Gaza’s civil defence agency said that the Israeli military killed 10 aid seekers on Friday, as a hospital director in the south warned of an influx of patients with acute malnutrition, AFP reported on Friday.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that Israeli fire killed nine people “near the US aid centre in the Al-Shakoush area, northwest of Rafah city in southern Gaza” on Friday.
Bassal also said one person had been killed and eight injured as a result of Israeli gunfire at civilians gathered near an aid distribution point close to the Netzarim corridor, south of Gaza City, on Friday.
The US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operations in late May after Israel imposed an 11-week blockade on humanitarian aid entering Gaza. It has been beset by controversy as starving Palestinians with no other access to food are killed daily while seeking aid.
The United Nations said on 13 July that 875 people had been killed seeking aid. The number now exceeds 900.
Sohaib al-Hums, a medical doctor and director of the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the south, on Friday warned the medical facility was “witnessing an unprecedented influx of displaced persons”.
“We are receiving cases suffering from extreme exhaustion and complete fatigue, in addition to severe emaciation and acute malnutrition due to prolonged lack of food,” he said in a statement.
“We warn that hundreds whose bodies have completely wasted away are now facing imminent death, as their physical endurance has been surpassed,” he added.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned last week that its teams in Gaza were seeing surging levels of acute malnutrition and that levels had reached an “all-time high” at two of its facilities in the territory.
