Human Rights Watch on Friday accused Israeli forces operating outside US-backed aid centres in war-torn Gaza of routinely killing Palestinian civilians seeking food, as well as using starvation as a weapon of war.
“US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarised aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.
After nearly 22 months of war in Gaza between Israeli forces and the militant group Hamas, the Palestinian territory is slipping into famine and civilians are starving to death, according to a UN-mandated expert report.
Israel and the United States have backed a private aid operation run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) at four sites inside Gaza, protected by US military contractors and the Israeli army.
GHF launched its operations in late May, sidelining the longstanding UN-led humanitarian system just as Israel was beginning to ease a more than two-month aid blockade that led to dire shortages of food and other essentials.
Since then, witnesses, the civil defence agency and AFP correspondents inside Gaza have reported frequent incidents in which Israeli troops have opened fire on crowds of desperate Palestinian civilians approaching GHF centres seeking food.
At least 859 Palestinians were killed while attempting to obtain aid at GHF sites between May 27 and July 31 — most by the Israeli military — according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families,” HRW’s Wille said in a statement.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment on the HRW report.
It has previously insisted that its forces do not target unarmed civilians and strive to avoid accidental casualties.
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was expected in Gaza on Friday to inspect at least one GHF food distribution site, as international pressure mounts for a durable humanitarian response to the hunger crisis.
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© Agence France-Presse
