Dozens of Palestinians have been killed as the Israeli forces struck aid distribution points in the southern Gaza Strip, amid a worsening hunger crisis across the besieged territory.
Al Jazeera reported that 41 Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, including 29 aid seekers.
According to reports, 10 Palestinians were killed and 70 wounded in an Israeli strike at an aid distribution point on Al-Tina Street, south of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, at least 20 Palestinian aid seekers were killed during a stampede at one of the aid distribution centers in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, run by the controversial US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The United Nations reported that since late May, some 900 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at sites that are mostly run by GHF.
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, unprecedented numbers of starving people of all ages are arriving at emergency departments in a state of “severe exhaustion and fatigue.” The ministry warned that “hundreds whose bodies have wasted away will face certain death due to hunger and their bodies’ endurance capacity being exceeded.”
Al-Jazeera’s Gaza correspondent Anas Al-Sharif reported the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Strip, where Israel’s deliberate blockade and forced starvation policies have left civilians unable to donate blood amid ongoing daily attacks.
“For the first time in history, Gaza is importing 100% of its blood units, as the severe hunger and dehydration have left the entire population too unwell to donate,” he wrote on his X account on Saturday.
The controversial GHF has effectively sidelined Gaza’s vast UN-led aid delivery network since it started operations in May, after Israel’s more than two-month total blockade of the strip.
Israeli soldiers and US contractors working with GHF have admitted to shooting unarmed Palestinians gathering for food, according to separate recent reports by Israeli outlet Haaretz and The Associated Press news agency.
Despite the Israeli regime’s claims that an alternative distribution pathway is needed as the Palestinian resistance group Hamas allegedly “steals” aid, the UN officials have said the looting of Gaza aid has nothing to do with Hamas.
The UN has categorically stated that looting is instead being performed by the so-called Popular Forces, a Daesh-linked anti-Hamas militia armed and supported by Israel.
The UN and other humanitarian groups have criticized the GHF for politicizing aid distribution, saying it is giving cover for Israel to pursue its aims to depopulate the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 58,667 people and wounded 139,974, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, since the onset of the genocidal war on October 7, 2023.
