4 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces while seeking aid near Gaza City, witnesses say

Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinian aid-seekers travelling on Sunday through a military zone south of Gaza City that is regularly used to reach a food distribution point, a hospital and witnesses said. Gaza City is in famine after 22 months of war, while Israel’s military moves ahead with a planned offensive to seize the city, perhaps within days. Israel’s defence minister has warned that the city of hundreds of thousands of people could be destroyed. Al-Awda Hospital and two witnesses told Associated Press the Palestinians were killed when troops opened fire on a crowd heading to a site run by the Israeli-backed US contractor Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the Netzarim corridor area, hundreds of metres from the site. “The gunfire was indiscriminate,” said Mohamed Abed, a father of two from the Bureij refugee camp. Abed and Aymed Sayyad, another aid-seeker, said troops opened fire when a group near the front of the crowd pushed towards the site before its scheduled opening. Sayyad said he and others helped two people wounded by gunshots. “This incident didn’t occur near our site nor as described,” the GHF said in an email. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported another eight malnutrition-related deaths on Sunday, including a child. That brings the total number of malnutrition-related deaths during the war to 289, with 115 of them being children. At least 62,686 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the ministry, including missing people confirmed dead by a special ministry judicial committee. Of those, more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 13,500 wounded while seeking aid at distribution points or along convoy routes used by the United Nations and other aid groups, according to the Health Ministry. The Health Ministry does not say how many of the dead are fighters or civilians but says around half have been women and children. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and is staffed by medical professionals. The UN and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own. The world’s leading authority on food crises, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, said on Friday that famine is happening in Gaza City and could spread south to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of next month. Aid groups have long warned that the war and months of Israeli restrictions on food and medical supplies entering Gaza are causing starvation. Israel has denied the existence of widespread hunger, calling reports of starvation “lies” promoted by Hamas. In Jabaliya, the densely populated refugee camp just north of Gaza City, residents said they endured heavy explosions overnight. Days after Israel’s military announced it was intensifying its operations in the area and mobilising tens of thousands of reservists to take the city, they said they lived in constant fear. One displaced Palestinian there, Ossama Matter, said neighbourhoods had been razed beyond recognition. “They want it like Rafah,” he said, referring to the southern Gaza city destroyed earlier in the war. “There have been non-stop explosions and strikes in the past days.” While fleeing Jabaliya, teacher Salim Dhaher said he saw robots planting explosives as troops advanced. Dhaher said he feared it was part of a larger effort to forcibly remove Palestinians from the north. The aim is clear, he said: “To destroy everything above the ground and force the transfer.” There was little sign of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians evacuating south ahead of Israel’s invasion of Gaza City, which Israel says is still a Hamas stronghold. Many are exhausted by repeated displacements and unconvinced that any area – including so-called humanitarian zones – offers safety. Meanwhile, Israeli bulldozers uprooted hundreds of trees in the West Bank village of al-Mughayyir on Sunday in the presence of the Israeli military, according to Agence France-Presse journalists who witnessed the scene. Most of the felled vegetation appeared to be olive trees, essential to the economy and culture of the West Bank, while olive groves have also long been a flashpoint for violent clashes between farmers and encroaching Israeli settlers. Abdelatif Mohammed Abu Aliya, a local farmer from the village near Ramallah, said he lost olive trees that were more than 70 years old on about one hectare of land. “They completely uprooted and levelled them under false pretences,” he said, explaining that he and other residents had already begun replanting the pulled-up trees. Agence France-Presse photographers on the ground saw overturned soil, olive trees lying on the ground and several bulldozers operating on the hills surrounding the village. One bulldozer had an Israeli flag and Israeli military vehicles were parked nearby. “The goal is control and forcing people to leave. This is just the beginning – it will expand across the entire West Bank,” said Ghassan Abu Aliya, who leads a local agricultural association. Residents said the bulldozing began on Thursday. A Palestinian NGO reported that 14 people had been arrested in the village over the past three days. When asked about the incident, the Israeli army told Agence France-Presse they were looking into the matter. In a statement issued on Friday, the army said it had arrested a man from al-Mughayyir, accusing him of being “responsible for a terrorist attack” nearby. On August 16, the Palestinian Authority reported that an 18-year-old man had been shot and killed by the Israeli army in the same village. The army said its forces responded to stones thrown by “terrorists” but did not directly link the incident to the young man’s death. In a video widely circulated in Israeli media on Friday, a senior military commander refers to the attack in al-Mughayyir and vows to make “every village and every enemy … pay a heavy price” for attacks against Israelis. Violence in the West Bank has escalated since the war in Gaza began. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

4 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces while seeking aid near Gaza City, witnesses say

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Aid-seekers said troops opened fire when a group near the front of the crowd pushed towards the aid site before its scheduled opening

Aid-seekers said troops opened fire when a group near the front of the crowd pushed towards the aid site before its scheduled opening