Gaza civil defence says Israeli fire kills 93 aid seekers
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces opened fire on a ‘desperate’ crowd of Palestinians queuing for aid, killing 93 people and wounding dozens more.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces opened fire on crowds of Palestinians trying to collect humanitarian aid in the war-torn Palestinian territory on Sunday, killing 93 people and wounding dozens more.
Eighty were killed as truckloads of aid arrived in the north, while nine others were reported shot near an aid point close to Rafah in the south, where dozens of people lost their lives just 24 hours earlier.
Four were killed near another aid site in Khan Yunis, also in the south, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP.
Qasem Abu Khater, 36, told AFP he had rushed to the Al-Sudaniya area of Gaza City in the hope of getting a bag of flour, joining a “desperate” crowd of thousands.
“There was deadly overcrowding and pushing - women, men and children,” said Khater, who was displaced from Jabalia, north of the city.
“It felt like we were no longer alive, like we had no souls left. The tanks were firing shells randomly at us and Israeli sniper soldiers were shooting as if they were hunting animals in a forest,” he added.
“Dozens of people were martyred right before my eyes and no one could save anyone.”
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “Israeli forces opened fire on civilians waiting for aid”, and that “dozens” were wounded.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the agency and other parties.
Asked for comment, the military said it was looking into the latest reports of deaths.
The army has maintained that it works to avoid harm to civilians, saying this month that it issued new instructions to its troops on the ground “following lessons learned” from a spate of similar incidents.
On Sunday, the Israeli military told residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area to move south immediately.
Israel was “expanding its activities” against Hamas around Deir el-Balah, “where it has not operated before”, the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.
The announcement prompted concern from families of hostages held since October 7, 2023 that the Israeli offensive could harm their loved ones.
They called in a statement for Israeli authorities to “urgently explain to Israeli citizens and families what the fighting plan is and how exactly it protects the abductees who are still in Gaza”.
Delegations from Israel and militant group Hamas have spent the last two weeks in indirect talks on a proposed 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and the release of 10 living hostages.
Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
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ISRAELI GUNFIRE KILLS 39 PALESTINIANS SEEKING FOOD
Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that Israeli fire killed 39 people and wounded more than 100 near two aid centres, in the latest deaths of Palestinians seeking food.
Deaths of people waiting for handouts in huge crowds near food points in Gaza have become a regular occurrence, with the territory’s authorities frequently blaming Israeli fire.
But the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has replaced UN agencies as the main distributor of aid in the territory, has accused militant group Hamas of fomenting unrest and shooting at civilians.
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the deaths happened near a site southwest of Khan Yunis and another centre northwest of Rafah, both in southern Gaza, attributing the fatalities to “Israeli gunfire”.
POPE LEO CALLS FOR CEASFIRE
Pope Leo XIV emphasised the importance of protecting places of worship in a call on Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following Israel’s deadly strike on Gaza’s only Catholic Church, the Vatican said.
The pontiff also renewed his appeal for negotiations, a ceasefire and the end of the war, while reiterating his concern for the “dramatic humanitarian situation” in the Palestinian territory, it said in a statement.
The Vatican said Netanyahu initiated the call, the day after Israeli fire on the Holy Family Church in Gaza City killed three people and provoked international condemnation.
“During the conversation, the Holy Father renewed his appeal to revive negotiations and reach a ceasefire and the end of the war,” the Vatican said in a statement, noting that Leo was at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.
“He once again expressed his concern for the dramatic humanitarian situation of the population in Gaza, whose heartbreaking toll is borne particularly by children, the elderly and the sick.
“Finally, the Holy Father reiterated the urgency of protecting places of worship and especially the faithful and all people in Palestine and Israel.”
Mr Netanyahu has said Israel “deeply regrets” the strike, and blamed a “stray round”.
He repeated this regret in the conversation with the pope, which was “friendly”, a spokesman for Netanyahu told AFP, adding that the two men agreed to meet soon.
His predecessor, Pope Francis, kept in regular contact with parish priest Father Gabriel Romanelli and repeatedly called for an end to the Gaza war, which has created a humanitarian crisis for the people living there.
Romanelli was one of 10 people injured in the strike and was seen with bandages on his leg.
Meanwhile, two of the most senior Christian leaders in the Holy Land travelled to Gaza on Friday after Israeli fire killed three at the Palestinian territory’s only Catholic church, provoking international condemnation.
CLASHES AT WEST BANK SETTLER OUTPOST
Palestinians and the Israeli army clashed on Friday during a march in a village in the northern occupied West Bank against a newly established Israeli settlement outpost.
“We came to this area to express our protest and say: ‘this land is ours, not yours’”, Ghassan Bazour, head of Raba’s village council, told AFP.
While all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, only outposts such as the one established overnight in Raba are also prohibited under Israeli law.
An AFP journalist at the scene reported that a group of men holding Palestinian flags and those of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’ Fatah party walked from Raba towards a nearby hill on top of which settlers had established the outpost.
After conducting the Muslim Friday prayer at the base of the hill, people continued towards the outpost, until Israeli soldiers arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd with tear gas, the journalist said.
The army did not respond to an AFP request for comment on Friday’s events in Raba.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that its teams had provided support to 13 people suffering from tear gas inhalation.
Village council chief Bazour said that settlers had originally taken over the hill’s high ground to establish an outpost and deny Palestinians access to nearby agricultural lands.
“There is now a settler outpost here (which) will continue to devour the land and empty these areas”, Muayad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, told AFP.
Originally published as Gaza civil defence says Israeli fire kills 93 aid seekers