Crush at Gaza aid site kills at least 20, GHF blames armed agitators

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Crispian Balmer

CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -At least 20 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday at an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), in what the U.S.-backed group said was a crowd surge instigated by armed agitators.

The GHF, which is supported by Israel, said 19 people were trampled and one fatally stabbed during the crush at one of its centres in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. 

"We have credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas – deliberately fomented the unrest," GHF said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

Palestinian heath officials told Reuters 21 people had died of suffocation at the site. One medic said lots of people had been crammed into a small space and had been crushed.

On Tuesday, the U.N. rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in Gaza - the majority of them close to GHF distribution points.

Most of those deaths were caused by gun fire that locals have blamed on the Israeli military. The military has acknowledged that Palestinian civilians were harmed near aid distribution centres, saying that Israeli forces had been issued new instructions following what it called "lessons learned".

The GHF uses private U.S. security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a U.N.-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the accusation.

The U.N. has called the GHF’s model “inherently unsafe” and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards - an allegation GHF has denied.

Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, accused the GHF on Wednesday of gross mismanagement, saying its lack of crowd control and failure to uphold humanitarian principles had led to chaos and death among desperate civilians.

"People who flock in their thousands (to GHF sites) are hungry and exhausted, and they get squeezed into narrow places, amid shortages of aid and the absence of organization and discipline by the GHF," he told Reuters.

The war in Gaza, triggered in October 2023 by a deadly Hamas attack on Israel, has devastated large swathes of the coastal enclave, displaced almost all of the territory's population and led to widespread hunger and privation.

ISRAELI ARMY ROAD

Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had completed a new road in southern Gaza separating several towns east of Khan Younis from the rest of the territory in an effort to disrupt Hamas operations.

Palestinians see the road under Israeli army control as a way to exert pressure on Hamas in ongoing ceasefire talks, which started on July 6 and are being brokered by Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar with the backing of the United States.

Palestinian sources close to the negotiations said a breakthrough had not yet been reached on any of the main issues under discussion.

Hamas said Israel wanted to keep at least 40% of the Gaza Strip under its control as part of any deal, which the group rejected. Hamas has also demanded the dismantlement of the GHF and the reinstatement of a U.N.-led aid delivery mechanism.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will end once Hamas is disarmed and removed from Gaza.

Gaza local health authorities said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 17 people across the enclave on Wednesday.

Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.

Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. An estimated 50 Israelis and foreign nationals remain captive in Gaza, including 28 hostages who have been declared dead and whose bodies are being withheld.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer, Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Ahmed Elimam and Tala Ramadan; Editing by Alex Richardson and Andrew Cawthorne)