79 Gazans killed waiting for food after Israeli troops open fire, medics say

Israeli troops killed at least 79 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, local health authorities said, after large and desperate crowds mobbed one of the U.N. convoys carrying a trickle of aid into the mostly besieged enclave.

The U.N. World Food Program said its 25-truck convoy was mobbed shortly after it passed through the Zikim border crossing from Israel into Gaza. “Our convoy encountered massive crowds of hungry civilians which came under gunfire,” the agency said in a statement.

Israel’s four-month blockade has left Gazans so bereft of basics like fuel that some of the bodies of victims Sunday were piled onto donkey carts, rather than ambulances, to reach al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 79 people were killed.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that it had identified “a gathering of thousands of Gazans” and fired “warning shots” to “remove an immediate threat” to troops. The military did not respond to further questions about the nature of the threat. It has issued similar statements after mass killings of aid seekers gathered near distribution sites run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation over the past two months.

“The IDF is aware of the claim regarding casualties in the area, and the details of the incident are still being examined,” the army said. It added that the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll did not “align” with its own information, but provided no alternative figures.

Israel’s blockade and military campaign have reduced Gaza’s 2 million-strong population to near starvation. On Sunday, the military signaled it was expanding operations deeper into Gaza, warning people to evacuate the central city of Deir al-Balah and to move south to Mawasi, where many of the enclave’s displaced civilians are sheltering in tents.

World Central Kitchen, a U.S.-based nonprofit, also said Sunday that its teams had run out of ingredients to cook warm meals. The Health Ministry said 18 people, including eight children, had died of a lack of food in 24 hours.

“The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in #Gaza,” the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees said in a post Sunday on X. “Among them are 1 million children.”

On the Al Jazeera news network, the voice of correspondent Anas al-Sharif cracked as he pointed viewers to an elderly woman who appeared to have fainted from exhaustion as the cameras rolled. “People are falling down now in the streets of Gaza from extreme hunger,” he said.

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense force, announced he was going on hunger strike, saying in a video statement that what is happening in the enclave “is not merely a crisis.”

“It is a documented crime being committed against an entire people,” he said, addressing world leaders. “You hold the power to stop this crime. History will not forgive those who watch in silence or those who remain complicit.”

Several witnesses to the shootings near Zikim said they saw Israeli tanks firing on the crowd as people ran toward the aid trucks. Reached by phone in al-Shifa Hospital, Rebhi al-Masri, 30, said his brother-in-law was badly wounded from being shot in the neck and chest. Another relative was shot in the pelvis, and his brother had gone missing in the chaos. “I have no idea where he is,” he said. “Everybody started running.”

Zaher al-Wahidi, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said 330 people were treated for injuries in al-Shifa Hospital alone. Corridors had filled with the wounded and the emergency room was out of beds, he said.

Wahidi said another 13 people were shot near an aid distribution center in Rafah in southern Gaza on Sunday. When asked about the incident, the Israeli military said troops had “identified suspects” and fired “warning shots” to prevent them from approaching.

From al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, wounded 24-year-old Youssef Wady described Sunday night how casualties were still arriving. “I hope the people of all nations hear my voice,” he said. “Feel for us. Enough is enough. … Some people have spent months without a single loaf of bread.”

As of July 13, the United Nations had recorded 875 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food in recent months, 674 of whom were killed around Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites. More than 200 others were killed while seeking food “on the routes of aid convoys or near aid convoys” run by the United Nations or its humanitarian partners, Thameen al-Kheetan, a spokesman, told reporters in Geneva.

Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign minister said Sunday that he had issued instructions that the residence visa not be renewed for a top U.N. official in Gaza who had criticized the military’s shooting of Palestinian aid seekers. Jonathan Whittall, who heads the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, had addressed the spiraling bloodshed in a news conference last month. “What we are seeing is carnage,” he said. “It’s a death sentence for people just trying to survive.”

In a post on X, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar portrayed Whittall’s description of the killings as “hostile conduct” against Israel.

“Whoever spreads lies about Israel – Israel will not work with him,” he wrote.

Tom Fletcher, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, posted on the same platform shortly after to say that Whittall was in Deir al-Balah, with Israeli airstrikes intensifying. “Surrounded by our team, and civilians we stay to help,” he wrote.