At least 31 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, medical sources told Al Jazeera, and 20 others were killed when a truck carrying humanitarian aid overturned onto a crowd of people.
Among those who died in Israeli attacks on Wednesday were 10 aid seekers killed in various areas of the territory, despite the Israeli army’s announcement of “tactical pauses” in fighting to allow aid distribution.
Al-Awda Hospital reported that five people – including a woman and two children – were killed, and others wounded, in an Israeli raid on a house north of the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Four more people died in an Israeli raid on two homes in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Earlier on Wednesday, at least 20 Palestinians were killed when a truck delivering aid supplies overturned, according to the Government Media Office.
The incident occurred as large numbers of Palestinians gathered in central Gaza in search of food and basic supplies amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.
Local officials quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down what they described as an “unsafe road”.
Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said dozens of people were wounded while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid, the AFP news agency reported.
“Despite the recent limited allowance of a few aid trucks, the occupation deliberately obstructs the safe passage and distribution of this aid,” the Government Media Office said in a statement.
“It forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities. This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks and forcibly seizing their contents.”
The incident comes as humanitarian organisations warn of famine and disease spreading across the enclave, while deaths from starvation and malnutrition continue to rise amid severe Israeli restrictions on aid.
Hunger crisis
At least five people died from malnutrition on Wednesday, medical sources told Al Jazeera. A source at al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza confirmed that Hiba Yasser Abu Naji, a child, died from malnutrition. An infant also died from starvation, according to the source, and an adult from Jabalia was reported to have died as well.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, at least 193 people – including 96 children – have died from starvation and malnutrition since October 2023.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military allowed 85 aid trucks to enter Gaza – far below the 600 trucks a day needed to meet basic requirements, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Meanwhile, Palestinians approaching aid distribution sites run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) have frequently come under Israeli fire since the organisation launched operations in late May, after Israel slightly eased its total blockade. Such shootings have become near-daily occurrences near GHF sites in central and southern Gaza.
“Time is running out for people in Gaza, and a deal has to be reached between Hamas and the Israeli military that will allow for humanitarian aid to be let into the enclave,” Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told Al Jazeera.
“Everyone has suffered enough. We have lost colleagues, we have lost friends, families – everyone in Gaza is impacted,” he said.
“We have 350 plus staff members in Gaza who are struggling on a daily basis to find enough food and clean water, so you cannot possibly imagine how civilians who are most vulnerable, who have been living in displacement for 22 months [are surviving].
“I see no way that they can continue living like this and I can see no justification for this to continue any longer, not from any legal or moral perspective,” he added. “The agreement should include and guarantee that access is for every person who is in desperate need for food, for medical treatment and for [their] family to know that they are still alive.”
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that while some aid was entering the enclave, “there should be hundreds and hundreds of trucks entering Gaza every day for months or years to come”.
“People are dying every day. This is a crisis on the brink of famine,” he said – adding that tonnes of life-saving aid remain stuck at border crossings due to bureaucratic delays and a lack of safe access.
