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The United Nations rights office said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the United States-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and convoys run by other relief groups, including the UN.
The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of GHF sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys.
Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the most recent deadly incident occurred on Monday, when reports indicated the Israeli military shelled and fired towards Palestinians seeking food at a GHF site in north-west Rafah.
The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.
The UN has called the GHF aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.
UN secretary-general António Guterres said last month: “Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarised zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people.”
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families.”
The GHF, which started distributing food packages in Gaza in late May after Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade, previously told Reuters such incidents have not occurred on its sites and accused the UN of misinformation, which it denies.
“The data we have is based on our own information gathering through various reliable sources, including medical human rights and humanitarian organisations”, Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.
The United Nations has called the GHF aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards. Source: Getty / Moiz Salhi
The GHF said last week it had delivered more than 70 million meals to Palestinians in five weeks, and that other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.
The Israeli army previously told Reuters in a statement it was reviewing recent mass casualties.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has previously cited instances of violent pillaging of aid, and the UN World Food Programme said last week that most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by “hungry civilian communities”.
