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At least 20 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday as thousands of hungry people tried to reach food at a distribution site in southern Gaza run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a controversial Israeli and US-backed aid initiative.
GHF announced the deaths, marking the first time it has acknowledged fatalities linked to its four distribution sites. The latest incident followed the killings of at least 500 Palestinians by the Israeli military near GHF centres since they opened at the end of May, according to local authorities.
“We are heartbroken to confirm that 20 people died this morning in a tragic incident at SDS3 [an aid distribution site] in Khan Younis,” GHF said.
“Our current understanding is that 19 of the victims were trampled and one was stabbed amid a chaotic and dangerous surge, driven by agitators in the crowd.”
The health ministry in Gaza said: “For the first time martyrs were recorded due to suffocation and extreme crowding at aid distribution centres. The Israeli occupation and the American institution are deliberately committing massacres.”
It said “gas” had been fired at the crowd, but GHF said that was “false. Our team does not use tear gas”.
GHF accused Hamas of causing the killings, saying it had “credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd — armed and affiliated with Hamas — deliberately fomented the unrest”. It did not immediately provide evidence of links with the militant group.
The organisation said its personnel identified multiple firearms in the crowd, one of which was confiscated. It said a US worker was threatened with a firearm by a member of the crowd during the incident.
GHF, which has become the Israeli government’s preferred mechanism for delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza, has opened just four sites in the enclave. These are rarely open on the same day.
They draw huge crowds of desperate people who often walk through the night through dangerous Israeli military zones as they seek to collect food.
The aid seekers queue up in caged alleys leading to the sites. Once the gates open, they flood into the centres where boxed aid is piled up to grab in what people who have attended describe as a “free for all” lacking orderly distribution.
Many of the casualties have been shot on the designated approach routes to the sites. The four GHF centres are intended to serve more than 2mn people living under starvation conditions after Israel in March began blocking most aid deliveries by humanitarian groups.
The foundation has said it plans to scale up the operation to reach more people.
Israel has promoted the GHF scheme as an alternative to the established UN system, which it has accused of allowing Hamas to siphon off aid. The UN has denied there has been any significant diversion of aid to Hamas.
UN agencies and other major humanitarian groups have refused to work with GHF, accusing it of weaponising food at militarised centres to force the displacement of Palestinians to the south.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said earlier this year it was “deeply worried that it will not allow for humanitarian aid to be distributed in a manner consistent with core humanitarian principles of impartiality, humanity and independence”.
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