GAZA CITY – Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed another 21 people waiting for aid in the Palestinian territory yesterday, as rights groups and United Nations agencies slammed the United States-backed system for distributing food there.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 21 people were killed and around 150 wounded “as a result of the Israeli occupation forces’ targeting of gatherings of citizens waiting for aid… in the central Gaza Strip with bullets and tank shells” in the early hours yesterday.

Footage from an AFP journalist showed wounded residents carried to a nearby hospital, with some appearing to be unconscious and pale.

“How long will this situation go on? How long will people have to endure this? We want a solution for these victims who are dying,” Rabhi al-Qassas, an eyewitness, told AFP.

The Israeli military later said that a gathering overnight had been identified in an area “adjacent” to its troops in the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza, where the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid group is known to hand out food.

It said reports of individuals injured by military fire in the area were “under review”.

Crowds of Palestinians gather near the Netzarim corridor every night in the hope of receiving rations, with the Gaza population of more than two million suffering famine-like conditions after an Israeli blockade, according to rights groups.

GHF is a privately run US- and Israeli-backed organisation brought into Gaza at the end of May to replace UN-run aid operations.

As news of the latest incident broke, the UN condemned the “weaponisation of food” in Gaza as a war crime and urged Israel’s military to “stop shooting at people trying to get food”.

“Israel’s militarised humanitarian assistance mechanism is in contradiction with international standards on aid distribution,” the UN human rights office said in written notes provided before a briefing.

UN agencies and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with GHF over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.

According to figures issued on Saturday by the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, at least 450 people have been killed and nearly 3 500 injured by Israeli fire while seeking aid since late May.

Many of those have been near sites operated by the GHF, according to rescuers, but GHF says some deadly incidents have occurred near UN convoys. – Nampa/AFP