told The Associated Press that Israeli occupation forces carried out an airstrike on a nearby home before opening fire toward the crowd in the southern city of Khan Younis.
It acknowledged “several casualties” as its soldiers opened fire on the approaching crowd and claimed authorities would investigate what happened.
The shooting did not appear to be related to a new Israeli- and US aid delivery network, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, that rolled out last month and has been marred by violence and deadly killings of Palestinians collecting aids.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, or OCHA, said the people killed were waiting for food rations arriving in UN convoys.
‘Aren’t we human beings?'
Yousef Nofal, an eyewitness, said he saw many people motionless and bleeding on the ground after Israeli forces opened fire. "It was a massacre,” he said, adding that the soldiers continued firing on people as they fled from the area.
Mohammed Abu Qeshfa reported hearing a loud explosion followed by heavy gunfire and tank shelling. “I survived by a miracle,” he said.
The dead and wounded were taken to the city's Nasser Hospital, which confirmed 51 people had been killed.
Later Tuesday, medical charity MSF raised the death toll to 59, saying that another 200 had been wounded while trying to receive flour rations in Khan Younis.
Samaher Meqdad was at the hospital looking for her two brothers and a nephew who had been in the crowd.
“We don’t want flour. We don’t want food. We don’t want anything,” she said. “Why did they fire at the young people? Why? Aren’t we human beings?”
Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds trying to reach food distribution points run by a separate US and Israeli-backed aid group since the centers opened last month.
Local health officials say scores have been killed and hundreds wounded, accusing the group of acting as a trap to lure starving civilians into targeted zones.
In those instances, the Israeli army has acknowledged firing warning shots at people it claimed had approached its forces in a suspicious manner.
Deadly Israeli airstrikes continued elsewhere in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday. Al-Awda Hospital, a major medical center in northern Gaza, reported that it has received the bodies of eight Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the central Bureij refugee camp.
Desperation grows
UN agencies and major aid groups have rejected the new system, saying it can't meet the mounting needs in Gaza and that it violates humanitarian principles by allowing Israel to control who has access to aid.
Experts have warned of famine in the territory that is home to some 2 million Palestinians.
UN officials say Israeli military restrictions, a breakdown of law and order, and widespread looting make it difficult to deliver the little aid that Israel has allowed in.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for OCHA, said on Tuesday that the aid Israeli authorities have allowed into Gaza since late May has been “woefully insufficient.”
Fuel has not entered Gaza for over 100 days, she said. “The only way to address it is by sufficient volumes and over sustained periods of time. A trickle of aid here, a trickle of aid there is not going to make a difference."
Israel’s genocidal war since October 2023 has killed over 55,300 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children.
* This story was edited by Ahram Online.
Short link: