Israeli airstrikes and gunshots killed at least 25 people overnight and early Saturday, with the majority of victims being shot while awaiting aid deliveries, Gaza hospital officials said, in the latest of a string of deadly incidents at aid sites in the Strip as Gazans face mounting hunger.
The victims killed by gunfire were waiting for aid trucks close to the Zikim crossing with Israel, said staff at Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were brought.
The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to a request for comment.
Those killed in airstrikes included four people in an apartment building in Gaza City, among others, according to hospital staff and the ambulance service. The death tolls could not be verified.
The reports from Gaza come after the Hamas-run health ministry in the coastal enclave said on Friday that 89 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours.
Later Saturday, the IDF released footage showing airstrikes on a cell of terror operatives that detonated a bomb against troops operating in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
According to the IDF, no soldiers were wounded in the attack. Troops of the 188th Armored Brigade spotted the operatives and directed drone strikes that killed them.
Meanwhile, in Gaza City, the military said troops of the 7th Armored Brigade directed airstrikes on launchers used to fire anti-tank missiles at the forces.
In the past day, the IDF said the Israeli Air Force carried out strikes on over 100 terror targets across Gaza, including cells of operatives, tunnels, buildings used by Hamas, weapon depots, and anti-tank launch positions.
One rocket was fired from Gaza toward Israel on Saturday. According to the IDF, the rocket, which caused sirens to sound, struck an open area near the border community of Kissufim, but no injuries or damage were reported.
Earlier in the day, sirens were activated in Nir Am near the Gaza border, but the military said the alert was a false alarm.
The continued fighting and violence, particularly around aid sites, comes amid an apparent breakdown in hostage-ceasefire talks, mounting signs of widespread hunger in the Strip, and spiraling international pressure on Israel to ease the entry of aid into Gaza.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has sparked international condemnation, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres writing on X on Saturday that widespread hunger in Gaza is a “moral crisis that challenges the global conscience.”
“We will continue to speak out. But words don’t feed hungry children,” his post said. “The UN stands ready to make the most of a ceasefire to dramatically scale up humanitarian operations.”
Concern was also expressed in a joint statement by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany, who said the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza “must end now” and that “the time has come” for the war to end.
“We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and urgently allow the UN and humanitarian NGOs to carry out their work in order to take action against starvation,” read the joint statement by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
“The most basic needs of the civilian population, including access to water and food, must be met without any further delay,” they said. “Withholding essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable.”
“Israel must uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law,” they added. “We stand ready to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire and a political process that leads to lasting security and peace for Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region.”
The statement came a day after Macron said France would recognize a Palestinian state in September, prompting condemnation from Israel and responses from Germany and the UK that they would not follow suit.
According to a statement from Starmer’s office, the British premier spoke to Macron and Merz to outline UK plans to get aid to people in Gaza and evacuate sick and injured children.
“The prime minister set out how the UK will also be taking forward plans to work with partners such as Jordan to airdrop aid and evacuate children requiring medical assistance,” the statement said.
Citing two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter, The New York Times reported on Saturday that Israel has no evidence that Hamas regularly steals aid from the United Nations.
The claim that Hamas steals aid has been Israel’s main justification for the establishment of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a group backed by the US and Israel that has distributed tens of millions of meals in southern and central Gaza, but has seen hundreds of reported deaths of Palestinians at and near its distribution sites.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the UN system for distributing aid was the most reliable and effective method of distributing aid, while Hamas would steal from smaller organizations that contributed aid.
The IDF told The Times in a statement that Hamas’s looting of aid is “well documented” and that the terror group “exploited humanitarian aid to fund terrorist activities.”
The Times’ report came after more than 100 trucks’ worth of aid coming in from Israel were collected and distributed by the UN and other international organizations on Friday, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said.
According to COGAT, some 90 trucks of food were also unloaded at the crossings and were waiting to be collected.
“Hundreds of trucks still await pickup. We continue to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” COGAT added.
The war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251. The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 28 of the 50 remaining hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 58,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 456.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.