By Harun Nasrullah
London (The Muslim News): At least 95 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday as Israel ramped up its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, with multiple strikes hitting densely populated areas and aid distribution sites. According to medical officials in the territory, among the dead were more than a dozen people who had gathered at food lines in a desperate bid to secure dwindling humanitarian supplies—an increasingly fatal act in besieged Gaza.
These latest deaths bring the total number of Palestinians killed since the Israeli military campaign began to 56,531, with 133,642 wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The worsening toll includes those caught up in humanitarian aid zones that, once seen as safe havens, have now become scenes of deadly violence. Near the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza, Israeli forces reportedly opened fire on a crowd of civilians waiting for food, killing 11 and injuring 84. Earlier shelling in the same area and along Salah al-Din Street resulted in an additional 11 deaths and over 65 injuries. In Rafah, six more Palestinians were shot dead while attempting to reach an aid distribution site.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), issued a sharp denunciation of the unfolding humanitarian strategy, specifically targeting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—a US- and Israeli-backed private aid initiative. Lazzarini said the system was no longer delivering relief but orchestrating death.
“This scheme provides nothing but starvation and gunfire to the people of Gaza,” he declared in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “It has replaced humanitarian principles with militarised logistics, and the consequences are catastrophic.”
He added that since the programme’s launch, at least 500 people have been killed and nearly 4,000 injured while attempting to reach aid.
“We are witnessing the collapse of the humanitarian system,” Lazzarini continued. “What remains is a shell of aid operations, co-opted by political agendas and enforced with weapons.”
Once 400-strong, the number of operating aid distribution points has now dwindled to just four. These remaining sites are heavily militarised, with private contractors and Israeli forces often guarding their perimeters. Aid workers and human rights groups have condemned the GHF’s operations, calling them “a lure for the hungry and the hopeless” into kill zones.
“The idea that humanitarian aid can be delivered under gunpoint is a moral absurdity,” said Miriam al-Khatib, a field officer with a Palestinian rights group. “People go out hoping for a bag of flour and come back in shrouds—if they come back at all.”
The broader pattern of violence spread across the enclave. In Gaza City’s al-Zeitoun neighbourhood, an Israeli strike flattened a residential building, killing ten people and burying several others beneath rubble.
“We heard no warning, just the roar of the jet and then everything was dust,” said Ahmad, a survivor who lost two family members in the strike.
A separate drone attack in the same area killed four people, while another in Shejaiya claimed two more lives. The Asaad al-Saftawi School in eastern Gaza City—serving as a temporary shelter—was also struck, killing three civilians.
Elsewhere, bodies continued to be pulled from the rubble in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, illustrating the enduring impact of prior bombardments.
In central Gaza, six people died when Israeli forces shelled homes in the town of Al-Zawayda, and two more, including a woman, were killed in an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in Maghazi refugee camp.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, twelve people were killed in two separate strikes—one targeting a residential home, another hitting a tent sheltering displaced families. Two more Palestinians were killed in a separate airstrike in al-Mawasi, and three others in Jorat al-Aqqad, where shelling of residential buildings was also reported.
The humanitarian collapse has become so extreme that, according to local health workers, a young man died of malnutrition—a stark illustration of the blockade’s devastating grip on access to food.
“He was just 21,” said Dr. Rami Shaheen at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. “He starved to death while the world debated logistics and security protocols.”
As the death toll grows and humanitarian aid grinds to a halt, political tensions continue to simmer. A senior Hamas official told Al Jazeera that the group remains committed to securing a ceasefire but accused Israel of deliberate obstruction.
“We are determined to seek a ceasefire that will save our people,” the official said. “But Israel continues to sabotage negotiations, prolonging the suffering of civilians.”
Illegal settler expansion deepens ensions in the Occupied West Bank
While the humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorates rapidly, the occupied West Bank is witnessing its own escalation, driven by illegal Israeli settler expansion.
Palestinian rights groups report that illegal settlers have established a fifth outpost northwest of Jericho, intensifying tensions in one of the West Bank’s most strategically sensitive areas.
According to the Al-Baydar Organisation for the Defence of Bedouin Rights, settlers have brought in tents, levelling equipment, and fencing materials over the past few days, carving up land in the Muarrajat corridor—a key route linking northern and southern regions of the West Bank while effectively isolating Jericho.
The organisation warned that the newly established outpost is more than a pastoral encampment.
“This is not random. It is a calculated political project disguised as agriculture,” said Al-Baydar spokesperson Nour Odeh. “The aim is to displace long-established Bedouin communities and to entrench Israeli control over vital geographic corridors.”
The move has raised alarm among international observers.
“These outposts are illegal under international law and dangerously provocative,” said a European diplomat in Ramallah who requested anonymity. “They are deepening the fragmentation of Palestinian territory and further undermining any prospects for peace.”
Israeli settler expansion, frequently supported by Israeli military presence, has long been a flashpoint in the West Bank. But the latest actions, coupled with the escalating conflict in Gaza, have led to a notable increase in confrontations between settlers and Palestinians. Bedouin communities in the area have reported threats, harassment, and the loss of access to traditional grazing lands.
“They want to erase us,” said Salem Abu Daqqa, a local herder displaced from the area. “They take our land, cut off our water, and call it security.”
[Photo: Relatives of the deceased mourn their loss after an Israeli attack on Netzarim ‘Death’ Corridor killed many Palestinians waiting for food aid, as their bodies are brought to Al Awda Hospital in Jabalia camp, Gaza on July 02, 2024. Photojournalist: Moiz Salhi/AA]
