TNA Staff
The New Arab / June 8, 2025
At least 13 people were killed and more than 100 were injured when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of Palestinian aid seekers in Rafah.
At least 13 people were killed and more than 100 others injured by Israeli forces on Sunday, who opened fire on Palestinians making their way to an aid distribution site in the southern Gaza Strip.
Palestinian paramedics said initially they had evacuated the bodies of four people who were killed near an aid hub in the southern city of Rafah. A medic at Nasser Hospital later said the death toll had risen to 13.
Local media reported that the Israeli military had opened fire near a distribution site operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israel-backed organisation that has taken control of food distribution in Gaza from the UN and other relief agencies.
The Israeli military said in a statement that troops had opened fire in southern Gaza but said that it had directed warning shots at a group that was moving towards soldiers.
It acknowledged reports of injuries but did not specify how many people it believed had been hurt or shot.
It was the latest bout of shooting near the GHF’s aid distribution points since it began handing out aid less than two weeks ago. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more injured by Israeli fire.
Sanaa Doghmah said her husband, Khaled, 36, was fatally shot in the head while trying to reach a distribution site in Rafah to collect food for their five children.
“He was going to get food for his children and himself, to make them live, feed them because they don’t have a pinch of flour at home,” Khaled’s aunt, Salwah, said at his funeral.
The GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
GHF: Aid handed out
The US-based organisation earlier said in a Facebook post that aid was distributed in central and southern Gaza on Sunday.
It had handed out no aid on Saturday, accusing Hamas of making threats that “made it impossible” to operate in the enclave, which the Islamist group denied.
The GHF uses private American military contractors to operate its sites and has been accused of a lack of neutrality and independence by UN and other international humanitarian agencies. It has denied such accusations.
Israel relented to international pressure to allow limited UN-led operations to resume on 19 May after an 11-week blockade in the enclave of 2.3 million people, where experts have warned a famine looms. The UN has described the aid allowed into Gaza as a “drop in the ocean”.
While the GHF has claimed there have been no incidents at its so-called secure distribution sites, Palestinians seeking aid have described scenes of disorder and access routes to the sites have been beset by chaos and deadly violence.
Dozens of Palestinians were killed near GHF sites on 1-3 June, Gaza health authorities said. Israel’s military has said it was investigating the incidents but that warning shots were fired in each incident, and that on Tuesday it had also fired at Palestinians advancing towards troops.
The GHF did not give out aid on Wednesday as it pressed Israel to boost civilian safety beyond its sites, then on Friday it paused some aid distribution “due to excessive crowding.”
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to the U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led militants took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
Israel’s military campaign has since killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the coastal enclave.
