Updated death toll comes amid condemnation of US-backed aid delivery scheme and Israeli bombing across the enclave.
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, according to the besieged enclave’s Government Media Office.
The updated toll on Wednesday comes a day after 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.
In a statement, the Government Media Office said Israeli forces “opened direct fire on hungry Palestinian civilians who had gathered to receive aid” at the distribution site, wounding at least 62 people.
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”.
For its part, the GHF said it had opened a second of a planned four aid distribution sites in Gaza on Wednesday.
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.
Speaking earlier in the day, 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”.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, said Israel was using “aid as a weapon of war”.
Reporting from UN headquarters, media’s Kristen Saloomey said that Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s special coordinator for Middle East peace, and Feroze Sidhwa, a surgeon who recently went on a humanitarian mission to Gaza, were among those who addressed the council.
“The message from both of these experts was again calling for a ceasefire and the full resumption of aid into the Gaza Strip,” she said.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, criticised the UN for what he said were “attempts to block access to aid” and demanded a retraction from Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian chief, for accusing Israel of committing genocide.
Relentless Israeli attacks
media’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said the attacks levied by Danon should come as no surprise.
“They are on the defensive, knowing all too well that they lost their public relations campaign and that their reputation around the world is in the mud,” he said, referring to Israel’s near-daily bombardment and siege of Gaza.
As the debate over aid access raged, Israel’s punishing attacks continued across Gaza, with rights observers warning of an even worsening humanitarian situation.
At least 63 people were killed in Israeli attacks since the early hours of Wednesday, according to medical sources speaking to media Arabic, bringing the death toll since October 7, 2023, to at least 54,084 Palestinians, with more than 123,308 wounded.
The ministry added that only 17 hospitals in Gaza remained partially functioning, with critical shortages of essential medicines and oxygen supplies.
Separately, the Red Cross reported that its field hospital in southern Gaza’s al-Mawasi area came under Israeli fire early on Wednesday, causing panic and injuries among patients there.
In an open letter, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), Oxfam and other nonprofit groups called for “full, independent and international investigations into the attacks on healthcare in Gaza as violations of international humanitarian law”.
The UN’s World Food Programme, meanwhile, reported that its warehouse in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah had been broken into by hungry people “in search of food supplies”. Preliminary reports indicate that at least four people were killed amid the stampede and gunfire, though the cause of the latter was not immediately clear.
The agency said that increasing aid was “the only way to reassure people that they will not starve”.
media’s Hani Mahmoud reported from Gaza City that the search for food has proven deadly, even away from crowded distribution areas.
“For example, in the past couple of hours, two people were reported killed in the Shujayea neighbourhood [of Gaza City]. They were killed trying to get to their homes,” he said.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
