Charities call for end to Israeli-backed aid group as dozens more die in Gaza
At least seven Palestinians were killed seeking aid in southern and central Gaza between late Monday and early Tuesday.
The deaths came after Israeli forces killed at least 74 people in Gaza earlier on Monday with air strikes that left 30 dead at a seaside cafe and gunfire that killed 23 as Palestinians tried to get desperately needed food aid, witnesses and health officials said.
The war has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half of the dead were women and children.
The Health Ministry on Tuesday afternoon said the bodies of 116 people killed by Israeli strikes had been taken to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours.
The Hamas attack in October 2023 that sparked the war killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 others hostage. Some 50 hostages remain, many of them thought to be dead.
More than 165 major international charities and non-governmental organisations, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty, called on Tuesday for an immediate end to the Gaza Humanitarian Fund.
'Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,' the group said in a joint news release.
The call by the charities and NGOs was the latest sign of trouble for the GHF — a secretive US and Israeli-backed initiative headed by an evangelical leader who is a close ally of Donald Trump.
GHF started distributing aid on May 26, following a nearly three-month Israeli blockade which has pushed Gaza's population of more than two million people to the brink of famine.
In a statement on Tuesday, the organisation said it has delivered more than 52 million meals over five weeks.
'Instead of bickering and throwing insults from the sidelines, we would welcome other humanitarian groups to join us and feed the people in Gaza,' the statement said.
'We are ready to collaborate and help them get their aid to people in need. At the end of the day, the Palestinian people need to be fed.'
Last month, the organisation said there had been no violence in or around its distribution centres and that its personnel had not opened fire.
According to Gaza's Health Ministry, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed around the chaotic and controversial aid distribution programme over the past month.
Palestinians are often forced to travel long distances to access the GHF hubs in hopes of obtaining aid.
The GHF is the linchpin of a new aid system that took distribution away from aid groups led by the UN.
The new mechanism limits food distribution to a small number of hubs under guard of armed contractors, where people must go to pick it up. Currently four hubs are set up, all close to Israeli military positions.
Israel had demanded an alternative plan because it accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid. The United Nations and aid groups deny there was significant diversion, and say the new mechanism allows Israel to use food as a weapon, violates humanitarian principles and will not be effective.
The Israeli military said it had recently taken steps to improve organisation in the area.
Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing the militants of hiding among civilians because they operate in populated areas.
Of the latest seven deaths by Israeli fire, three occurred in Gaza's southern city of Khan Younis, while four were killed in central Gaza.
More than 65 others were wounded, according to the Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp, and the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, which received the casualties.
They were among thousands of starved Palestinians who gather at night to take aid from passing trucks in the area of the Netzarim route in central Gaza.
An 11-year-old girl was killed on Tuesday when an Israeli strike hit her family's tent west of Khan Younis, according to the Kuwait field hospital that received her body.
The UN Palestinian aid agency also said Israel's military struck one of its schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza City on Monday. The strike caused no casualties but caused significant damage, UNRWA said.
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