
Israeli forces kill 93 as they open fire on starving Palestinians in Gaza - War on Gaza
Eighty were killed as truckloads of aid arrived in the north, while nine others were reported shot near an aid point close to Rafah in the south, where dozens of people lost their lives just 24 hours earlier.
Four were killed near another aid site in Khan Younis, also in the south, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP.
The UN World Food Programme said its 25-truck convoy carrying food aid "encountered massive crowds of hungry civilians which came under gunfire" near Gaza City, soon after it crossed from Israel and cleared checkpoints.
Civilian deaths have become routine as Israeli forces continue striking crowds gathered near aid centres, where people are facing extreme shortages of food and essential supplies because of the Israeli blockade on the strip.
The UN said earlier this month that nearly 800 aid-seekers had been killed since late May, including on the routes of aid convoys.
Like 'hunting animals'
In Gaza City, Qasem Abu Khater, 36, told AFP he had rushed to try to get a bag of flour but instead found a desperate crowd of thousands and "deadly overcrowding and pushing".
"The tanks were firing shells randomly at us and Israeli sniper soldiers were shooting as if they were hunting animals in a forest," he added.
"Dozens of people were martyred right before my eyes and no one could save anyone."
The WFP condemned violence against civilians seeking aid as "completely unacceptable".
Israel on Sunday withdrew the residency permit of head of the OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) office in Israel, Jonathan Whittall, who has repeatedly condemned the humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a post to X, accused him of spreading lies about the war in Gaza.
Israel's genocidal campaign has killed at least 58,895 Palestinians and wounded nearly 140,000 others, the majority of them women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Independent investigations suggest the true death toll in Gaza could be far higher -- approaching 100,000 -- as thousands remain missing and are presumed buried beneath the rubble.
Most of Gaza's population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war and there have been repeated evacuation calls across large parts of the coastal enclave.
On Sunday morning, the Israeli military told residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area to move south immediately due to imminent operations in the area.
Whole families were seen carrying what few belongings they have on packed donkey carts heading south.
"They threw leaflets at us and we don't know where we are going and we don't have shelter or anything," one man told AFP.
The displacement order was "another devastating blow to the already fragile lifelines keeping people alive across the Gaza Strip", the UN OCHA said on Sunday.
According to the aid agency, 87.8 percent of Gaza is now under displacement orders or within Israeli militarized zones, leaving "2.1 million civilians squeezed into a fragmented 12 per cent of the Strip, where essential services have collapsed."
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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