
Charities demand closure of Gaza aid agency backed by US, Israel
The GHF, backed by the US and Israel, has been operating since May to distribute aid but has been fiercely criticized by observers, with over 500 Palestinians killed and more than 4,000 injured at its distribution centers.
Organizations including Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty International on Tuesday said Palestinians are being forced into 'militarized' zones in order to receive essential supplies.
'Today, Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,' the groups said in a statement.
'Orphaned children and caregivers are among the dead, with children harmed in over half of the attacks on civilians at these sites.'
The GHF was established after Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza following the breakdown of a US-backed ceasefire with Hamas in March.
Four aid distribution centers were set up, replacing around 400 that were run by international bodies during the ceasefire.
The group of aid agencies and charities said the GHF system 'is not a humanitarian response' to the problems facing Gazans, who have lived in a constant state of displacement and supply shortages since the outbreak of the war in October 2023.
'Amidst severe hunger and famine-like conditions, many families tell us they are now too weak to compete for food rations,' the group added.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday condemned the GHF's distribution system as being 'inherently unsafe.'
It came after a report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot directly at Palestinian civilians to disperse them from overcrowded GHF aid distribution centers.
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Al Arabiya
7 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
ICRC warns Gaza health system overwhelmed by casualties at aid distributions
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Tuesday that a 'sharp surge' in deaths and injuries in incidents around aid distribution sites in Gaza is pushing the territory's already stretched health system past its capacity. The ICRC said in a statement that its field hospital in south Gaza recorded 200 deaths since the new aid distribution sites were launched in late May. The facility also treated more than 2,200 'weapon-wounded patients, most of them across more than 21 separate mass casualty events,' it added. 'Over the past month, a sharp surge in mass casualty incidents linked to aid distribution sites has overwhelmed Gaza's shattered healthcare system,' the ICRC said. 'The scale and frequency of these incidents are without precedent,' it said, adding that its field hospital had treated more patients since late May than 'in all mass casualty events during the entire previous year.' To cope with the flow of wounded, ICRC said that all its staff were now contributing to the emergency response effort. 'Physiotherapists support nurses, cleaning and dressing wounds and taking vitals. Cleaners now serve as orderlies, carrying stretchers wherever they are needed. Midwives have stepped into palliative care,' it added. An officially private effort, the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations on May 26 after Israel halted supplies into the Gaza Strip for more than two months, sparking warnings of imminent famine. GHF operations have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people waiting to collect rations. More than 500 people have been killed while waiting to access rations from its distribution sites, the UN Human Rights Office said Friday. The GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points. Gaza's health system has been at a point of near collapse for months, with nearly all hospitals and health facilities either out of service or only partly functional. Israel's drastic restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza since the start of the war 21 months ago has caused shortages of everything, including medicine, medical supplies, and fuel, which hospitals rely on to power their generators. 'The absence of accessible fuel means no ambulances, no electricity for hospitals, and no clean water,' the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report Monday. Israel had not allowed any fuel to enter the Palestinian territory in four months, it added. 'Service providers such as hospitals have been rationing supplies, but this cannot sustain life-saving operations for much longer.'


Al Arabiya
a day ago
- Al Arabiya
Doctors alarmed at rising meningitis cases in Gaza's children
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Al Arabiya
a day ago
- Al Arabiya
Gaza civil defense says Israeli forces kill at least 12 Palestinians
Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed at least 12 people on Monday, including six in a clinic housing Palestinians displaced after 21 months of war. Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where the war has created dire humanitarian conditions for the Palestinian territory's population of more than two million. Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that six people were killed and 15 injured in an Israeli air strike that hit the Al-Rimal clinic, 'which houses hundreds of displaced people, in the Al-Rimal neighborhood west of Gaza City.' AFP footage showed Palestinians, including groups of young children, combing through the bombed-out interior of the clinic, where mattresses lay alongside wood, metal and concrete broken apart in the blast. 'We were surprised by missiles and explosions inside the building,' eyewitness Salman Qudum told AFP. 'We did not know where to go because of the dust and destruction.' In the south of the territory, Bassal said two people were killed and 20 others injured by Israeli forces' gunfire while waiting for aid near a distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). A US- and Israel-backed group, the GHF took the lead in food distribution in the territory in late May, but its operations have had a chaotic rollout with repeated reports of aid seekers killed near its facilities. Hundreds reported killed The UN human rights office said last week that more than 500 people have been killed waiting to access food from GHF distribution points. The health ministry in Gaza on Sunday placed that toll higher, at 751 killed. In Khan Younis in the south, Bassal reported two people killed in an air strike on a house and another killed by Israeli gunfire. An air strike on a house in Gaza City killed one and injured several others, he added. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. In a separate statement, it said it had struck 'dozens of terrorists, weapons depots, observation posts, military buildings, and other terror infrastructures' over the past 24 hours. Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defense agency. Israel has killed more than 57,418 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory's health ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.