Israel on Tuesday attacked starving Palestinians waiting for humanitarian assistance at the newly established US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's (GHF) aid site in southern Gaza’s Rafah, killing at least 27, including three children and two women. Dozens of others were also injured in the attack.
Israeli strikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed more people bringing the death toll to 35, which includes children.
In Khan Younis, six Palestinians, including two children, were killed in three different strikes targeting homes and tents for displaced people, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Two more people were killed and others injured in an Israeli strike on a group of civilians in Jabalia town, northern Gaza, according to Wafa.
Israel has continuously attacked desperate Palestinians who were lined up, waiting for the much-needed humanitarian assistance at aid points set up by the Israeli military since May 27, when the GHF started its operations.
The US-backed aid distribution system was established following Israel's announcement that it would allow "limited" entry of humanitarian assistance into the war-ravaged territory after its three-month-long aid blockade that pushed the entire Gaza population into a famine-like situation, killing at least 57, mostly children, including infants.
The UN and several aid groups have called the aid system operated by GHF a "death trap" for Palestinians and accused it of helping Israel in its genocidal war against Gaza. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an independent investigation into Israel's repeated attacks against Palestinain aid seekers.
Palestinian Medical Relief Society called the attack a war crime and said it is an inhumane activity.
"Honestly, it’s an inhumane act... It’s a war crime … shooting towards civilians directly while they are waiting for aid,” the organisation's director Bassam Zaqout said, reported Al Jazeera.
He also described the aid sites as "death traps" for Palestinian aid seekers.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) had earlier condemned the attacks and said it was “a genocide with international complicity and American participation.”
"What happened constitutes a full-fledged war crime,” the leftist group said.
“We demand urgent international and Arab intervention to stop this ongoing massacre and impose strict accountability mechanisms on the criminal occupation, in addition to immediately breaking the siege,” it added.
The PFLP had also warned the desperate Palestinians that aid points set up by Israel and US were "death traps."
On the other hand, the 'Palestinian Center for Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons' on Friday raised an alarm regarding Palestinians vanishing from the aid sites set up by the Israeli army after Israel's three-month long blockade of humanitarian assistance pushed the entire population of Gaza into a famine like situation, starving at least 57 people to death, mostly children including infants.
The centre echoed PFLP's remarks that the Israeli army's aid distribution points are a "deliberate trap for civilians" as they are placed deep inside dangerous military zones.
"These areas are death zones," the centre said in a statement, describing the strategy as a grave violation of international humanitarian law.
Meanwhile, Israel has issued evacuation orders in several areas of Khan Younis, which Gaza’s Health Ministry said are deliberate attempts to stifle the territory's "health system through evacuations of areas housing hospitals and healthcare centres.”
"The recent evacuations in Khan Yunis Governorate pose a direct threat to putting the Nasser Medical Complex out of service,” the ministry said in a statement.
"Dozens of patients and wounded are in intensive care, operating rooms, and emergency rooms, as well as children in nursery wards, facing certain death if the complex is out of service,” the ministry added.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has so far killed more than 54,381 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Israel has also killed aid workers, healthcare workers and journalists in targeted attacks. More than 200 journalists have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023.
