The Israeli military killed at least 44 desperate Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday in the latest massacre of people seeking aid, The Associated Press reported, citing witnesses and hospital officials.
Al Jazeera reported that Israel killed a total of 80 Palestinians in Gaza and put the death toll of aid seekers at 51. The AP report said that Israeli tanks, drones, and troops opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians in southern and central Gaza who were heading toward aid sites operated by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF), which have become death traps.
The Israeli military acknowledged that its forces opened fire on crowds of aid seekers, claiming that it fired “warning shots” at people who approached forces in a “suspicious manner.” Based on the AP report, the IDF did not allege that the people were armed.
The killing of Palestinians seeking aid has become a daily occurrence in Gaza. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, since the GHF began operating in the Strip at the end of May, at least 516 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF while seeking aid, and another 3,799 have been wounded.
“The newly created, so-called ‘aid mechanism’ is an abomination that humiliates and degrades desperate people,” Phillipe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, told reporters on Tuesday. “It is a death-trap, costing more lives than it saves.”
The latest aid massacres come as much of the world’s attention has been on the Israel-Iran war, which appears to be over for the time being after the two sides agreed to a ceasefire. In Gaza, Palestinians are asking when they will get a ceasefire.
“Whoever stopped the war between Iran and Israel is able to stop the war … in the Gaza Strip. Massacres every day, killing of children, killing the elderly, destruction of infrastructure, destruction of education, destruction of healthcare, destruction of everything we own in the Gaza Strip,” Khalil Moshbeh, a resident of Gaza, told Al Jazeera.
Abu Salman al-Bureim, another Palestinian in Gaza, called on the US and Qatar to work for a Gaza ceasefire. “We ask the West specifically to integrate us into this ceasefire so this crime and tragedy ends,” he said.
The US has continued to support Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza by providing bombs and other military equipment and by using its veto power at the UN Security Council.
