Key points
- Israeli forces “opened direct fire on Palestinians at the distribution site”: Gaza Media Office
- The media office describe killings as a “heinous crime”
- Israel is using “aid as a weapon of war”: Palestinian envoy to UN
ISLAMABAD: At least 10 Palestinians desperately seeking aid from a contentious and heavily criticised United States-backed organisation have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the last 48 hours, Al-Jazeera reported.
The updated toll on Wednesday comes a day following a harrowing video showed thousands of starving Palestinians rushing to get aid, with many of them herded into cage-like lines, from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution point in Rafah in southern Gaza.
Al-Jazeera cited Gaza’s Government Media Office as saying Israeli forces “opened direct fire on hungry Palestinian civilians who had gathered to receive aid” at the distribution site, wounding at least 62 people.
“Heinous crime”
It was not immediately clear exactly how many incidents of gunfire occurred or on which days the 10 Palestinians were fatally shot, but there were deaths on both days.
“These locations were transformed into death traps under the occupation’s gunfire,” the media office said, decrying the killings as a “heinous crime”.
The centres are part of an aid delivery scheme that has been roundly condemned by United Nations officials and the humanitarian community, who have repeatedly said that life-saving aid could be adequately and safely scaled up in Gaza if Israel would allow access to aid and let those organisations that have decades of experience handle the flow.
“Aid as a weapon of war”
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, said Israel was using “aid as a weapon of war”.
Earlier, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, decried the US-backed delivery model as a “distraction from atrocities” and called on Israel to allow the UN-backed humanitarian system to “do its life-saving work now”.
The message was echoed by several members of the UN Security Council during a meeting in New York discussing the conflict, with Algeria, France and the United Kingdom among those appealing for Israel to allow unfettered aid deliveries.
