• Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach distribution sites, moving through Israeli military zones

GAZA CITY: UN officials said a US- and Israeli-backed distribution system in Gaza was leading to mass killings of people seeking humanitarian aid, drawing accusations from Israel that the UN was “aligning itself with Hamas.”

Eyewitnesses and local officials have reported repeated killings of Palestinians seeking aid at distribution centers over recent weeks in the war-stricken territory, where Israeli forces are battling militants.

The Israeli military has denied targeting people seeking aid, and the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has denied that any deadly incidents were linked to its sites.

The new aid distribution system has become a killing field with people shot at while trying to access food for themselves and their families.

Philippe Lazzarini, Head of the UN agency for Palestinian affairs

But following weeks of reports, UN officials and other aid providers denounced what they said was a wave of killings of hungry people seeking aid.

“The new aid distribution system has become a killing field,” with people “shot at while trying to access food for themselves and their families,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian affairs, or UNWRA.

“This abomination must end through a return to humanitarian deliveries from the UN, including @UNRWA,” he wrote on X.

The Health Ministry in the territory says that since late May, more than 500 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce supplies.

Hungry Palestinians are enduring a catastrophic situation in Gaza.

Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the sites, moving through Israeli military zones.

The country’s civil defense agency has also repeatedly reported people being killed while seeking aid.

“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“The search for food must never be a death sentence.”

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, branded the GHF relief effort “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.”

That drew an angry response from Israel, which said GHF had provided 46 million meals in Gaza.

“The UN is doing everything it can to oppose this effort. In doing so, the UN is aligning itself with Hamas, which is also trying to sabotage the GHF’s humanitarian operations,” the Foreign Ministry said.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a newspaper report that the country’s military commanders ordered soldiers to fire at Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Left-leaning daily Haaretz had earlier quoted unnamed soldiers as saying commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds near aid distribution centers to disperse them even when they posed no threat.

Haaretz said the military advocate general, the army’s top legal authority, had instructed the military to investigate “suspected war crimes” at aid sites.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the claim.

Netanyahu said in a joint statement with Defense Minister Israel Katz that their country “absolutely rejects the contemptible blood libels” and “malicious falsehoods” in the Haaretz article.

The military said in a separate statement it “did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers.”

It added that Israeli military “directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians.”

Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza from March for more than two months.

It began allowing supplies to trickle in at the end of May, with GHF centers secured by armed US contractors and Israeli troops on the perimeter.

Guterres said that from the UN, just a “handful” of medical deliveries had crossed into Gaza this week. 

AFP