At least 51 Palestinians were killed and more than 200 wounded in the Gaza Strip while waiting for U.N. and commercial trucks to enter the territory with desperately needed food, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry and a local hospital.
Palestinian witnesses told The Associated Press that Israeli forces carried out an airstrike on a nearby home before opening fire toward the crowd in the southern city of Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said soldiers had spotted a gathering near an aid truck that was stuck in Khan Younis, near where Israeli forces were operating. It acknowledged “several casualties” as Israelis opened fire on the approaching crowd and said authorities would investigate what happened.
The shooting did not appear to be related to a new Israeli- and U.S.-supported aid delivery network that rolled out last month and has been marred by controversy and violence…..
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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?”
Palestinians say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowdstrying to reach food distribution points run by a separate U.S. and Israeli-backed aid group since the centers opened last month. Local health officials say scores have been killed and hundreds wounded.
In those instances, the Israeli military has acknowledged firing warning shots at people it said had approached its forces in a suspicious manner.
Deadly Israeli airstrikes continued elsewhere in the enclave 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….
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Israel says the new system operated by a private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, is designed to prevent Hamas from siphoning off aid to fund its militant activities.
U.N. agencies and major aid groups deny there is any major diversion of aid and 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.
The U.N.-run network has delivered aid across Gaza throughout the 20-month Israel-Hamas war, but has faced major obstacles since Israel loosened a total blockade it had imposed from early March until mid-May.
U.N. officials say Israeli military restrictions, a breakdown of law and order, and widespread looting make it difficult to deliver the aid that Israel has allowed in…..
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