GAZA CITY: Scores of people were killed and injured when Israeli forces shelled Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, the Health Ministry said Sunday.
Anadolu Agency reported Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the attack took place at the Kuwait roundabout south of Gaza City.
“Israeli occupation forces are carrying out a systematic genocide against thousands of hungry stomachs in northern Gaza,” the spokesman said.
There was no comment from the Israeli army on the report.
The attack came three days after at least 118 Palestinians were killed and 760 others injured on Thursday when Israeli forces shelled a crowd waiting for humanitarian aid south of Gaza City.
Separately, the enclave’s media office said airdrops of humanitarian aid are ‘ineffective’. amid deepening famine in Gaza.
The office said in a statement on Telegram that “2.4 million people suffer from severe food shortages and famine is deepening further in Gaza and the north.”
It said the famine “is worsening in the northern and Gaza governorates, where so far 15 children have succumbed to hunger, malnutrition and dehydration” and this “threatens the lives of more than 700,000 Palestinian citizens suffering from extreme hunger.”
The media office pointed out that “dropping aid by air and turning a blind eye to bringing it in through the crossings is an attempt to circumvent the radical solutions to the problem.”
“Aerial aid drops now carry serious consequences for the people, posing a major challenge, as some of them are dropped near the buffer zone (with Israel) or areas controlled by the occupation army or located within the occupied Palestinian territories,” it noted.
It said this “poses a danger of death to citizens attempting to obtain aid.”
“The aid that is dropped by air does not achieve justice at all” and requires people to “run after this aid that does not reach safe places in disgraceful, humiliating and inhuman behavior,” it added.
The US said Saturday that it had carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian aid into Gaza, with more than 30,000 meals parachuted from military planes.
Days ago, the Egyptian army announced in a statement the participation of Qatar and France in an aerial operation in which Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates took part to provide aid to the Gaza Strip, which has been witnessing an Israeli war since Oct 7.
Israel’s deadly offensive on Gaza Strip since Oct 7 had killed more than 30,410 people and injured 71,700 others with mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war has pushed 85 per cent of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza. - Bernama-Anadolu Agency
