
Image source, Reuters
- Author, Writing
- Author's title, BBC News World
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At least 59 Palestinians died and more than 220 were injured after Israeli tanks opened fire against a crowd that expected the arrival of humanitarian aid trucks in Jan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, according to the Ministry of Health of the Territory.
Witnesses pointed out that Israeli tanks fired at least two projectiles against thousands of people awaiting trucks along the main eastern road in the city.
Israeli authorities have not commented on the incident.
Tuesday's death toll was the highest reported so far in the almost daily shootings that have been recorded since the Gaza or GHF Humanitarian Foundation (for its acronym in English) began operating in the territory three weeks ago.
The deadliest day to date had been Monday, when the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip reported the death of 28 people near a GHF center in Al-Alam, in the city of Rafah, and two others in a similar center in the Nezarim corridor, in the center of the territory.
Hundreds of Palestinians have died trying to obtain food from the GHF distribution centers, open by Israel after partially lifting a three -month block that, according to the UN, had taken the population of Gaza to the edge of the starvation.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, declared Monday: “Israel's media and methods of war are inflicting a horrible and inadmissible suffering to the Palestinians of Gaza.”
In an address in front of the UN Human Rights Council, Turk accused Israel of using food as a weapon and reiterated his call to an exhaustive investigation of attacks near the centers.
Image source, AFP
Ahmed Fayad, a man who tried to get food at the GHF camp on Monday, described the operation as a “trap.”
“We were thinking that we would receive help to feed our children, but it turned out to be a trap, a massacre. I advise everyone: they don't go,” he told the Reuters news agency.
UN agencies have refused to collaborate with the GHF.
On several previous occasions, the FDI acknowledged that their troops opened fire near places of help.
Diversion of attention
While the shots against the Palestinians who come in search of help take place almost daily, what happens there has been veiled in part after the attention changed focus and focuses on the exchange of fire between Israel and Iran.
The confrontation between these two countries began on Friday, when the Benjamin Netanyahu government launched the so -called Nascent Leon operation, with which it is attacking nuclear facilities and other Iranian military objectives.
In an opinion column, the head of correspondents of the British newspaper The Guardian In the Middle East, Emma Graham-Harrison said: “International pressure for famine and the killing of civilians in Gaza apparently dissipated in a little more than the time it took to vanish the smoke of the first missile attacks on Tehran.”
“The Israeli army acted quickly to declare Iran its highest priority, relegating the battle for Gaza to the background. This change echoed in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the writing rooms of the whole world,” he reflected.
Image source, Reuters
According to testimonies collected by the reporter of the New York Times In Jerusalem, Adam Rasgon, many Palestinians in Gaza feel that the recent escalation of the conflict between Israel and Iran is diverting worldwide attention from its humanitarian crisis.
“Everyone talks about Iran now,” said Khalil Al-Halabi, a former UN official, now pensioner with 71 years, who lives in a partially destroyed house in the city of Gaza.
“Gaza has become a secondary matter.”
In addition to constantly worrying about finding food for his family, he says that he fears that the conflict between Israel and Iran Socve the efforts that are desperately needed to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.
Prior to the incident of the last two days, the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip said that at least 300 people had died and more than 2,600 were injured near the aid distribution points since the GHF began its operations in Gaza on May 26.
The Israel Defense Forces (FDI) questioned the death toll and said that Hamas was responsible for much of the violence.
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