• GHF claims food point was closed when attacked
• Medic says hundreds facing ‘imminent death’ in besieged enclave
GAZA: At least 90 people, including 36 who were seeking aid, were killed across Gaza on Saturday as Al Jazeera reported Israeli forces continued to attack aid sites.
The Israeli military said it had fired warning shots at suspects who approached its troops after they did not heed calls to stop, about a kilometre away from an aid distribution site that was not active at the time.
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 the south, attributing the deaths to “Israeli gunfire”.
One witness said he headed to the Al-Tina area of Khan Yunis before dawn with five of his relatives to try to get food when “Israeli soldiers” started shooting.
“My relatives and I were unable to get anything,” Abdul Aziz Abed, 37, told AFP.
“Every day I go there and all we get is bullets and exhaustion instead of food.” Three other witnesses also accused troops of opening fire.
Gaza resident Mohammed al-Khalidi said he was in the group approaching the site and heard no warnings before the firing began.
“We thought they came out to organise us so we can get aid, suddenly [I] saw the jeeps coming from one side, and the tanks from the other and started shooting at us,” he said.
The Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF), a US-backed group which runs the aid site, said there were no incidents or fatalities there on Saturday and that it has repeatedly warned people not to travel to its distribution points at dark.
“The reported IDF [Israel Defence Forces] activity resulting in fatalities occurred hours before our sites opened and our understanding is most of the casualties occurred several kilometres away from the nearest GHF site,” it said.
In response, the Israeli military said it “identified suspects who approached them during operational activity in the Rafah area, posing a threat to the troops”.
Soldiers called for them to turn back and “after they did not comply, the troops fired warning shots”, it said, adding that it was aware of the reports about casualties.
“The incident is under review. The shots were fired approximately one kilometre away from the aid distribution site at nighttime when it’s not active,” it said in a statement.
On Tuesday, the UN rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in Gaza — the majority of them close to GHF distribution points.
‘Imminent death’
At least 18 more people were killed in other Israeli attacks across Gaza on Saturday, health officials said.
The Israeli military said that it had struck militants’ weapon depots and sniping posts in a few locations in the enclave.
Most people in Gaza have been displaced at least once by the fighting, and doctors and aid agencies say the physical and mental health effects of 21 months of conflict are being increasingly seen.
“We are receiving cases suffering from extreme exhaustion and complete fatigue, in addition to severe emaciation and acute malnutrition due to prolonged lack of food,” the director of the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in Khan Yunis, Sohaib Al-Hums, said on Friday.
“Hundreds” of people were facing “imminent death”, he added.
Accountability
The US ambassador to Israel on Saturday visited a Christian village in the occupied West Bank and urged accountability for an attack on an ancient church, which residents have blamed on Israeli settlers.
In early July, the village of Taybeh was hit by an arson attack in the area of the ruins of the Byzantine-era Church of Saint George, which dates back to the fifth century.
Ambassador Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian and staunch advocate for Israel, said it was “unacceptable to commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship”.
Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2025