Aid centres in hunger-wracked Gaza will temporarily close on Wednesday, a controversial US-backed agency said, with the Israeli army warning roads leading to distribution stations "are considered combat zones."
Twenty-seven people were killed in southern Gaza on Tuesday when Israeli troops opened fire near one of the centres operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Israel recently allowed "limited" humanitarian assistance to enter 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.
UN has called the meagre aid entering Gaza a "drop in the ocean" and warned that the children in Gaza could starve to death if adequate aid does not reach them on time.
The UN Security Council will vote Wednesday on a resolution calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian access to Gaza, a measure expected to be vetoed by the United States.
The GHF said its "distribution centres will be closed for renovation, reorganisation and efficiency improvement work" on Wednesday and would resume operations on Thursday.
The Israeli army, which confirmed the temporary closure, warned against travelling "on roads leading to the distribution centres, which are considered combat zones".
The GHF, officially a private effort with opaque funding, began operations a week ago but the UN and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with it over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.
Following Tuesday's deadly incident near one of GHF's centres, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres decried the killing of Palestinians seeking food aid as "unacceptable."
Israeli authorities and the GHF -- which uses contracted US security -- have denied allegations that the Israeli army shot at civilians rushing to pick up aid packages at GHF sites. The Israeli army has said the incident is under investigation.
A trap
The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed the attack and said "Gazans face an "unprecedented scale and frequency of recent mass casualty incidents."
Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross said its field hospital in Rafah received 184 wounded people, 19 of them declared dead on arrival, with eight others later dying of their wounds.
The dead were transferred to Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis. Three children and two women were among the dead, according to Mohammed Saqr, head of nursing at the hospital.
Hospital director Atef al-Hout said most of the patients had gunshot wounds.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk called such attacks against civilians "unconscionable" and said they "constitute a grave breach of international law and a war crime".
“Palestinians have been presented the grimmest of choices: die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meager food that is being made available through Israel’s militarized humanitarian assistance mechanism,” he said.
At the hospital, the family of Reem al-Akhras, who was killed in the shooting, were beside themselves with grief.
"She went to bring us some food, and this is what happened to her," her son Zain Zidan said, his face streaked with tears.
Akhras's husband, Mohamed Zidan, said "every day unarmed people" were being killed.
"This is not humanitarian aid -- it's a trap."
Witnesses have said the shootings all occurred at the Flag Roundabout, around a kilometer (half-mile) from one of the GHF’s distribution sites in the now mostly uninhabited southern city of Rafah. The entire area is an Israeli military zone where journalists have no access outside of army-approved embeds.
Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old displaced person from Rafah, said the shooting started around 4 a.m. Tuesday and he saw several people killed or wounded.
Neima al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, said the Israeli fire was “indiscriminate." She added that when she managed to reach the distribution site, there was no aid left.
“After the martyrs and wounded, I won’t return,” she said. “Either way we will die.”
Rasha al-Nahal, another witness, said that “there was gunfire from all directions.” She said she counted more than a dozen dead and several wounded along the road.
When she reached the distribution site, she found there was no aid left, she said. She gathered pasta from the ground and salvaged rice from a bag that had been dropped and trampled upon.
“We’d rather die than deal with this," she said. "Death is more dignified than what’s happening to us.”
