MSF Calls For Dismantling Gaza Humanitarian Foundation After Israeli Army Kills Aid Seekers

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday, June 27 called for the dismantling of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), asserting it is organizing "a sham of food distribution that produces massacres in a chain and must be immediately stopped."

“'It's a field of slaughter': IDF soldiers were ordered to deliberately shoot unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid”

BFM

MSF said the Gaza food distribution mechanism, backed by the United States and Israel, "appears designed to humiliate the Palestinians," and reported "more than 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded as they were heading to these distributions in search of food."

BFM

The Gaza Strip Civil Defense announced on Friday that the Israeli army had killed 80 people, including ten who were waiting for humanitarian aid, while the Israeli army said it was examining these reports when asked by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters in New York on Friday, "People are killed simply by trying to feed their families and themselves. Going to fetch food should never be a death sentence," while urging "the political will for a ceasefire in Gaza."

After an article in the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote in a joint statement released with his defense minister, Israel Katz, that "The State of Israel categorically rejects the odious accusations of ritual murder published in Haaretz."

The Haaretz article is titled: "It's a field of massacre": IDF soldiers were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid, and it cites several soldiers speaking on condition of anonymity about orders to fire on crowds near aid distribution centers.

France 24

Asked by AFP, the Israeli army said it was reviewing Civil Defense's information but categorically denied that its soldiers opened fire on people waiting for aid at the Gaza Strip's central distribution site, where Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal reported one death.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry reacted to Guterres by writing on X that "The UN 'sides with Hamas'" and said the UN aligns with Hamas by opposing the GHF effort, while also asserting that the Israeli army "never targets civilians."

MSF’s Gaza emergency coordinator Aitor Zabalgogeaskoa described four distribution sites as "all located in areas fully controlled by Israeli forces after residents were forcibly displaced," and said the sites are "surrounded by observation posts, earthen berms and barbed wire."

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Haaretz

Zabalgogeaskoa said the fenced entrance provides only a single access point and that "If people arrive too early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot at," while "If they arrive on time, but there are too many people and they jump over the berms and barbed wire, they get shot at."

The Health Ministry of the Hamas government for Gaza reported nearly 550 people killed and more than 4,000 wounded in long queues forming to reach various humanitarian aid distribution centers since the GHF began operations there at the end of May, while the GHF denies deadly shootings near its distribution points.

In response to the criticism, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the GHF has "directly provided more than 46 million meals to Palestinian civilians, not to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas" since the start of its distributions at the end of May, and the UN and humanitarian NGOs have criticized the GHF and refused to work with it.