Israeli forces killed at least 22 people and wounded 20 others, many while attempting to get desperately needed food aid in southern Gaza on Monday, according to witnesses, hospitals, and Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said it received the bodies of 11 people who were shot while returning from an aid site associated with Israeli and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund in southern Gaza, part of a deadly pattern that has killed more than 500 Palestinians in the chaotic and controversial aid distribution program over the past month. Ten others were killed at a United Nations aid warehouse in northern Gaza, according to the Health Ministry.
The southern Gaza strike happened around 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the GHF site in the city of Khan Younis, as Palestinians returned from the site along the only accessible route. Palestinians are often forced to travel long distances to access the GHF hubs in hopes of obtaining aid.
Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar was walking along with dozens others when he saw troops in vehicles and tanks racing toward them. At the beginning they fired warning shots in air, before firing at the crowds, he said.
“They fired at us indiscriminately,” he said, adding that he was shot in his leg, and a man was also shot while attempting to rescue him.
He said he saw troops detaining six people, including three children, and it wasn’t clear what happened to them. “We don’t know whether they are still alive,” he said.
Monzer Hisham Ismail, another witness, said troops attacked the crowds while returning from the GHF hub in eastern Khan Younis.
“We were returning from the American aid hub … we were targeted by (the Israeli) artillery,” he said.
Nasser Hospital said another person was killed near a GHF hub in the southern city of Rafah.
In northern Gaza, at least 10 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on an aid warehouse in Gaza City, according to the Health Ministry’s ambulance and emergency service. It wasn’t immediately clear whether there was aid at the warehouse.
The strike in Gaza City came as the military intensified its bombardment campaign across the city and the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp. On Sunday and Monday, Israel issued widespread evacuation orders for large swaths of northern Gaza.
Palestinians reported massive bombing overnight into Monday morning, describing the fresh attacks as a “scorched earth” campaign that targeted mostly empty buildings and civilian infrastructure above the ground.
“They destroy whatever left standing … the sound of bombing hasn’t stopped,” said Mohamed Mahdy, a Gaza City resident who fled his damaged house Monday morning.
Fares Awad, head of the Health Ministry’s emergency and ambulance services in northern Gaza, said that most of Gaza City and Jabaliya have become inaccessible and ambulances were unable to respond to distress calls from people trapped in the rubble.
