President Michael D Higgins has condemned as a “shocking act of cruelty” Hamas footage of the emaciated bodies of two hostages taken on October 7th.

Mr Higgins said the move “reflects not only on those responsible for such actions but damages any cause to which they attach themselves”.

On Saturday, Hamas released a video of hostage Evyatar David. In it, David is skeletally thin and is shown digging a hole, which, he says in the video, is for his own grave.

Another video, released on Friday, pictured hostage Rom Braslavski.

Of the 251 hostages taken during the Hamas attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

Speaking on the situation in the Middle East, Mr Higgins said: “We are now in a position of seeing the nadir of human behaviour with images like these occurring at the same time as children are deprived of medicine and mothers are deprived of water and the necessary means of addressing malnutrition as they watch their children die.”

The President said all of these actions “must not just receive the opprobrium of the world, but must lead to practical actions that cannot wait”.

He repeated his call for the use of a specific United Nations mechanism he said could provide safe access to aid in Gaza.

Israeli forces killed at least 23 Palestinians seeking food on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, according to hospital officials.

Witnesses described facing gunfire as hungry crowds surged around aid sites as the malnutrition-related death toll surged.

Six more people died of starvation or malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, its health ministry said on Sunday.

Desperation has gripped the Palestinian territory of more than two million, which experts have warned is at risk of famine because of Israel’s blockade and nearly two-year offensive.

Yousef Abed, among the crowds en route to a distribution point, described coming under what he called indiscriminate fire, looking around and seeing at least three people bleeding on the ground.

“I couldn’t stop and help them because of the bullets,” he said.

Southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital said it had received bodies from near multiple distribution sites, including eight from Teina, about 2.8km from a distribution site in Khan Younis run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – a private US and Israeli-backed contractor that took over aid distribution more than two months ago.

The hospital also received one body from Shakoush, near a different GHF site in Rafah. Another nine were killed by troops near the Morag corridor who were awaiting trucks entering Gaza through an Israeli border crossing, it said.

Three Palestinian eyewitnesses, seeking food in Teina and Morag, said the shootings occurred on the route to the distribution points, which are in military zones secured by Israeli forces. They said they saw soldiers open fire on hungry crowds advancing towards the troops.

Further north in central Gaza, hospital officials described a similar episode, with Israeli troops opening fire on Sunday morning towards crowds of Palestinians trying to get to GHF’s fourth and northernmost distribution point.

“Troops were trying to prevent people from advancing,” one witness said. “They opened fire and we fled. Some people were shot.”

At least five people were killed and 27 were injured at GHF’s site near the Netzarim corridor, Awda Hospital said.

Eyewitnesses seeking food in Gaza have reported similar gunfire attacks in recent days near aid distribution sites, leaving dozens of Palestinians dead.

The United Nations reported 859 people were killed near GHF sites from May 27th to July 31st, and hundreds more have been killed along the routes of UN-led food convoys.

The GHF launched in May as Israel sought an alternative to the UN-run system, which had safely delivered aid for much of the war but was accused by Israel of allowing Hamas, which guarded convoys early in the war, to siphon supplies.

Israel has not offered evidence of widespread theft. The UN has denied it.

[ Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces: ‘They put on music and colourful lights and started dancing over us ... They had their feet on our backs’Opens in new window ]

GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding. Israel’s military has said it fires only warning shots as well. Both claimed the death tolls have been exaggerated.

Neither Israel’s military nor GHF immediately responded to questions about Sunday’s reported fatalities.

Meanwhile, the Gaza ministry of health also said six more Palestinian adults died of malnutrition-related causes in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours. This brings the death toll among Palestinian adults to 82 in the past five weeks since the ministry started counting deaths among adults in late June, it said.

Ninety-three children have also died of causes related to malnutrition since the war in Gaza started in 2023, the ministry said. – AP/Guardian