An Israeli drone strike on Friday killed six Palestinian gunmen who Hamas claimed were guarding aid trucks against looters, as the head of the United Nations warned that only a “teaspoon” of aid was getting in following Israel’s 11-week-long blockade.
The Israeli military said 83 trucks carrying flour, food, pharmaceutical drugs, and medical equipment entered the Gaza Strip from the Kerem Shalom crossing point on Friday, for a total of 388 since Monday, when the blockade was eased.
However, an umbrella network of Palestinian aid groups provided a separate figure, saying only 119 aid trucks have passed the Kerem Shalom crossing point and into Gaza. The discrepancy was likely because many of the trucks were not picked up by the aid groups from the Palestinian side of the crossing for distribution.
Regardless, getting the supplies to people sheltering in tents and other makeshift accommodations has been fitful, and UN officials say at least 500 to 600 trucks of aid are needed every day.
Despite the easing of the blockade, distribution has also been hampered by looting by groups of men, some of them armed, near the city of Khan Younis, an umbrella network representing Palestinian aid groups said.
“They stole food meant for children and families suffering from severe hunger,” the network said in a statement, which also condemned Israeli airstrikes on security teams protecting the trucks.
A Hamas official said six members of a security team tasked with guarding the shipments were killed early Friday in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
In response to a query by The Times of Israel, the IDF said that it targeted the gunmen, some of them Hamas members, after identifying them near the trucks, adding “the aid was not hit as a result of the strike.”
The army did not elaborate on how it knew that only some of the armed operatives targeted were Hamas members.
Hamas claimed that the targeted gunmen were “members of the aid security and protection teams… who were performing purely humanitarian tasks.”
A military source denied Hamas’s allegation that the targets were local security, saying, “This is a false and unfounded claim.”
“This is another example of the cynical use by terror organizations in the Gaza Strip of civilians and humanitarian aid infrastructure that enters the area. The IDF will allow humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, while making every effort to ensure that the humanitarian aid does not reach terror organizations,” the IDF added in its response.
While critics argue that armed guards are needed to secure aid to prevent looting, given the desperate need for food in Gaza, Israel in the past has targeted gunmen unless their operations are coordinated. But aid groups say that many of their requests to coordinate the transportation of trucks go unanswered by Israel.
Israel imposed the blockade in early March as hostage-ceasefire talks broke down, accusing Hamas of stealing aid meant for civilians.
“Hamas constantly calls the looters ‘guards’ or protectors’ to mask the fact that they’re disturbing the aid process,” an IDF official told Reuters.
The UN World Food Program said 15 trucks carrying flour to WFP-supported bakeries had been looted since Monday, which it said reflected the dire conditions facing Gazans.
“Hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity,” it said in a statement.
With most of Gaza’s 2 million population squeezed into an ever-narrowing zone on the coast and in the area around the southern city of Khan Younis by Israel’s military operation, international pressure to get aid in quickly has ratcheted up.
“Without rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access, more people will die – and the long-term consequences on the entire population will be profound,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, adding that “Palestinians in Gaza are enduring what may be the cruelest phase of this cruel conflict.”
Guterres pointed to the slow rate of aid entering.
“In any case, all the aid authorized until now amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” he added in a statement. “Meanwhile, the Israeli military offensive is intensifying with atrocious levels of death and destruction.”
A German government spokesperson said the aid was “far too little, too late, and too slow,” adding that delivery of supplies had to be increased significantly.
Israel has announced that a new system, sponsored by the United States and run by private contractors, will soon begin operations from four distribution centers in the south of Gaza, but many details of how the system will work remain unclear.
The UN has already said it will not work with the new system, which it says will leave aid distribution conditional on Israel’s political and military aims.
Israel says its forces will only provide security for the centers and will not distribute aid themselves.
“I appeal to people of conscience to send us fresh water and food,” Sobhi Ghattas, a displaced Palestinian sheltering at the port in Gaza City, told AFP. “My daughter has been asking for bread since this morning, and we have none to give her.”
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, criticized Israel on Friday, saying that the UN had brought in 500 to 600 trucks per day on average during a six-week ceasefire that broke down in March, about five times higher than current rates.
“No one should be surprised, let alone shocked at scenes of precious aid looted, stolen or ‘lost’,” he wrote on X, adding that “the people of Gaza have been starved” for more than 11 weeks.
Footage published in Arabic media on Friday showed hundreds of Palestinians crowding around a bakery in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp as bread was being distributed for the first time in weeks.
As the aid has begun to trickle in, the IDF has continued the intensified ground and air operation launched last week, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would end with Israel taking full control of the Gaza Strip.
The military said Friday that it had struck over 75 targets in Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including terror operatives, rocket launchers, buildings used by terror groups, weapon depots, and other infrastructure.
One strike on Thursday night in Gaza City targeted the offices of a currency exchange company, which the IDF said was funding the military wings of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“Al-Cairo” had changed its name from “Dubai” in 2022, after the company was declared by the defense minister to be “aiding terror organizations due to its involvement in transferring funds to such groups,” the military said.
The IDF said the offices were used in recent years to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas and Islamic Jihad for the terror groups’ military activity.
“Throughout the war, the workers of the currency exchange office continued to aid and fund the activity of Hamas terrorists and transferred millions of dollars to operatives of Hamas’s military wing for military activity purposes, thereby enabling the continuation of Hamas’s terror activity,” the IDF said.
In August 2024, the IDF said it killed one of the employees of the company, Tahseen Al-Nadiyya, over his involvement in funding Hamas.
On Friday, Hamas-run Palestinian medical services said at least 25 people had been killed in the strikes. Another Hamas official told AFP that at least 71 people were killed. Neither of the figures could be independently confirmed.
In Gaza’s north, Al-Awda hospital reported Friday that three of its staff were injured “after Israeli quadcopter drones dropped bombs” on the facility.
The Hamas-run civil defense agency later said it had successfully contained a fire at the hospital.
Meanwhile, the military said Friday that ground troops had killed several operatives across Gaza and destroyed other Hamas sites.
Sirens were activated in the Gaza border community of Nir Am on Friday afternoon, with the IDF reporting that one rocket launched from the Strip was intercepted.
Israel resumed operations in Gaza on March 18, ending a ceasefire that began on January 19.
The war broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 53,000 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 on October 7.
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.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 58 hostages, including 57 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.