798 people killed while receiving aid in Gaza, says UN human rights office

GENEVA – The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on July 11 that it has recorded at least 798 killings both at aid points run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and near humanitarian convoys run by other relief groups, including the UN.

The GHF uses private American security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel says has let militants divert aid.

After the

deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians

trying to reach the GHF’s aid hubs in zones where Israeli forces operate, the UN has called its aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.

“(From May 27) up until July 7, we’ve recorded 798 killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, and 183 presumably on the route of aid convoys,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said during a news briefing in Geneva.

The GHF, which began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May after Israel lifted an 11-week-old aid blockade, said the UN figures were “false and misleading”. It has repeatedly denied that deadly incidents have occurred at its sites.

“The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys,” a GHF spokesman said.

The OHCHR said it bases its figures on a range of sources, such as information from hospitals in the Gaza Strip, cemeteries, families, Palestinian health authorities, non-governmental organisations and its partners on the ground.

Most of the injuries to Palestinians in the vicinity of aid distribution hubs recorded by OHCHR since May 27 were gunshot wounds, Ms Shamdasani said.

“We’ve raised concerns about atrocity crimes having been committed and the risk of further atrocity crimes being committed where people are lining up for essential supplies such as food,” she said.

Israel has repeatedly said its forces operate near the relief aid sites to prevent supplies from falling into the hands of militants it has been fighting in Gaza.

The GHF said on July 11 that it delivered more than 70 million meals to hungry Gaza Palestinians in five weeks, and that other humanitarian groups have “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs previously cited instances of

violent pillaging of aid

, while the UN World Food Programme has said most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by “hungry civilian communities”.

There is an acute shortage of food and other basic supplies 21 months into Israel’s military campaign, during which much of the enclave has been reduced to rubble and most of its 2.3 million inhabitants displaced. REUTERS