Hospitals in Gaza say Israeli fire killed more than a dozen people on Saturday, eight of them while trying to get food, as malnutrition-related deaths continue to rise in the territory.
The bloodshed comes a day after Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, visited an aid distribution site run by the Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Global outrage has grown over Israel’s restrictions on aid and the deadly unrest surrounding the GHF sites, with daily reports of shootings at all four locations since the group took over aid distribution at the end of May. The UN says 859 Palestinians have been killed during that time in the vicinity of these sites, and more than 500 have been killed along the routes of food convoys.
Health officials reported that Israeli airstrikes and gunfire killed at least 18 Palestinians on Saturday, including three who were in the area around a distribution site. Nasser hospital also said Israeli forces killed five Palestinians who were among crowds awaiting aid in the south.
In a statement to the Associated Press, GHF said “nothing (happened) at or near our sites”. Both the GHF and the Israeli army have said they only shoot if there is a threat, or fire warning shots to disperse crowds.
Doctors in Gaza have reported treating an increasing number of gunshot and shrapnel wounds in patients who were trying to get food at the aid sites.
“We weren’t close to them [the troops] and there was no threat,” a witness, Abed Salah, who was among crowds close to the GHF site near Netzarim corridor, told AP. “I escaped death miraculously.”
Officials added that 10 of Saturday’s casualties were killed by strikes in central and southern Gaza, with five people killed in two separate strikes on tents sheltering displaced people.
The US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who accompanied Witkoff on the trip on Friday, claimed the GHF sites were delivering “more than one million meals a day” and called the distribution “an incredible feat”.
The US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, visit an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Friday. Photograph: Ambassador Mike Huckabee/X/Reuters
Reports from aid workers, doctors, and journalists in Gaza paint a different story, with UN-backed food security experts saying this week that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is now playing out in Gaza.
Seven Palestinians died of malnutrition-related causes over the past 24 hours, including a child, the territory’s health ministry said on Saturday. This brings the total deaths among children from causes related to malnutrition in Gaza to 93 since the war began.
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After international outcry, airdrops of aid have resumed, and several European countries have announced plans to join the Jordan-led coalition orchestrating the drops, but aid groups say this delivers only a fraction of what aid trucks can supply – and are also dangerous. What is really needed, they say, is to open the land borders and restore the full flow of aid.
“If there is political will to allow airdrops – which are highly costly, insufficient + inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote on X on Saturday.
The German government, traditionally a staunch ally of Israel, joined calls for Israel to deliver more aid on Saturday, saying that the current amount remains “very insufficient”. The criticism came after the German military completed its first food airdrops into Gaza.
In Tel Aviv, Witkoff joined families of hostages protesting, as they urged the Israeli government to end the war and release their loved ones.
Yotam Cohen, brother of 21-year-old hostage Nimrod Cohen, told AFP: “The war needs to end. The Israeli government will not end it willingly. It has refused to do so.”
Negotiations between Hamas and Israel aimed at securing a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and a deal for the release of hostages ended in deadlock last week, with Witkoff blaming Hamas for a “lack of desire to reach a ceasefire”.
Hamas said on Saturday that it would not lay down arms unless an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state is established.