CAIRO: At least 67 people were killed by Israeli fire while they waited for UN aid trucks in northern Gaza on Sunday (Jul 20), the territory’s health ministry said, as Israel issued new evacuation orders for areas packed with displaced Gazans.
The ministry said dozens of people were also wounded in the incident in northern Gaza. It was one of the highest reported death tolls among repeated recent cases in which aid seekers have been killed, including 36 on Saturday. Another six people were killed near another aid site in the south, it said.
Israel’s military said its troops had fired warning shots towards a crowd of thousands of people in northern Gaza on Sunday to remove what it said was “an immediate threat”.
It said initial findings suggested reported casualty figures were inflated, and it “certainly does not intentionally target humanitarian aid trucks”.
It did not immediately comment on the incident in the south.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said that shortly after entering Gaza, a WFP convoy of 25 trucks carrying food aid encountered “massive crowds of hungry civilians” who then came under gunfire.
“WFP reiterates that any violence involving civilians seeking humanitarian aid is completely unacceptable,” it said in a statement.
A Hamas official told Reuters that the militant group was angered over the mounting deaths and the hunger crisis in the enclave, and that this could badly affect ceasefire talks underway in Qatar.
In total, health authorities said 90 people had been killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes across the enclave on Sunday.
