At least 20 Palestinians have been killed and many others injured after a truck carrying humanitarian aid overturned onto a crowd in central Gaza.
The incident occurred as large numbers of Palestinians gathered in search of food and basic supplies amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.
According to the Gaza Government Media Office on Wednesday, the vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down what they described as an “unsafe road.”
Gaza Civil Defence spokesperson, Mahmud Bassal, confirmed that dozens of people were injured while hundreds of civilians had gathered at the site, waiting for desperately needed aid.
“Despite the recent limited allowance of a few aid trucks, the occupation deliberately obstructs the safe passage and distribution of this aid,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement.
“It forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities. This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks and forcibly seizing their contents.”
The deadly incident comes as humanitarian organisations continue to warn of worsening famine and the spread of disease across the enclave, with rising deaths linked to starvation and malnutrition.
A source at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza confirmed that a child, Hiba Yasser Abu Naji, died from malnutrition. The source also reported that an infant and an adult from Jabalia died from the same cause.
On Monday, the Israeli military permitted 95 aid trucks to enter Gaza, far below the 600 trucks per day needed to meet basic humanitarian needs, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The current daily average remains at around 85 trucks.
Meanwhile, Palestinians approaching aid distribution sites operated by the controversial World Central Kitchen-linked Global Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) have frequently come under Israeli fire since the organisation began operations in late May.
Such shootings have become near-daily occurrences, particularly near sites in central and southern Gaza.
A spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Jens Laerke, said that although some aid was entering Gaza, “there should be hundreds and hundreds of trucks entering Gaza every day for months or years to come.”
“People are dying every day. This is a crisis on the brink of famine,” he said, adding that tonnes of life-saving aid remain stuck at border crossings due to bureaucratic delays and a lack of safe access.
Elsewhere in Gaza, several Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes across the enclave.
Al-Awda Hospital reported that five people, including a woman and two children, were killed, and others wounded, in an Israeli strike on a house north of the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Four more people were reportedly killed in an Israeli raid targeting two homes in the Shujayea neighborhood of Gaza City.
