Israeli gunfire, strikes kill 120 Palestinians in Gaza, many at aid sites
Gaza's Health Ministry said 57 people trying to access aid were killed and more than 363 injured by Israel since Wednesday morning. The distribution points are operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed drive in tightly Israeli-controlled zones.
Israel's Foreign Ministry has described the GHF aid system as a 'dramatic success' despite mass killings and scenes of utter human desperation, triggering widespread international opprobrium.
The isolated aid sites – set up in Rafah and in the Netzarim Corridor – have been branded 'human slaughterhouses' as more than 220 people have been killed while desperately trying to secure meagre food parcels for their families since GHF started operating on May 27.
The Israeli army has admitted its troops fired 'warning shots' in the area of the Netzarim Corridor, where the majority of aid seekers were reported killed overnight.
Gaza's Government Media Office said the Israeli military 'is deliberately creating chaos in the Gaza Strip by perpetuating a policy of starvation and deliberately targeting and killing starving people seeking food'.
The United Nations also condemned the killings and has refused to supply aid via the foundation, which uses private contractors with Israeli military backup in what the UN says is a breach of humanitarian standards.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) called the aid distribution model 'a distraction from the ongoing atrocities and a waste of resources'.
It reiterated that the humanitarian community in Gaza, including UNRWA, is 'ready and has the experience and expertise to reach people in need'.
Israel has banned UNRWA and other legacy aid agencies with decades of experience from operating in Gaza, where a famine looms, while it maintains a punishing aid blockade.
Chris Newton, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Israel's chaotic and violence-plagued aid system is deliberately structured to keep Palestinians desperate and hungry while pushing them southward.
Newton told Al Jazeera that GHF's stated aim of providing 1,750 calories worth of food per person per day is well short of the minimum standard for crisis situations.
That amount of food is 'closer to the ration given in a starvation experiment run in the 1940s in the US than it is to Israel's own previous 2008 red line for the minimum calories needed to avoid malnutrition in Gaza,' said Newton.
Elsewhere in Gaza on Wednesday, dozens of other people were killed by Israeli gunfire and strikes across the coastal territory.
An Israeli attack in Gaza City's Tuffah neighbourhood killed at least seven people, according to local medical sources.
Three Palestinians, including two children, were killed when an Israeli strike hit a home in northern Gaza's Jabalia, while in central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, three more Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone strike, which wounded several others, according to the news agency Wafa.
In southern Gaza's Khan Younis, Israeli air strikes on displacement tents in the Tiberias camp killed four Palestinians, including a child, and wounded others, Wafa said.Children have borne much of the brunt of Israel's ongoing assault. Gaza's Health Ministry said the total death toll from Israel's war has risen to 55,104 since October 7, 2023 – most of them women and children.
Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said al-Shifa Hospital, like many other health facilities, has been reduced in terms of its capacity to provide proper healthcare to people, let alone children.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who was at al-Shifa, said, 'Everywhere we go, this is the same scenario.
'Despite doctors' most incredible efforts, we see children being brutalised, burned … because it's a war on children.'
In the meantime, Israel continues to hold some of the crew members and activists who were on board the Madleen aid vessel trying to break the Israeli siege. Israeli forces intercepted the vessel and its 12 crew members in international waters off Gaza earlier this week.
While it deported four of the members, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, eight others remain in detention.
The group Adalah–The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel called on Israel to immediately release the remaining detained volunteers and return them either 'to the Madleen to resume their humanitarian mission to Gaza or to their countries of origin'.At least two of the detainees were placed in solitary confinement, according to their lawyers, though one – Rima Hassan – has since been returned to the main prison wing.
Brazilian national Thiago Avila was placed in solitary at Ayalon Prison due to an 'ongoing hunger and thirst strike' that began this week. 'He has also been treated aggressively by prison authorities, although this has not escalated to physical assault,' Adalah said.
Hassan, a French citizen and member of the European Parliament, was also temporarily placed in isolation in Neve Tirza Prison after writing 'Free Palestine' on a wall in another prison called Givon.
The UN's special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, has decried the arrests as 'arbitrary' and 'unlawful' and also called for the detainees' immediate release.
The Israeli military says it recovered the bodies of Yair Yaakov and a second captive, whose name has not yet been released, in a joint operation in Khan Younis with the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet.
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Los Angeles Times
34 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
The latest child to starve to death in Gaza weighed less than when she was born
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Yahoo
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People Are Reporting A Frightening COVID Symptom — Here's What To Know
A positive COVID-19 test result is not something that anyone wants to see — but now there may be an extra reason to avoid getting sick. COVID infections cause miserable symptoms such as fever, fatigue, congestion and more. Now, though, some people infected with COVID in China are reporting a very sore throat that's been nicknamed 'razor blade throat.' According to Google trends data, people throughout the U.S. are now, too, worried about this scary-sounding symptom and are searching for things like 'new covid variant painful symptom' and 'covid razor throat.' Just how worried do you need to be about a super-painful sore throat during a COVID infection? Below, doctors weigh in on the supposed 'razor blade' sore throat symptom: Some people with COVID are reporting a 'razor blade throat,' but you don't need to panic. It's nothing new. 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Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
No proof Hamas routinely stole UN aid, Israeli military officials say
Now, with hunger at crisis levels in the territory, Israel is coming under increased international pressure over its conduct of the war in Gaza and the humanitarian suffering it has brought. Doctors in the territory say that an increasing number of their patients are suffering from -- and dying of -- starvation. More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups warned this past week of 'mass starvation' and implored Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian assistance. The European Union and at least 28 governments, including Israeli allies like Britain, France, and Canada, issued a joint statement condemning Israel's 'drip-feeding of aid' to Gaza's 2 million Palestinian residents. Advertisement Israel has largely brushed off the criticism. David Mencer, a government spokesperson, said this past week that there was 'no famine caused by Israel.' Instead, he blamed Hamas and poor coordination by the United Nations for any food shortages. Advertisement Israel moved in May toward replacing the UN-led aid system that had been in place for most of the 21-month war in Gaza, opting instead to back a private, American-run operation guarded by armed US contractors in areas controlled by Israeli military forces. Some aid still comes into Gaza through the United Nations and other organizations. The new system has proved to be much deadlier for Palestinians trying to obtain food handouts. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, almost 1,100 people have been killed by gunfire on their way to get food handouts under the new system, in many cases by Israeli soldiers who opened fire on hungry crowds. Israeli officials have said they fired shots in the air in some instances because the crowds came too close or endangered their forces. The military officials who spoke to The New York Times said that the original UN aid operation was relatively reliable and less vulnerable to Hamas interference than the operations of many of the other groups bringing aid into Gaza. That's largely because the United Nations managed its own supply chain and handled distribution directly inside Gaza. Hamas did steal from some of the smaller organizations that donated aid, as those groups were not always on the ground to oversee distribution, according to the senior Israeli officials and others involved in the matter. But, they say, there was no evidence that Hamas regularly stole from the United Nations, which provided the largest chunk of the aid. A Hamas representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An internal US government analysis came to a similar conclusion, Reuters reported Friday. It found no evidence of systematic Hamas theft of US-funded humanitarian supplies, the report said. Advertisement 'For months, we and other organizations were dragged through the mud by accusations that Hamas steals from us,' said Georgios Petropoulos, a former UN official in Gaza who oversaw aid coordination with Israel for nearly 13 months of war. The senior military officials and others interviewed by the Times spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on behalf of the military or government. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a statement, the military said that it has been 'well documented' that Hamas has routinely 'exploited humanitarian aid to fund terrorist activities.' But the military did not dispute the assessment that there was no evidence that Hamas regularly stole aid from the United Nations. The Israeli government and military have often clashed over how to conduct the war in Gaza. Early last year, top commanders urged a cease-fire with Hamas to secure the release of hostages. Netanyahu's government instead expanded the ground operation in southern Gaza. Israel used the rationale that Hamas steals aid when it cut off all food and other supplies to Gaza between March and May. In March, after a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel collapsed, Netanyahu said: 'Hamas is currently taking control of all supplies and goods entering Gaza,' and he declared that Israel would prevent anything from entering the territory. That blockade, and problems with a new aid system that launched in May, brought hunger and starvation in Gaza to the current crisis levels. For most of the war, the UN was the largest single source of aid entering Gaza, according to data from the Israeli military unit that oversees policy in the territory. Advertisement Now, the new aid system is managed instead by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private American company led by a former CIA agent. It was intended to eventually replace international aid organizations and the UN role. But it has only a few distribution hubs, compared with hundreds under the former UN-run operation. The new system's rollout at the end of May was quickly followed by near-daily episodes of deadly violence near distribution sites. Desperate and hungry Palestinians must go to the few aid distribution sites located in areas controlled by Israeli forces. The hours of operation are limited and supplies run out, so crowds arrive early, with some walking for miles to get there. Since May 19, when Israel allowed emergency supplies to resume entering Gaza after its two-month blockade, half of the aid has been distributed by the United Nations and international organizations, with the other half coming through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Israeli military says. Petropoulos welcomed the notion that some Israeli officials had recognized the UN-led aid system as effective during the war. But he said he wished that endorsement had come much sooner. 'If the UN had been taken at face value months ago, we wouldn't have wasted all this time and Gazans wouldn't be starving and being shot at trying to feed their families,' he said. This article originally appeared in
