News- Middle East: More aid-seeking Palestinian civilians have been killed in the Gaza Strip by occupying Israeli forces.

Media outlets citing multiple sources said five Palestinians were killed and scores more injured by Israeli forces on Sunday at two aid distribution sites in southern Gaza.

Gaza-based journalist Islam Bader said the killings were the result of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s (GHF) schedule conflicting with orders issued by the Israeli command.

The Israeli command said in a statement that Israeli forces had opened fire after directing warning shots at groups of aid-seekers who were deemed as threatening to them.

Bader explained that the GHF had announced that distribution would begin at 5:00 AM at the Netzarim site in southern Gaza.

However, Israeli forces had closed the area as a restricted zone from 6:00 PM to 8:00 AM, and entering it during those hours is strictly prohibited and extremely dangerous.

Palestinian civilians arrived early in the morning, and the distribution of aid ended by 6:30 a.m.

Starving people, who were frustrated due to the limited supplies distributed among them, began to dismantle parts of the site seeking more aid parcels, prompting US private contractors to spray pepper gas to disperse them.

Then Israeli troops opened fire, killing one person and injuring 15.

Separately, at the Tal al-Sultan GHF site in the southern city of Rafah, starving Palestinians arrived early as well, at around 5:00 a.m. However, Israelis said the site would open at noon, and while the Palestinians were waiting there, Tel Aviv forces used tanks, gunboats, and snipers to target the gathering, killing four and injuring dozens.

Sunday's attacks on aid-seekers were the latest deadly bout of several Israeli killings near aid distribution points in Gaza since the controversial Israeli- and US-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, began handing out aid late last month.

The GHF employs American military contractors to work at its aid distribution sites and has been accused of a lack of neutrality and independence by the United Nations and other international humanitarian agencies. It did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The UN has described the aid allowed into Gaza as “a drop in the ocean.”

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 Tel Aviv regime gave in to international pressure to allow limited UN-led operations to resume on May 19 after an 11-week blockade in the enclave of 2.3 million people, where experts have warned is facing famine.

The Israeli forces launched the genocidal war on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023.

Since then, it has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the coastal territory. 

Source: Press TV