• Israeli attacks kill 81 more in Gaza, including 13 at Al-Shati camp
• WHO accuses IDF of storming its facilities
• EU foreign policy chief asks Israeli counterpart to stop killings at aid points
GENEVA: The United Nations (UN) on Tuesday said Israeli forces have killed over 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid in Gaza since the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) started operations.
An officially private effort, the GHF began operations on May 26 after Israel halted supplies into the Gaza Strip for more than two months, sparking famine warnings.
GHF operations have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people waiting to collect rations in the Palestinian territory, where the Israeli military is seeking to destroy Hamas.
“Over 1,000 Palestinians have now been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get food in Gaza since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operating,” UN human rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told AFP.
“As of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near UN and other humanitarian organisations’ aid convoys.” Kheetan added: “Our data is based on information from multiple reliable sources on the ground, including medical teams, humanitarian and human rights organisations.”
Malnutrition claims lives
Meanwhile, the head of Gaza’s largest hospital on Tuesday said 21 children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory in the past three days, while Israel pressed a devastating assault.
Gaza’s population of more than two million people is facing severe shortages of food and other essentials, with residents frequently killed as they try to collect humanitarian aid at a handful of distribution points.
“Twenty-one children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in various areas across the Gaza Strip,” Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, told reporters.
Abu Salmiya told reporters that new cases of malnutrition and starvation were arriving at Gaza’s remaining functioning hospitals “every moment”.
“We are heading towards alarming numbers of deaths due to the starvation inflicted on the people of Gaza,” he added.
‘Horror show’
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Gaza a “horror show” in a speech on Tuesday, with “a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times”.
Chaotic scenes have become frequent at aid distribution areas since the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began overseeing aid operations.
Latest attacks
Earlier on Tuesday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 81 Palestinians, including 31 aid seekers, in attacks across Gaza since dawn, a day after tanks pushed into southern and eastern parts of Deir el-Balah for the first time, according to an Al-Jazeera report.
Also, the World Health Organisation said Israel attacked its facilities amid its expanding ground operations. Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Israeli strikes on the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City had killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 50.
He said two people were killed in Deir el-Balah.
The UN agency’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused troops of entering its staff residence, and forcing women and children to evacuate, as they handcuffed, stripped and interrogated male staff at gunpoint.
‘Morally unacceptable’
Reports of the latest death toll came as the Roman Catholic church’s most senior cleric in the Holy Land said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was “morally unacceptable”.
“We have seen men holding out in the sun for hours in the hope of a simple meal,” Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa told a news conference in Jerusalem after visiting Gaza.
Civilian killings ‘must stop’
In the meantime, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told her Israeli counterpart Tuesday that Israel’s military “must stop” killing civilians at aid distribution points in Gaza.
Kallas wrote on X that “the killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible”.
“I spoke again with Gideon Saar to recall our understanding on aid flow and made clear that IDF must stop killing people at distribution points,” she wrote.
