ISRAELI forces have killed more than 120 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours, medical sources have told Al Jazeera, including dozens of hungry aid seekers, as Israel continues to relentlessly bombard the besieged territory, with the overall war death toll now surpassing a staggering 55,000 people.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said 57 people trying to access aid were killed and more than 363 injured by Israel since Wednesday morning. The distribution points are operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed drive in tightly Israeli-controlled zones.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has described the GHF aid system as a “dramatic success” despite mass killings and scenes of utter human desperation, triggering widespread international opprobrium.
The isolated aid sites – set up in Rafah and in the Netzarim Corridor – have been branded “human slaughterhouses” as more than 220 people have been killed while desperately trying to secure meagre food parcels for their families since GHF started operating on May 27.
The Israeli army has admitted its troops fired “warning shots” in the area of the Netzarim Corridor, where the majority of aid seekers were reported killed overnight.
Gaza’s Government Media Office said the Israeli military “is deliberately creating chaos in the Gaza Strip by perpetuating a policy of starvation and deliberately targeting and killing starving people seeking food”.
The United Nations also condemned the killings and has refused to supply aid via the foundation, which uses private contractors with Israeli military backup in what the UN says is a breach of humanitarian standards.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) called the aid distribution model “a distraction from the ongoing atrocities and a waste of resources”.
It reiterated that the humanitarian community in Gaza, including UNRWA, is “ready and has the experience and expertise to reach people in need”.
Israel has banned UNRWA and other legacy aid agencies with decades of experience from operating in Gaza, where a famine looms, while it maintains a punishing aid blockade.
Chris Newton, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Israel’s chaotic and violence-plagued aid system is deliberately structured to keep Palestinians desperate and hungry while pushing them southward.
Newton told Al Jazeera that GHF’s stated aim of providing 1,750 calories worth of food per person per day is well short of the minimum standard for crisis situations.
That amount of food is “closer to the ration given in a starvation experiment run in the 1940s in the US than it is to Israel’s own previous 2008 red line for the minimum calories needed to avoid malnutrition in Gaza,” said Newton.