Palestinians say local gunmen and Israeli forces opened fire near Gaza aid site

The Palestinians of Gaza say that they were dismissed once again as they headed for one of the aid distribution centers led Monday by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation supported by the United States.

Witnesses said that for the first time, they had been dismissed by Palestinian armed men near the GHF site in the Tal Al-Sultan region in Rafah, in the South. They also said the Israeli troops had shot them.

The Ministry of Health managed by Gaza said six people had been killed and 99 injured in areas designated for aid collection.

The Israeli army said it was examining reports.

The GHF said that the Tal Al-Sultan site had not opened on Monday and that there were no incidents on two other sites that distributed the aid.

It comes a few days after the Israeli Prime Minister acknowledged that he was arguing the Palestinian clans in Gaza who were opposed to Hamas.

Almost every day since the GHF began to distribute help on May 26, there have been fatal incidents near one or the other of the four centers it has so far opened.

Dozens of Palestinians were killed while they were approaching a site in the Rafah Tal Al-Sultan region on a road that crosses an Israeli military zone.

In previous incidents, witnesses said the Israeli forces opened fire on crowds. The Israeli army denied that the troops fired on civilians on the site, but he said that the troops fired on “suspects” who ignored the warning shots and approached them.

In the incident on Monday, people on the scene said that Palestinian armed men had shot them, as well as Israeli forces.

They said that armed men seemed to be allied with Israeli forces because they operated near them and returned to an Israeli military zone.

A witness told the Daily program of the Middle East Daily of the BBC that he had seen a group of young men dressed in civilian clothes and with his face completely covered when he arrived in the region to obtain a box of food aid from the GHF site.

“At the beginning, we thought they could be young Palestinians who helped the process, but suddenly, they started to shoot us,” said Hisham Saeed Salem.

“Even those who have managed to get a box of aid have been targeted and slaughtered. We still don’t know who these attackers are. They took everything from us-some even stole us during chaos,” he added.

Another man, Mohammed Sakout, said: “Several young men were shot killing just behind me. I barely escaped death – bullets passed a few centimeters from my head.”

“At the beginning, it was the Israeli army that shot civilians. But today we were shocked to discover the presence of gangs and militias,” he added.

At the Nasser hospital in the neighboring city of Khan Younis, a seriously injured man treated for a ball injury on the neck, Mohammed Kabaga, told the Associated Press: “A group of masked armed men who organized us starting towards us directly.”

“We went to look for help. They said they were queuing. We line up and suddenly, they started to shoot us. While I was stuck, I was surprised when a ball struck me, I was dizzy and I fell,” he said.

Israeli defense forces (FDI) told the BBC that it examined reports.

The GHF declared in a press release that it had opened two sites on Monday in the Saudi district of Rafah and Wadi Gaza, at the center of the band, and that “a distribution of aid on the two sites went without incident”.

When asked by the BBC on Tal Al-Sultan reports, a GHF spokesman said that there was “nothing around our sites”.

However, an article on the group’s Facebook account said on Monday afternoon that the Tal Al-Sultan center was closed due to the “chaos of the crowd”.

The acting executive director of GHF, John Acree, said that he had delivered more than 11 million meals in the past two weeks “without injury or major incident on our distribution sites”.

The Gaza Ministry of Health said that hospitals had received a total of 127 people dead and 1,287 people injured from “areas designated for aid distribution” during the same period.

The GHF, which uses American private security entrepreneurs, aims to bypass the UN as a main provider of assistance to the Palestinians.

The UN and other aid groups refuse to cooperate with the new system, affirming that it contravenes the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence.

They also warn that 2.1 million people from Gaza face catastrophic hunger levels after a total Israeli blockage of almost three months which was partially relaxed three weeks ago.

The United States and Israel say that the GHF system will prevent aid from being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies.

The Israeli army launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the attack by Hamas against southern Israel on October 7, 2023, during which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 54,927 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Ministry of Health in the territory.