A mourner at the funeral of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire while waiting for aid in northern Gaza. Reuters
A mourner at the funeral of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire while waiting for aid in northern Gaza. Reuters
A mourner at the funeral of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire while waiting for aid in northern Gaza. Reuters
A mourner at the funeral of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire while waiting for aid in northern Gaza. Reuters

'Lame and lethal' aid system claims dozen more lives in Gaza


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At least 70 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes in Gaza on Thursday, the enclave's civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said.

Medics earlier reported that 12 people had been killed while trying to approach an aid site operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the central Gaza Strip.

The system has been described by a top UN official as “lame, medieval and lethal” following hundreds of deaths in similar incidents over the past few weeks.

Dozens of Palestinians were killed in separate Israeli air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip, medics added. One of those strikes killed at least 12 people, including women and children, near a mosque in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza city, they added.

Another eight civilians were killed in Israeli shelling of Gaza city on Thursday, Wafa news agency said. Five of those were killed in an attack on a house in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, and three others when an apartment in the west of the city was hit.

Israeli forces also blew up homes east of Jabalia Al Balad in northern Gaza, the agency reported.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army on Thursday's incidents. In recent days it said it was reviewing reports of civilian casualties.

A Palestinian woman waits for the arrival of aid trucks in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. Reuters
A Palestinian woman waits for the arrival of aid trucks in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. Reuters

About 100 other people were injured when Israeli drones and military vehicles opened fire in the morning near an aid distribution point in central Gaza, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

At least 338 people have been killed in total while gathering to collect aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to a tally released by local health authorities on Monday.

The recently created US and Israel-backed agency, whose four distribution centres are guarded by private security contractors and surrounded by Israeli forces, began operations in late May to supersede the aid delivery system operated by the UN. Israel said the move prevents the militant group Hamas from taking aid intended for civilians.

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.

"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 X after at least 14 people were killed while waiting for aid on Wednesday.

He described GHF as "a lame, medieval and lethal system that is deliberately harming people under the camouflage of 'humanitarian aid'".

Dozens killed waiting for aid in Khan Younis

"Hundreds of people have been reported killed since the 'Gaza Humiliation Foundation' started operating just over three weeks ago," he said, describing the group's operations as "a lame, medieval and lethal system that is deliberately harming people under the camouflage of 'humanitarian aid'".

He called for those responsible for establishing the new system to be held accountable, saying: "Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime."

The Palestinian death toll from Israel's war in Gaza passed 55,700 the health ministry said on Thursday and the number injured rose to more than 130,100. The ministry's figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, although it says the majority of victims have been women and children.

The war began on October 7, 2023, with a Hamas attack on southern Israel in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and about 250 taken hostage.

Who has been sanctioned?

Daniella Weiss and Nachala
Described as 'the grandmother of the settler movement', she has encouraged the expansion of settlements for decades. The 79 year old leads radical settler movement Nachala, whose aim is for Israel to annex Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where it helps settlers built outposts.

Harel Libi & Libi Construction and Infrastructure
Libi has been involved in threatening and perpetuating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinians. His firm has provided logistical and financial support for the establishment of illegal outposts.

Zohar Sabah
Runs a settler outpost named Zohar’s Farm and has previously faced charges of violence against Palestinians. He was indicted by Israel’s State Attorney’s Office in September for allegedly participating in a violent attack against Palestinians and activists in the West Bank village of Muarrajat.

Coco’s Farm and Neria’s Farm
These are illegal outposts in the West Bank, which are at the vanguard of the settler movement. According to the UK, they are associated with people who have been involved in enabling, inciting, promoting or providing support for activities that amount to “serious abuse”.

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

Six large-scale objects on show
  • Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
  • The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
  • A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
  • Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
  • A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
  • Torrijos Palace dome
Updated: June 19, 2025, 1:54 PM`