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Dozens of Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks while trying to get food aid in Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses said, while progress in talks aimed at securing a ceasefire appeared to be stalling.
At least 31 Palestinians were killed on their way to a distribution site run by the Israeli-backed American organisation Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) near Rafah in southern Gaza, officials and witnesses said, according to the Associated Press.
Reuters reported that 17 people were killed, citing medics, while Al Jazeera reported that 34 people were killed in the al-Shakoush area, in front of one of the GHF sites, when Israeli troops opened fire.
It was not possible to independently verify the numbers as Israel does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza. It was the latest mass shooting around a US-backed aid distribution system that the UN says has resulted in 800 people killed in six weeks.
Witnesses who spoke to Reuters described people being shot in the head and torso. Reuters saw several bodies of victims wrapped in white shrouds as family members wept at Nasser hospital.
The Red Cross said its field hospital saw its largest influx of dead in more than a year of operation after the shootings, and that the overwhelming majority of the more than 100 people hurt had gunshot wounds.
Israel’s military said it fired warning shots towards people it said were behaving suspiciously to prevent them from approaching. It said it was not aware of any casualties. The GHF said no incident occurred near its sites.
Israeli airstrikes in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza meanwhile killed 13 Palestinians including four children, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said. Fifteen others were killed in Khan Younis in the south, according to Nasser hospital. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Associated Press reported.
Intense airstrikes continued on Saturday evening in the area of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza.
The 21-month war has left much of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million reliant on outside aid while food security experts warn of famine. Israel blocked and then restricted aid entry after breaking the latest ceasefire in March.
“All responsive individuals reported they were attempting to access food distribution sites,” the Red Cross said after the shootings near Rafah, noting the “alarming frequency and scale” of such mass casualty incidents.
“We were sitting there, and suddenly there was shooting towards us. For five minutes we were trapped under fire. The shooting was targeted. It was not random. Some people were shot in the head, some in the torso, one guy next to me was shot directly in the heart,” eyewitness Mahmoud Makram told Reuters.
“There is no mercy there, no mercy. People go because they are hungry but they die and come back in body bags.”
Abdullah al-Haddad told Associated Press he was 200 metres from the aid distribution site run by the GHF close to the Shakoush area when an Israeli tank started firing at crowds of Palestinians.
“We were together, and they shot us at once,” he said, writhing in pain from a leg wound at Nasser hospital.
Mohammed Jamal al-Sahloo, another witness, said Israel’s military had ordered them to proceed to the site when the shooting started.
The indirect talks over a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire continued throughout Saturday, an Israeli official told Reuters, seven days since talks began. US president Donald Trump has said he hoped for a breakthrough soon based on a new US-backed ceasefire proposal.
One Palestinian source told Agence France-Presse that Israel’s refusal to accept Hamas’s demand for a complete withdrawal of troops from Gaza was holding back progress in the talks.
A second source said mediators had asked both sides to postpone discussions until Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, arrives in the Qatari capital.
“Hamas’s delegation will not accept the Israeli maps … as they essentially legitimise the reoccupation of approximately half of the Gaza Strip and turn Gaza into isolated zones with no crossings or freedom of movement,” the first source said.
A senior Israeli political official claimed later that it was Hamas that rejected what was on the table, accusing the group of “creating obstacles” and “refusing to compromise” with the aim of “sabotaging the negotiations”.
Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in their 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war and abducted 251. Hamas still holds some 50 hostages, with at least 20 believed to remain alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 57,800 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The UN and other international organisations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties. It does not include the thousands thought to be buried under the rubble or those who have died of the indirect consequences of the war.
