At least 43 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza on Friday, including 26 who had gathered to collect aid, the Palestinian territory's civil defence agency said.
Al Awda Hospital in Nuseirat refugee camp, north-east of Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, said it received 23 bodies after Israeli forces fired on people gathered to collect aid near the “Martyrs' Junction” north of the camp, in addition to dozens of wounded.
Medical sources from the Palestinian Red Crescent reported the deaths of another 11 Palestinians, and many others injured, after the Israeli military bombed a house in the Al Maaskar area, west of Deir Al Balah. The wounded were transferred to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city, they said.
"Forty-three martyrs have fallen as a result of the ongoing Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip since dawn today, 26 of whom were waiting for humanitarian aid," Mohammad Al-Mughayyir, director of medical supply at the civil defence agency, told AFP.
Attacks on civilians collecting aid and continued strikes on populated areas are a daily occurrence in Gaza. On Thursday, at least 70 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes, Gazan civil defence said, including 12 people who had been trying to approach an aid site operated by the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
The system has been widely criticised. “Palestinian lives have been so devalued. It is now the routine to shoot and kill desperate and starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said in a post on Wednesday, after more than 300 Palestinians had been killed collecting aid since the start of GHF deliveries last month.
The centres are regularly overrun by Gazans desperate for food after a nearly three-month total blockade of aid deliveries imposed by Israel in March.
Crowds start gathering near the distribution sites before dawn, despite a warning from the Israeli military that these areas are considered combat zones between 6pm and 6am.
The recently created GHF, whose four distribution centres are guarded by private security contractors and surrounded by Israeli forces, began deliveries to replace the aid delivery system operated by the UN.
Since October, 2023, the Palestinian death toll from Israel's war in Gaza has passed 55,700, the Health Ministry said on Thursday, and the number injured has risen to more than 130,100.
Israel's strikes and ground offensive followed a Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 abducted.
