As famine claims more lives, Palestinians are gunned down while waiting for aid, sparking outrage and raising global concerns about Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Israeli forces killed at least 92 Palestinians on Sunday as thousands gathered at multiple locations in Gaza to receive desperately needed food aid. The deadliest incident occurred at the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza, where 79 people were shot and killed as they waited near a United Nations convoy. Additional fatalities were reported near aid distribution points in Rafah and Khan Younis, where 13 others, including elderly civilians, were gunned down, according to medical and civil defence sources.
These attacks occurred amid a deepening humanitarian catastrophe. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that 19 people died from starvation in the past 24 hours, with hundreds more in critical condition due to extreme malnutrition. Aid workers and survivors described horrific scenes of desperation, as families risked everything for a sack of flour.
“We carried a young man on a bicycle — there was no ambulance, no food, no life left,” said Rizeq Betaar, a survivor of the Zikim shooting. Another witness, Osama Marouf, who tried to save a wounded elderly man, added: “I don’t even want the flour anymore. He’s like my father. May God help us through this.”
The Israeli military acknowledged opening fire at Zikim but claimed the shots were meant as a warning against an “immediate threat,” without offering evidence. Meanwhile, the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) strongly contradicted the Israeli account, stating that victims were unarmed civilians simply trying to access food from a convoy of 25 trucks.
“Shortly after passing the final checkpoint, the convoy was met by large crowds — and then came under fire from Israeli tanks and snipers,” the WFP reported. The agency warned that Gaza’s hunger crisis has reached “new levels of desperation,” with one in three people not eating for days and 90,000 women and children urgently needing treatment.
Despite previous Israeli assurances that humanitarian routes would be protected, the deadly incidents have shattered any remaining trust between aid groups and the military. The WFP emphasized the need for a “massive scale-up in food aid” to prevent more deaths and restore basic stability.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 71 children have already died of malnutrition since the war began in October 2023, and at least 60,000 more are at severe risk. In one tragic case, a 35-day-old baby girl in Gaza City died of hunger. “The mother was touching her body, saying, ‘I am sorry I could not feed you,’” reported Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary.
Parents now face a devastating choice: risk being killed at food distribution points or watch their children starve. Many, like one mother interviewed, are giving their children only water to fill their stomachs. “She can’t afford flour,” Khoudary said. “And even when she could, she couldn’t find it.”
As famine tightens its grip and aid convoys become targets, Gaza’s future grows ever more uncertain — and the calls for international accountability grow louder.