At least 34 Palestinians were killed Monday in new shootings on the roads leading to Israeli- and US-supported food distribution centers in the Gaza Strip, the local Health Ministry said.
The toll was the deadliest yet in the near-daily shootings that have taken place as thousands of Palestinians move through Israeli military-controlled areas to reach the food centers.
As on previous days, witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire in an attempt to control crowds.
The ministry says several hundred people have been killed and hundreds more wounded in such shootings since the centers, run by the private contractor Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, opened three weeks ago.
There was no immediate comment by the Israeli military. It has said in previous instances that troops fired warning shots at what it calls suspects approaching their positions.
Gaza's Health Ministry said 33 Palestinians were killed trying to reach the GHF center near the southern city of Rafah and another on route to a GHF hub in central Gaza. It said four other people were killed elsewhere.
Witnesses describe crowds under fire Israeli troops started firing as thousands of Palestinians massed around 4 a.m. at the Flag Roundabout before the scheduled opening time of the Rafah food center, according to Heba Jouda and Mohamed Abed, two Palestinians who were in the crowd.
People fell to the ground, trying to take cover, they said. "Fire was coming from everywhere," said Jouda, who has repeatedly made the journey to get food for her family over the past week. "It’s getting worse day by day," she said.
The Red Cross field hospital nearby received some 200 injured Monday, the highest single mass casualty event, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement. Only a day earlier, it said, around 170 were brought to the facility, most of them wounded by gunshots while trying to reach the GHF center. The Health Ministry toll made it the deadliest day around the food sites since June 2, when 31 people were killed.
The Flag Roundabout, hundreds of meters (yards) from the GHF center, has been a repeated scene of shootings. It is on the route designated by the Israeli military for people to take to reach the center.
Palestinians over the past weeks have said Israeli troops open fire to prevent people from moving past a certain point on the road before the scheduled opening of the center or because people leave the road.
A GHF spokesperson told The Associated Press on Sunday that "none of the incidents to date have occurred at our sites or during operating hours." It said the incidents have involved aid-seekers who were moving "during prohibited times ... or trying to take a short cut." It said it was trying to improve safety measures, including by recently moving the opening times from nighttime to daylight hours.
A new aid distribution system Israel and the United States say the new GHF system is needed to prevent Hamas from siphoning off aid. GHF says there has been no violence in or around the sites themselves.
UN agencies and major aid groups, which have delivered humanitarian aid across Gaza since the start of the 20-month Israel-Hamas war, have rejected the new system, saying it can’t meet the territory’s needs and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon. They deny there is widespread theft of aid by Hamas.
Palestinian health officials say scores of people have been killed and hundreds wounded since the sites opened last month. Experts have warned that Israel’s ongoing military campaign and restrictions on the entry of aid have put Gaza, which is home to some 2 million Palestinians, at risk of famine.
Meanwhile, a new UN food crisis report released on Monday said the resumption of military operations in Gaza was escalating the food crisis in Gaza "to unprecedented levels."
The Hunger Hotspots report by the World Food Program and Food and Agricultural Organization said that no adequate humanitarian aid or commercial supplies have reached the Gaza Strip since the end of the eight-week ceasefire, the longest interruption since the start of the conflict.
According to the latest projections, released in May, the whole of Gaza's 2.1 million people are at risk of falling into acute food insecurity by September.
The UN human rights chief said Israel’s warfare in Gaza is inflicting "horrifying, unconscionable suffering" on Palestinians and urged government leaders to exert pressure on Israel’s government and the Hamas movement to end it.
"Israel’s means and methods of warfare are inflicting horrifying, unconscionable suffering on Palestinians in Gaza," Volker Türk told the 47-member Human Rights Council in an address that raised concerns about the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel and the fallout from sweeping US tariffs among other topics.
Israeli authorities have regularly accused the council of anti-Israel bias, and the Trump administration has kept the United States out of its proceedings.
Israel’s military campaign since October 2023 has killed over 55,300 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It says women and children make up most of the dead but doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed more than 20,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
Hamas started the latest war in Gaza with its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, with gunmen killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 251 hostage. The fighters still hold 53 hostages, fewer than half of them alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
