GAZA’s Government Media Office yesterday accused Israel of ‘a horrific, intentionally repeated crime’, having lured starving Palestinians to aid centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and killing over a hundred of them in the past eight days.
In a statement it said yesterday morning’s death toll – 27 – brought the number killed at aid sites in the Rafah governorate and the so-called Netzarim Corridor since the GHF started operating in the enclave on May 27 to 102, with 490 others injured.
‘The so-called “aid” distribution centres, which are located in exposed and dangerous red zones under the control of the occupation army, have turned into mass bloodbaths, luring starving civilians to them as a result of the crippling famine and the tightening siege,’ the statement said.
‘They are then deliberately and coldly shot, in a scene that epitomises the malice of the project and exposes its true objectives.’
The Media Office called on ‘the United Nations, its Security Council and human rights organisations to assume their moral and legal responsibilities, take immediate action, and exert pressure using all available means to open official crossings without interference or conditions from the occupation.’
The UN human rights office said the impediment of access to food and relief for civilians in Gaza may constitute a war crime, describing attacks on civilians trying to access food aid as ‘unconscionable’.
‘For a third day running, people were killed around an aid distribution site run by the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”. This morning, we have received information that dozens more were killed and injured,’ Jeremy Laurence, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told reporters in Geneva.
Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said that the shooting started about 4.00am local time in the city’s Flag Roundabout area, about one kilometre away from the aid distribution hub. He said he saw several people killed or wounded.
Neima al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, gave a similar account, saying: ‘There were many martyrs and wounded,’ and the shooting by Israeli forces was ‘indiscriminate’.
She said she managed to reach the hub but returned empty-handed. ‘There was no aid there,’ she said. ‘After the martyrs and wounded, I won’t return. Either way we will die.’
Hamas said: ‘Targeting the hungry while they are searching for sustenance reveals the nature of this fascist enemy, which uses hunger and bombing as weapons of killing and displacement, as part of a systematic plan to empty Gaza of its population.’
Labelling the GHF operation the ‘Israeli-American mechanism’, Hamas said the process has become ‘a trap of death and humiliation’.
‘Its goal is not relief, but rather to break the dignity of our people and turn the lives of those under siege into hell, serving the purposes of forced displacement.
‘We call on the United Nations, the Security Council, and international relief organisations to take immediate action to halt this deadly mechanism and save what remains of our besieged people.’
- A five-year-old boy, his baby brother and their mother were pulled out alive after being trapped for hours under the rubble of their family home, destroyed by an Israeli strike in Gaza City on Monday night.
- The majority of Germans back ending arms exports to Israel. A poll found that 58 per cent favour a halt to arms deliveries, 22 per cent were opposed, and 19 per cent were undecided or declined to answer.
