GAZA CITY — Israeli forces killed at least 32 Palestinians and injured more than 200 others on Sunday as desperate civilians gathered for food at two controversial aid distribution sites in Gaza, capping a deadly opening week for the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The largest toll came in southern Rafah, where Israeli tanks opened fire on a crowd of thousands at an aid handout location, killing 31 people, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. Hours later, one more person was shot and killed near a separate food distribution point south of the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza City, the office reported on Telegram.
The GHF, launched with backing from the United States and Israel, has faced strong opposition from the United Nations and leading aid organizations, who accuse it of lacking neutrality and enabling Israel’s strategic objective of consolidating military control over Gaza.
Eyewitness Ibrahim Abu Saoud, 40, said Israeli forces fired on the crowd while people were still hundreds of meters from the military line. “We weren’t even close to them,” he told The Associated Press. “People were hit by gunfire everywhere… one young man died in front of me and we couldn’t help him.”
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said Palestinians were risking their lives for minimal rations. “They’re being killed while trying to get just one meal for their children,” she said, noting that the aid packages consisted of only basic items like a kilo of flour, a few cans of beans, and some pasta, insufficient for survival amid Gaza’s hunger crisis.
While the GHF insisted Israeli soldiers only fired “warning shots,” it denied reports of mass casualties, calling them “false reporting about deaths, mass injuries, and chaos.” The Israeli army, in a statement on Telegram, said it was “currently unaware of injuries caused by [Israeli] fire within the humanitarian aid distribution site” and that the matter remained under investigation.
The Gaza Government Media Office dismissed such claims, accusing Israel and the U.S. of orchestrating “mass death traps under the guise of aid.”
“What is happening is a systematic and malicious use of aid as a tool of war, employed to blackmail starving civilians and forcibly gather them in exposed killing points,” the statement said.
The Palestinian Medical Relief Society’s Bassam Zaqout, speaking from Gaza City, criticized the new GHF-managed aid system, which replaced over 400 local distribution points with just four centralized sites.
“This system is not designed for the people’s benefit. It excludes the elderly, the disabled, and it’s dangerously unmanageable,” Zaqout said.
Hamas, which governs the besieged Gaza Strip, called Sunday’s shootings a “blatant confirmation of premeditated intent”, holding Israel and the U.S. fully responsible for the killings.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) declared the incident a “full-fledged war crime”, urging international intervention to halt what it described as a “massacre” and calling for legal accountability.
Sunday’s deaths followed two earlier deadly incidents last week at separate aid locations near Rafah, where nine more Palestinians were killed in similar shootings. Critics say the GHF’s centralized distribution model exposes starving civilians to unnecessary risk in a militarized environment.
Gaza has been suffering under a severe blockade, partially eased only after more than two months of total restrictions that pushed over two million residents to the edge of famine.
