Israeli military kills 41 people in Gaza, medics say

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO (Reuters) -Israeli gunfire and airstrikes killed at least 41 Palestinians across Gaza on Sunday, local health authorities said, five of them near two aid sites operated by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Medics at Al-Awda Hospital in the central Gaza Strip said at least three people were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli fire as they tried to approach a GHF site near the Netzarim corridor. Two others were killed en route to another aid site in Rafah in the south.

An airstrike killed seven other people in Beit Lahiya town north of the enclave, medics said. In Nuseirat camp in central Gaza Strip, medics said an Israeli airstrike killed at least 11 people in a house. The rest were killed in separate airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip, they added.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May after Israel partially lifted a near three-month total blockade. Scores of Palestinians have been killed in near-daily mass shootings trying to reach the food.

The GHF said in a statement that it resumed food deliveries on Sunday, distributing more than two million meals from its three distribution sites without incident.

The United Nations rejects the new Israeli-backed distribution system as inadequate, dangerous, and a violation of humanitarian impartiality principles.

COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, said that this week it had facilitated the entry of 292 trucks with humanitarian aid from the United Nations and the international community, including food and flour, into Gaza.

It said the Israeli military would continue to permit the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave while ensuring it did not reach Hamas. Hamas denies Israeli accusations that it steals aid and says Israel is using hunger as a weapon against the Gaza population.

The Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday that at least 300 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,600 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the GHF began operations in Gaza.

"These are not humanitarian aid, these are traps for the poor and the hungry under the watch of occupation planes," said Munir Al-Bursh, Director-General of the health ministry.

"Aid distributed under fire isn't aid, it is humiliation," Bursh posted on X on Sunday.

The war in Gaza erupted 20 months ago after Hamas-led militants raided Israel and took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, on October 7, 2023, Israel's single deadliest day.

Israel's military campaign since has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the densely populated strip, which is home to more than two million people. Most of the population is displaced, and malnutrition is widespread.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by David Holmes, Sophie Walker and Giles Elgood)