Israeli forces have killed at least 115 Palestinians across Gaza, including 92 people who were shot dead while trying to get food at the Zikim crossing in the north and aid points in Rafah and Khan Younis in the south.
The killings on Sunday came as Israel’s continued siege of Gaza worsened a hunger crisis, with health authorities there announcing at least 19 deaths from starvation over the past day.
In Zikim, Israeli forces shot at least 79 Palestinians, according to medical sources, as large crowds gathered there in the hopes of getting flour from a United Nations aid convoy.
Nine more were killed near an aid point in Rafah, where 36 others had lost their lives just 24 hours earlier. Four more were killed near a second aid site in Khan Younis, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.
Rizeq Betaar, a Palestinian man who survived the attack at Zikim, helped carry one young victim to the hospital.
“We saw this young man lying on the ground, and we were the ones who carried him on the bicycle. We’re trying to get him to help. But there is nothing,” Betaar said. “There are no ambulances, no food, no life, no way to live any more. We’re barely hanging on.”
Another survivor, Osama Marouf, also helped to transport an old man who was shot and wounded.
“We brought this old man from Zikim. He went just to get some flour,” Marouf said. “I tried to save him on the bicycle – I don’t even want the flour any more, he’s like my father, this old man. May God give me the strength to do good. And may this hardship not last much longer.”
Israel’s military acknowledged the attack, saying it had fired “warning shots to remove an immediate threat posed to the troops” in northern Gaza. It did not, however, provide evidence or details of the alleged threat.
‘New levels of desperation’
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) issued a statement that disputed the Israeli account, saying the victims were simply people “trying to access food to feed themselves and their families on the brink of starvation”.
It said the Israeli shootings happened just after a convoy of 25 trucks carrying food assistance crossed the Zikim point.
“Shortly after passing the final checkpoint… the convoy encountered large crowds of civilians anxiously waiting to access desperately needed food supplies,” the agency said. “As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire.”
The violence came despite assurances from Israel that operational conditions for humanitarian agencies in Gaza would improve, the WFP said, including that armed forces would not be present nor engage along convoy routes.
“Gaza’s hunger crisis has reached new levels of desperation. People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance. Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment. Nearly one person in three is not eating for days,” the WFP warned.
“Only a massive scale-up in food aid distributions can stabilise this spiraling situation, calm anxieties and rebuild the trust within communities that more food is coming,” it added.
Gaza’s Ministry of Healt