Child among 20 killed near controversial US-run aid centres; displaced people in tents and medics also killed.
Israeli forces have killed more than 70 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip since dawn, medical sources have told media, including hungry aid seekers, as Israel continues to relentlessly bombard the besieged enclave where the United Nations says a famine threatens the entire population.
Israeli troops on Tuesday again opened fire on crowds seeking meagre food parcels for their families near the Netzarim Corridor, killing at least 20 people, including a 12-year-old child, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
The child has been identified as Mohammed Khalil al-Athamneh. More than 200 others were wounded.
The distribution points are operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US and Israeli-backed drive in Israeli-controlled zones.
The aid sites have been branded “human slaughterhouses” as more than 150 people have been killed since GHF started operating on May 27. Nearly 1,500 have so far been wounded, according to the Government Media Office.
In a statement on Tuesday, the media office accused the GHF of playing a complicit role in what it described as “lethal ambushes” disguised as humanitarian relief.
“GHF has become a deadly tool in the hands of the Israeli military, luring starving civilians into death traps under the pretence of aid,” the statement said, denouncing the body’s continued operation despite documented attacks on unarmed crowds at its sites.
media’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said the GHF aid distribution centres have become “a theatre for repeated bloodshed and deliberate attacks on civilians”.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has again sounded an alarm over the deteriorating humanitarian situation, saying on Tuesday the crisis has reached “unprecedented levels of despair”.
More than 2,700 children under the age of five were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in late May, the agency said, calling for the urgent restoration of humanitarian assistance.
Israel has maintained a crippling aid blockade since March 2, allowing only a limited trickle of assistance through the GHF. At the same time, it has barred established humanitarian organisations from operating in the territory – excluding those who have decades of experience in providing aid from hundreds of distribution points to the entire population of Gaza.
‘Theatre for repeated bloodshed’
Elsewhere in Gaza, an air strike in al-Mawasi – an Israeli-proclaimed “safe zone” that has come under repeated attack, east of Khan Younis – killed three people sheltering in displacement tents. Three more Palestinians were killed after an Israeli drone strike targeted a group of people in the Ma’an area, east of Khan Younis.
The attacks come as one of the southern city’s last remaining functioning hospitals has ceased operations due to “increasing hostilities” in its vicinity, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
In Gaza’s north, medical sources reported that four paramedics were killed by Israeli gunfire while carrying out their humanitarian duties in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City. Another three were killed in an air strike on Jabalia.
Israeli forces have also stepped up incursions into towns and villages across the occupied West Bank in recent days as part of a months-long assault on the territory.
On Tuesday, during an hours-long raid in Nablus, Israeli troops fired tear gas and live bullets towards residents that killed two brothers, identified as Nidal and Khaled Mahdi Ahmad Umairah, aged 40 and 35, respectively.
Israeli troops had opened live fire on the Umairah brothers in the Old City of Nablus during the ongoing military raid, preventing ambulance crews from reaching them, the Wafa news agency reported.
More than 85 people were injured in the assault, while many others have been detained.
media’s Nour Odeh said residents of Nablus’s Old City are “under lockdown”.
“They cannot leave their homes; they cannot have access to any services,” she said. “Even paramedics are telling us they are having a very difficult time reaching those who need their assistance.”
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