US and Israeli-backed group pauses food delivery in Gaza after deadly shootings

An Is­raeli- and U.S.-backed group paused food de­liv­ery at its three dis­tri­b­u­tion sites in the Gaza Strip on Wednes­day af­ter health of­fi­cials said dozens of Pales­tini­ans were killed in a se­ries of shoot­ings near the sites this week.

The Gaza Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Foun­da­tion said it was in dis­cus­sions with the Is­raeli mil­i­tary on bet­ter-guid­ing foot traf­fic near the sites and en­hanc­ing mil­i­tary train­ing pro­ce­dures to pro­mote safe­ty.

The move came a day af­ter Is­raeli forces ac­knowl­edged open­ing fire as peo­ple head­ed to­ward a GHF dis­tri­b­u­tion hub in the now most­ly un­in­hab­it­ed south­ern city of Rafah, a mil­i­tary zone off lim­its to in­de­pen­dent me­dia.

Gaza health of­fi­cials, the Red Cross and the U.N. rights of­fice said 27 peo­ple were killed on Tues­day and wit­ness­es blamed Is­raeli forces. Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said it fired near peo­ple it de­scribed as sus­pects who it said ap­proached its forces and ig­nored warn­ing shots. It says it is look­ing in­to re­ports of ca­su­al­ties.

At least 80 peo­ple have been killed since the sites opened last week, ac­cord­ing to hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing dozens in sim­i­lar shoot­ings at rough­ly the same lo­ca­tion on Sun­day and Mon­day, when the mil­i­tary al­so said it had fired warn­ing shots.

GHF says there has been no vi­o­lence in the aid sites them­selves but has ac­knowl­edged the po­ten­tial dan­gers peo­ple face when trav­el­ing to them on foot. Thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans walk to the sites ear­ly each morn­ing, des­per­ate for food and hop­ing to beat the crowds, and pass near Is­raeli forces in the predawn dark­ness.

GHF said it asked the Is­raeli mil­i­tary, which is some­times re­ferred to as the IDF, to “in­tro­duce mea­sures that guide foot traf­fic in a way that min­i­mizes con­fu­sion or es­ca­la­tion risks near IDF mil­i­tary perime­ters; de­vel­op clear­er IDF-is­sued guid­ance to help the pop­u­la­tion tran­sit safe­ly; en­hance IDF force train­ing and re­fine in­ter­nal IDF pro­ce­dures to sup­port safe­ty.”

A con­tro­ver­sial new aid sys­tem

Is­rael and the Unit­ed States say they sup­port­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of the new aid sys­tem to pre­vent Hamas from steal­ing aid and sell­ing it to fi­nance its mil­i­tant ac­tiv­i­ties. Is­rael has not claimed that Hamas fired in the area of the GHF sites.

The Unit­ed Na­tions, which op­er­ates a long­stand­ing aid sys­tem that can de­liv­er to hun­dreds of lo­ca­tions across the ter­ri­to­ry, de­nies there has been any sys­tem­at­ic di­ver­sion of aid by Hamas, say­ing it has mech­a­nisms to pre­vent that.

The U.N. has re­fused to take part in the new sys­tem, say­ing it vi­o­lates hu­man­i­tar­i­an prin­ci­ples by al­low­ing Is­rael to con­trol who gets aid and by forc­ing Pales­tini­ans to trav­el to just three dis­tri­b­u­tion hubs, two of which are in the south­ern­most city of Rafah.

Is­rael im­posed a com­plete ban on food and oth­er im­ports for 2 1/2 months be­fore eas­ing the re­stric­tions in May. U.N. agen­cies say lin­ger­ing re­stric­tions, the break­down of law and or­der in­side Gaza, and wide­spread loot­ing have made it dif­fi­cult to de­liv­er as­sis­tance.

Ex­perts warned ear­li­er this year that Gaza is at risk of famine if Is­rael does not lift its block­ade and stop the mil­i­tary cam­paign it re­newed in March, when it shat­tered a cease­fire with Hamas.

The war be­gan when Hamas-led mil­i­tants stormed in­to south­ern Is­rael on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and ab­duct­ing 251. They are still hold­ing 58 hostages, around a third be­lieved to be alive, af­ter most of the rest were re­leased in cease­fire agree­ments or oth­er deals.

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary cam­paign has killed over 54,000 peo­ple in Gaza, most­ly women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which does not say how many of the dead were civil­ians or com­bat­ants.

The min­istry is led by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als but re­ports to the Hamas-run gov­ern­ment. Its toll is seen as gen­er­al­ly re­li­able by U.N. agen­cies and in­de­pen­dent ex­perts, though Is­rael has chal­lenged its num­bers. Is­rael says it has killed some 20,000 mil­i­tants, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence.

The of­fen­sive has de­stroyed vast ar­eas, dis­placed around 90% of the pop­u­la­tion, and left peo­ple al­most com­plete­ly re­liant on in­ter­na­tion­al aid.

By WAFAA SHU­RAFA

DEIR AL-BAL­AH, Gaza Strip (AP)