More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to access food in Gaza, mostly near aid sites run by a controversial American contractor, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday.
Of the 1,054 people killed while trying to get food since late May, 766 were killed while heading to sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to the UN.
The GHF has proven to be a controversial body. Registered in Delaware and backed by Israel, it was established in February to distribute aid from four hubs in Gaza, replacing the UN system of distribution.
In January, Israel banned the main UN organisation delivering aid to Palestinians in Gaza, UNRWA, from operating, claiming the agency turned a blind eye to Hamas members in its ranks.
But the GHF had no previous experience of delivering aid to combat zones and its delivery method has been criticised by established aid groups.
Deliveries at its four distribution sites across Gaza have often seen people killed, either in crowd crushes or after Israeli forces or security contractors opened fire near aid-seekers.
Thameen al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN rights office, says its figures come from "multiple reliable sources on the ground," including medics, humanitarian and human rights organisations.
He said the numbers were still being verified according to the office's strict methodology.
Palestinian witnesses and health officials say Israeli forces regularly fire toward crowds of thousands of people heading to the GHF sites.
The military says it has only fired warning shots, and GHF says its armed contractors have only fired into the air on a few occasions to try to prevent stampedes.
The GHF rejected what it said were "false and exaggerated statistics" from the United Nations.
Desperation is mounting in the territory of more than 2 million, which experts say is at risk of famine because of Israel's blockade on what supplies can enter the Strip.
Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid, without providing evidence of widespread diversion, and blames UN agencies for failing to deliver food it has allowed in.
On Tuesday, the Health Ministry in Gaza said that 15 malnutrition-related deaths had been reported in the enclave in the last 24 hours, including four children.
The ministry said that brings the total number of deaths due to famine in Gaza to 101.
Israel eased a more than two-month blockade in May, allowing a trickle of aid in through the long-standing UN-run system and the newly created GHF but aid groups say it's not nearly enough.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) says Gaza's hunger crisis has reached "new and astonishing levels of desperation."
Ross Smith, the agency’s director for emergencies, told reporters on Monday that nearly 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and a third of Gaza’s population isn't eating for multiple days in a row.
MedGlobal, a charity working in Gaza, said that five children as young as three months had died from starvation in the past three days.
"This is a deliberate and human-made disaster," said Joseph Belliveau, its executive director.
"Those children died because there is not enough food in Gaza and not enough medicines, including IV fluids and therapeutic formula, to revive them."
The charity said that food is in such short supply that its own staff suffer dizziness and headaches.
A joint statement from 28 Western-aligned countries on Monday condemned the "the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians."
"The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity," read the statement, which was signed by the United Kingdom, France and other countries friendly to Israel.
"The Israeli government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable."
Israel and the United States rejected the statement, blaming Hamas for prolonging the war by not accepting Israeli terms for a ceasefire and the release of hostages abducted in 7 October 2023 incursion into southern Israel.
