94 Palestinians killed in Gaza, including 45 people waiting for aid

Airstrikes and shoot­ings killed 94 Pales­tini­ans in Gaza overnight, in­clud­ing 45 who were at­tempt­ing to get much-need­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, hos­pi­tals and the Health Min­istry said Thurs­day.

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary did not im­me­di­ate­ly com­ment on the strikes.

Five peo­ple were killed while out­side sites as­so­ci­at­ed with the Gaza Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Foun­da­tion, the new­ly-cre­at­ed, se­cre­tive Amer­i­can or­ga­ni­za­tion backed by Is­rael to feed the Gaza Strip’s pop­u­la­tion, while 40 oth­ers were killed wait­ing for aid in oth­er lo­ca­tions across the Gaza Strip.

On Thurs­day, hu­man rights or­ga­ni­za­tion Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al is­sued a re­port claim­ing Is­rael and the GHF use star­va­tion tac­tics against Pales­tini­ans to con­tin­ue to com­mit geno­cide in the Gaza Strip.

Dozens of peo­ple were killed in airstrikes that pound­ed the Strip Wednes­day night and Thurs­day morn­ing, in­clud­ing 15 peo­ple killed in strikes that hit tents in the sprawl­ing Muwasi zone, where many dis­placed Pales­tini­ans are shel­ter­ing. A sep­a­rate strike on a school in Gaza City shel­ter­ing dis­placed peo­ple al­so killed 15 peo­ple.

Ris­ing toll in Gaza as pos­si­ble cease­fire looms

Gaza’s Health Min­istry said the num­ber of Pales­tini­ans killed in Gaza has passed 57,000 since the war be­gan on Oct. 7, 2023. The toll in­cludes 223 peo­ple who had been miss­ing but have now been de­clared dead. The min­istry doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its death count but says that more than half of the dead are women and chil­dren.

The deaths come as Is­rael and Hamas inch clos­er to a pos­si­ble cease­fire that would end the 21-month war.

Trump said Tues­day that Is­rael had agreed on terms for a 60-day cease­fire in Gaza and urged Hamas to ac­cept the deal be­fore con­di­tions wors­en. But Hamas’ re­sponse, which em­pha­sized its de­mand that the war end, raised ques­tions about whether the lat­est of­fer could ma­te­ri­al­ize in­to an ac­tu­al pause in fight­ing.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary blames Hamas for the civil­ian ca­su­al­ties be­cause it op­er­ates from pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas. The mil­i­tary said it tar­get­ed Hamas mil­i­tants and rock­et launch­ers in north­ern Gaza that launched rock­ets to­ward Is­rael on Wednes­day.

Amnesty says con­tro­ver­sial aid dis­tri­b­u­tion amounts to ‘geno­cide’

The U.K.-based hu­man rights group Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al con­demned both Is­rael and the Gaza Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Foun­da­tion, which the U.S. and Is­rael have tapped to take over aid dis­tri­b­u­tion in Gaza from a net­work led by the Unit­ed Na­tions.

The Amnesty re­port said Is­rael has “turned aid-seek­ing in­to a boo­by trap for des­per­ate starved Pales­tini­ans” through GHF’s mil­i­ta­rized hubs. The con­di­tions have cre­at­ed “a dead­ly mix of hunger and dis­ease push­ing the pop­u­la­tion past break­ing point,” it said.

Is­rael’s for­eign min­is­ter de­nounced the Amnesty re­port, say­ing the or­ga­ni­za­tion has “joined forces with Hamas and ful­ly adopt­ed all of its pro­pa­gan­da lies.”

Gaza’s Health Min­istry says more than 500 Pales­tini­ans have been killed at or near GHF dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters over the past month, in­clud­ing five overnight be­tween Wednes­day and Thurs­day in Khan You­nis. The cen­ters are guard­ed by pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty con­trac­tors and lo­cat­ed near Is­raeli mil­i­tary po­si­tions. Pales­tin­ian of­fi­cials and wit­ness­es have ac­cused Is­raeli forces of open­ing fire at crowds of peo­ple mov­ing near the sites.

The war be­gan when Hamas-led mil­i­tants at­tacked south­ern Is­rael, killing 1,200 peo­ple and tak­ing rough­ly 250 hostages.

The war has left the coastal Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry in ru­ins, with much of the ur­ban land­scape flat­tened in the fight­ing. More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion has been dis­placed, of­ten mul­ti­ple times. And the war has sparked a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Gaza, leav­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple hun­gry.

By MELANIE LID­MAN and KA­REEM CHEHAYEB

TEL AVIV, Is­rael (AP)

Chehayeb re­port­ed from Beirut.