At least 51 Palestinians have been killed and over 200 wounded while waiting for food to enter the territory, marking one of the deadliest days of killings near aid sites, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Starving Palestinians had gathered near Al-Tahlia roundabout in southern Gaza, hoping to receive desperately needed aid, when they came under attack, turning the area into what many described as “a slaughterhouse and death trap.”
As the starved civilians waited for aid, they were suddenly targeted by Israeli forces. The wounded were rushed to Nasser Medical Complex, and the number of casualties is expected to continue rising.
Marwan Al-Hams, General Director of the Field Hospitals in Gaza, said there was “overcrowding in Nasser Medical Complex following the arrival of a number of martyrs and hundreds of injuries as a result of the targeting of the occupation waiting for aid.”
“The fridge of the dead in Nasser Medical Complex is full; we had to put the bodies outside the building,” he said, highlighting that “the medical teams work in very difficult conditions and only find little food.”
“We were over 50,000 people waiting for aid in the Al-Tahlia area,” said Saeed Abu Libda, a survivor of this morning’s massacre in Khan Younis, in a video shared online.
On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, which many consider a weapon of war against Palestinians.
On May 27, the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Stri,p began its operations in the Gaza Strip, opening its first of four distribution points in Rafah in southern Gaza.
Since GHF began operations on May 27, over 368 starving Palestinians seeking food aid near GHF distribution centres have been killed, and around 2,649 others injured by Israeli forces. The UN and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the foundation, stating that it is a “death trap” for starving Palestinians and that it has been aiding Israel in its genocidal war against Gaza.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 55,432 Palestinians and wounded 128,923, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
