Three Palestinians were killed and several others wounded on Monday after Israeli occupation forces opened fire on them as they attempted to collect humanitarian aid near a distribution point west of Rafah, in southern Gaza.
According to medical sources, the victims were targeted as they approached a U.S. aid distribution centre supported by both Tel Aviv and Washington, under a newly introduced mechanism that bypasses oversight by international and UN humanitarian agencies.
The same sources confirmed that dozens more were injured, some critically, as a result of direct gunfire from Israeli forces on the hungry crowds.
Another Palestinian succumbed to his wounds sustained on Sunday, after being shot while attempting to reach the same aid point.
These incidents continue to occur amid growing warnings of an escalating humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with aid distribution sites increasingly being turned into death traps by Israeli forces.
Since last Tuesday alone, these repeated attacks have resulted in the killing of 49 Palestinians and the injury of 305 others — reflecting a systematic policy by the occupation to weaponise humanitarian need and turn it into an open killing field. This is part of a broader campaign of collective targeting of civilians, amounting to acts of genocide under international law.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have intensified aerial and artillery bombardments across various parts of the Gaza Strip, especially in the north and east of Gaza City, as well as in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. Eyewitnesses reported that Al-Ansar Mosque in Deir al-Balah was completely destroyed after being hit by three missiles.
Occupation forces also continued their campaign of systematically demolishing residential homes in neighbourhoods across eastern Gaza and the north of the Strip — part of a clear strategy to destroy civilian infrastructure and forcibly displace the remaining population under siege conditions and a calculated effort to erase life.
It is worth noting that the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” — a newly created entity backed by the Israeli occupation and the U.S. administration — began its aid distribution initiative on 27 May in designated “buffer zones” in southern Gaza. However, the initiative has already collapsed, failing to meet even the most basic humanitarian needs, and has instead become a hotspot for mass killings of starving civilians.
These crimes are part of an ongoing assault that began on 7 October 2023, which has resulted in over 178,000 Palestinians killed or wounded, the majority of them women and children, along with thousands missing and hundreds of thousands forcibly displaced. This reflects the true nature of the assault: a campaign of genocidal warfare carried out with full support from the United States and under the silence — and complicity — of much of the international community.
These continued policies are leading to dire humanitarian consequences both in the short and long term, amid the total collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system, the destruction of livelihoods, deliberate starvation, and the widespread terrorisation of the population. These are all defining elements of what is legally considered a campaign of ethnic cleansing against an entire people.
