European Union and 26 countries condemned the “unimaginable levels” of suffering
Gaza
At least 73 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in the past 24 hours, medics said, while two more — including a six-year-old child — died from starvation caused by Israel’s blockade in the enclave.
Those killed on Tuesday included 19 aid seekers, as the European Union and 26 countries, including Canada, France and the United Kingdom, condemned the “unimaginable levels” of suffering in Gaza and called for urgent action to halt and reverse the unfolding famine in the war-torn territory, Al Jazeera reported.
Survivors of the latest attacks on aid seekers, which took place near the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza, described horrific scenes.
“There was gunfire all around; we didn’t know what was happening. People were dying in front of us, bullets flying between our legs, and we couldn’t do anything,” said a man who gave his name as Sayyid. “We got here to get a bite to eat, but we can barely make it. We’re exhausted, we’re dying… a piece of bread can now cost your life.”
Another survivor, Mohammed Abu Nahl, described crawling on his stomach “with bullets flying all around” as the wounded and dead lay all around him.
“The dead were lying beneath us, and we were pulling them out,” he said. “I came here just to feed my children. I have no money to buy food. If I had food and water, I wouldn’t come here. What should I do? Steal? Loot? “We call on all countries to stand with us, to stop the war, and to end our suffering.”
The Nasser Medical Complex, meanwhile, announced the deaths of six-year-old Jamal Fadi al-Najjar and 30-year-old Wissam Abu Mohsen from malnutrition.
The killings at Zikim take the death toll of aid seekers to more than 1,838 since late May, when the notorious United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began its operations in Gaza.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a post on X: “The Israeli Army continues to silence voices reporting atrocities from Gaza.”
“Israel is also blocking access of international journalists to report independently since the war began nearly two years ago. Journalists must be protected and international media must get into Gaza to support the heroic work of their Palestinian colleagues. This is the only way to counter disinformation and prevent doubts about the scale of atrocities committed in Gaza.
‘Daily patterns’ in shootings at GHF sites
An American paediatrician who volunteered in the Gaza Strip says the injuries inflicted on Palestinian aid seekers at sites run by the GHF suggest that Israeli forces deliberately shot men and boys by targeting and maiming specific body parts on specific days.
Ahmed Yousaf made the comments to Al Jazeera from the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Tuesday, hours after returning from Gaza, where he had spent two and a half weeks working at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir el-Balah and al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The doctor said he witnessed “mass casualty incidents” from Israeli shootings at the food distribution points run by the United States-backed GHF on an almost daily basis.
The boys and young men came in with very specific injuries, “almost like a daily pattern”, he said.
“Meaning on a given day, say Monday, we’d get 40, 60 patients coming in at a given time, and they would all be shot in the legs, or in the pelvic area, or the groin on a given day, just kind of a similar pattern. And the next day, we would see upper body, chest, thoracic pattern, and then there were days we saw only head wounds, upper neck bullet wounds. And what it felt like, at least for me, the position that I went with, was that somebody behind the gun that day was going to choose the way they were either going to maim or decide to kill people,” he said.
