Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli attacks killed 87 Palestinians and wounded 252 people over the previous 24-hour period, as relentless US-backed Israeli strikes continued to pound the Strip.
The Health Ministry said that another seven bodies were recovered from the rubble. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, where ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them at this time,” the ministry wrote on X.
Also on Wednesday, at least 21 people were killed during an incident near an aid distribution site that’s operated by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
Witnesses told The Associated Press that American mercenaries who work for the GHF used pepper spray and stun grenades on a large crowd of Palestinians near the entrance of the GHF site before it opened, causing panic. Other witnesses told Al Jazeera that GHF guards used tear gas on the crowd, and the Health Ministry said at least 15 people died due to being crushed by the crowd and “suffocation” from the gas.
“We were running like everyone else. We got to the gate and realized that it was closed, thousands of people were there,” a witness told Al Jazeera. “The Americans fired tear gas into the crowd to disperse them which caused a stampede and many people died while being crushed by the crowd.”
The Health Ministry said that the incident marked the first time “deaths have been recorded due to suffocation and the intense stampede of citizens at aid distribution centers.”
For its part, the GHF is blaming the incident on Hamas, claiming the Palestinian group infiltrated the crowd. A GHF spokesman claimed that a “large number” of Palestinians in the crowd were armed with pistols, but no evidence was produced to back up the claim besides a photo of a pistol the GHF claimed was confiscated. The GHF also said an American medic was stabbed and wounded.
The incident marks the first time that the GHF acknowledged a mass casualty event at one of its aid sites despite hundreds of Palestinians being massacred by the IDF on the roads to the sites. Whistleblowers who worked for the GHF have also reported that Americans working at the aid sites use stun grenades, tear gas, and even live ammunition to disperse crowds of unarmed, hungry Palestinians.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that a total of 25 aid seekers were among 81 people killed throughout the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
The Health Ministry’s total death toll since October 7, 2023, has reached 58,573, and the number of wounded has climbed to 139,607. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are a significant undercount, and estimates that factor in indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege and destruction of all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure bring the death toll into the hundreds of thousands.
