Witnesses have described scenes like “a horror movie” in Gaza after Israeli forces fired towards a crowd waiting for trucks loaded with flour near Khan Younis, on one of the bloodiest days for weeks in the devastated territory.

At least 59 Palestinians were killed according to medics and hundreds more wounded in the southern city. People at the scene and doctors described seeing injured and dead with wounds typical of those caused by artillery or tank fire. Unverified video shared on social media showed about a dozen mangled bodies lying in a street.

Multiple other incidents of violence involving crowds of desperate Palestinians trying to get food were reported on Tuesday. Medics said at least 14 other people were also killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes elsewhere in the densely populated enclave, taking Tuesday’s overall death toll to at least 73.

Eight Palestinians were reported to have died in a separate shooting near an aid distribution site in the city of Rafah, and several more injured or killed in a third incident between Rafah and Khan Younis.

View image in fullscreen Women mourn for those killed after Israeli soldiers opened fire in Khan Younis on Monday. Photograph: Moaz Abu Taha/APAImages/Shutterstock

The Israeli military acknowledged firing in the area of the crowd in Khan Younis and said it was looking into the incident.

Musab Barbakh, 22, said he had arrived at the al-Tahlia junction at midnight. “I was sitting with a group of young men at around 8.30am when suddenly a shell landed right in the middle of us. I don’t know how I survived without any injuries. As I was running away, another shell hit another group of people. Then a missile was fired, followed by random gunfire,” he said.

“The ground was filled with martyrs, the wounded, and pools of blood. Cars were exploding, the bodies of the martyrs were torn apart – wherever you looked, you saw scenes of body parts, blood, and corpses. I felt like I was living in a horror movie.”

Abdullah Anshasi, 30, from the al-Amal neighbourhood in Khan Younis, said he, too, was waiting for the aid to arrive when “explosions began and shrapnel rained down around us”.

“Many people were killed. We saw several artillery shells land around us,” he said. “What we witnessed was horrifying: human bodies flying through the air, hundreds of injured people lying on the ground. We survived by a miracle.”

View image in fullscreen The Nasser hospital received 51 dead and 250 injured people, said Dr Mohamed Saqer. Photograph: Dr Mohammed Saqer

Palestinian medics said at least 59 people were killed and 221 wounded in the incident, at least 20 of them in critical condition.

“The injured were transported to us … on donkey carts, with multiple injured people stacked on top of each other. In some, as many as 20 wounded all piled up,” Dr Mohammed Saqer, the head of the nursing department at the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis, said.

“Most of the injuries are in the upper body – limbs, chest, heart, and head. Many victims arrived as dismembered body parts, with amputations and other severe injuries. Based on our inquiries with eyewitnesses and those accompanying the injured, the attack appears to have been carried out using artillery shells, followed by live gunfire from soldiers.”

A second doctor at the Nasser medical complex said the hospital morgue was completely full, so bodies were being placed outside the building. “Thousands of people – relatives and injured – have flooded the hospital, searching for their loved ones. Wounded people are lying in the hospital courtyards. The emergency department has been completely paralysed,” they said.

View image in fullscreen ‘Thousands of people have flooded the hospital,’ said one doctor at the Nasser medical complex. Photograph: Dr Mohammed Saqer

The IDF said it was aware of reports of casualties “from IDF fire”.

“The details of the incident are under review. The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimise harm as much as possible to them while maintaining the safety of our troops,” its statement said.

The IDF said a crowd had been identified adjacent to an aid distribution truck that had got stuck in the area of Khan Younis, and in proximity to IDF troops operating in the area.

The exact identity of the trucks expected at the al-Tahlia junction was not immediately clear. UN agencies, commercial operators and others have all moved limited amounts of aid into Gaza in recent weeks.

Anas Barbakh, 21, said he had travelled to al-Tahlia after hearing that trucks loaded with flour had reached the crossroads for the past two days.

“So many people were killed and wounded that we couldn’t even tell who was dead, who was injured, or who was still alive. My brother and my cousin Musab were injured – one in the head and the other in the chest. We transported them to the hospital on horse-drawn carts,” he told the Guardian.

View image in fullscreen A crowd gathers near Nasser hospital in Khan Younis as Palestinian casualties – who were waiting to receive aid – are brought in after an Israeli strike. Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

A tight blockade on all supplies entering Gaza was imposed by Israel throughout March and April, threatening many of the 2.3 million people who live there with a “critical risk of famine”. Food has become extremely scarce, sending prices for basics soaring.

“Despite the danger, we are forced to go [to get aid]. No one can afford to buy a bag of flour for $400 … I have a family of 10 people to feed,” said Barbakh.

Since the blockade was partially lifted last month, the UN has tried to bring in aid but has faced major obstacles, including rubble-choked roads, Israeli military restrictions, continuing air strikes and growing anarchy.

Aid officials said between 20 and 30 UN trucks had entered Gaza through the main checkpoint of Kerem Shalom in recent days but all had been looted. “There is no law and order. Some of it is criminal and organised but mostly it is just desperate people trying to get some food,” a senior UN official told the Guardian.

Palestinians say Israeli forces have opened fire repeatedly on crowds trying to reach food distribution points run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organisation that recently began operating in Gaza with Israeli and US support.

The second incident reported on Monday involved Palestinians seeking to access an aid hub in Rafah. The details of the third incident were unclear, though witnesses described many injured. There was no immediate comment from the IDF or GHF.

On Monday, at least 37 Palestinians were killed as they tried to reach a GHF site, local authorities said. The IDF disputed the death toll, saying it did not match their information. Witnesses blamed that shooting on Israeli troops who opened fire early in the morning as crowds of hungry Palestinians converged on two hubs managed by the GHF.

Q&A Why is it so difficult to report on Gaza? Show Coverage of the war in Gaza is constrained by Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists and a bar on international reporters entering the Gaza Strip to report independently on the war. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza since 7 October 2023, unless they are under Israeli military escort. Reporters who join these trips have no control over where they go, and other restrictions include a bar on speaking to Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinian journalists and media workers inside Gaza have paid a heavy price for their work reporting on the war, with over 180 killed since the conflict began. The committee to protect journalists has determined that at least 19 of them “were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders”. Foreign reporters based in Israel filed a legal petition seeking access to Gaza, but it was rejected by the supreme court on security grounds. Private lobbying by diplomats and public appeals by prominent journalists and media outlets have been ignored by the Israeli government. To ensure accurate reporting from Gaza given these restrictions, the Guardian works with trusted journalists on the ground; our visual​​ teams verif​y photo and videos from third parties; and we use clearly sourced data from organisations that have a track record of providing accurate information in Gaza during past conflicts, or during other conflicts or humanitarian crises. Emma Graham-Harrison, chief Middle East correspondent Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback.

Israel hopes the GHF will replace the previous comprehensive system of aid distribution run by the UN, which Israeli officials claim allowed Hamas to steal and sell aid. UN agencies and major aid groups, which have delivered humanitarian aid across Gaza since the start of war, have rejected the new system, saying it is impractical, inadequate and unethical. They deny there is widespread theft of aid by Hamas.

The GHF’s provisions so far have been grossly inadequate, humanitarian officials in the devastated territory said.

Israel’s military campaign since October 2023 has killed more than 55,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Its count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israel launched its campaign aiming to destroy Hamas after the group’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 251 hostage. The militants still hold 53 hostages, fewer than half of them alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Associated Press contributed to reporting

Thirteen starving Palestinians are killed as they tried to get food near the Netzarim Corridor and in Rafah’s al-Mawasi area.

Israeli forces have killed 59 Palestinians across Gaza, at least 17 of whom were trying to get food at aid sites operated by the controversial United States and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to the Ministry of Health, the latest deaths in areas that critics have slammed as “human slaughterhouses”.

Medics at al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza on Sunday told Al Jazeera that at least three people were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli fire as they tried to approach a GHF site near the so-called Netzarim Corridor, desperately seeking meagre food parcels for their hungry families.

At least another 10 other aid seekers were reported killed and more than 50 injured in southern Gaza. Many of the dead and wounded were taken to the Red Cross Hospital in Rafah, according to medics.

“People have told us that the Israeli military did not warn the hungry crowds before opening fire on them, leading to devastating civilian casualties,” reported Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

Ahmed al-Masri, who left one of the aid points empty-handed, described the shootings as “a trap”.

Multiple Israeli air raids also hammered southern Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 12 Palestinians there. Seven others were killed when an Israeli strike targeted a group of people in Beit Lahiya town in the north of the enclave, medics said.

At least eight people were killed by an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Palestinian agency Wafa reported that the attack on the residential building also wounded several people.

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Alarming levels of hunger, and the spectre of famine, have driven people to the few food distribution points in Gaza despite the severe peril involved. But Israeli forces have responded with sniper fire and bombings. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in near-daily mass shootings, with the GHF accused of weaponising aid.

On Saturday, at least 79 Palestinians were killed, many of them while seeking aid. Medics at al-Awda and Al-Aqsa Hospitals in central Gaza said at least 15 people were killed as they tried to approach the GHF aid distribution site near Netzarim Corridor.

There has been no comment from the Israeli military regarding Sunday’s attacks.

‘Execution sites’

The GHF began distributing aid in Gaza at the end of May after Israel partially lifted a three-month total blockade of food, medicines and other essential items.

Abu Azzoum said Palestinians are starting to see GHF distribution hubs as “execution sites”, considering the repeated attacks there.

The GHF said its aid sites were closed on Saturday. But witnesses said thousands of people had gathered near the sites anyway, desperate for food as Israel’s punishing blockade and military campaign have driven the territory to the brink of famine.

Earlier this month, operations at the group’s aid distribution hubs were also temporarily halted following several incidents of deadly violence, in which Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian aid seekers.

The Gaza Ministry of Health said in a statement on Saturday that at least 274 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,000 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the GHF began operations in Gaza.

The Israeli military has admitted to shooting at aid seekers, but claimed it opened fire only when “suspects” deviated from a stipulated route to the GHF distribution site.

Hamas has accused Israel of “employing hunger as a weapon of war and turning aid distribution sites into traps of mass deaths of innocent civilians”.

Israel and the US say the new system is intended to replace the United Nations-run network. They have accused Hamas, without providing evidence, of siphoning off the UN-provided aid and reselling it to fund its military activities.

Israel has also admitted to backing armed gangs in Gaza, known for criminal activities, to undermine Hamas. These groups have been blamed for looting aid.

UN officials deny Hamas has diverted significant amounts of aid and say the new system is unable to meet mounting needs and also bypasses those organisations with decades of experience in distributing aid across the entire territory to the whole population.

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The UN has also labelled the GHF aid distribution as inadequate, dangerous, and a violation of humanitarian principles.

“GHF, I think it’s fair to say, has been, from a principled humanitarian standpoint, a failure,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters in Geneva on Friday. “They are not doing what a humanitarian operation should do, which is providing aid to people where they are, in a safe and secure manner.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed nearly 55,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and has flattened much of the densely populated Gaza Strip, home to more than two million people, most of whom are displaced and facing acute hunger.

There has been no immediate comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s Palestinian deaths.

Israeli fire and air strikes have killed at least 79 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, a number of them near an aid distribution site operated by the United States and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to local health authorities, the latest deaths of people desperately seeking food for their hungry families.

Medics at al-Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals in central Gaza, where most of the casualties were moved to, said at least 15 people were killed on Saturday as they tried to approach the GHF aid distribution site near the so-called Netzarim Corridor.

The rest were killed in separate attacks across the besieged and bombarded enclave, they added. Since the GHF started operations last month, at least 274 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded near aid distribution sites, according to a statement by the Gaza Ministry of Health.

The GHF said they were closed on Saturday. But witnesses said thousands of people had gathered near the sites anyway, desperate for food as Israel’s punishing 15-week blockade and military campaign have driven the territory to the brink of famine.

‘Execution sites’

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Palestinians are starting to see GHF distribution hubs as “execution sites,” considering the repeated attacks there. But people in Gaza “have run out of options, and they are forced to travel to these dangerous humanitarian spaces to get aid”.

Israel imposed a full humanitarian blockade on Gaza on March 2 for 11 weeks, cutting off food, medical supplies and other aid.

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It began allowing small amounts of aid into the enclave in late May following international pressure, but humanitarian organisations say it is only a tiny fraction of the aid that is needed.

There has been no immediate comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s incidents.

The GHF – a United States and Israel-backed organisation led by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical Christian who advised US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – began distributing food packages in Gaza on May 27, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral.

Israel and the United States say the new system is intended to replace the UN-run network. They have accused Hamas, without providing evidence, of siphoning off the UN-provided aid and reselling it to fund its military activities.

Israel has also admitted to backing armed gangs in Gaza, known for criminal activities, to undermine Hamas. These groups have been blamed for looting aid.

UN officials deny Hamas has diverted significant amounts of aid and say the new system is unable to meet mounting needs. They say it has militarised aid by allowing Israel to decide who has access and by forcing Palestinians to travel long distances or relocate again after waves of displacement.

Later on Saturday, the Israeli military ordered residents of Khan Younis and the nearby towns of Abasan and Bani Suheila in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and head west towards the so-called humanitarian zone area, saying it would forcefully work against “terror organizations” in the area.

More than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip is now within the Israeli-militarised zone, under forced displacement orders, or where these overlap, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The UN estimates that nearly 665,000 people have been displaced yet again since Israel broke the ceasefire in February.

Israel’s war on Gaza and its population has killed more than 55,290 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the densely populated Strip, which is home to more than two million people. Most of the population is displaced and malnutrition is widespread.

Despite efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to restore a ceasefire in Gaza, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, including that Israel implement a permanent ceasefire and not restart the war.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

No injuries were reported in a house fire Sunday in Mexico, Missouri, according to a Monday press release from the Mexico Department of Public Safety.

The release says that firefighters were called at 12:48 p.m. to the 300 block of Pleasant Street. Firefighters found a fire in the kitchen of the home and extinguished it, the release says.

The release says the kitchen had “significant fire damage” while the rest of the home had “moderate smoke damage.”

“A resident stated he had a pan of grease on the stove, and he left the room for a few minutes. When he returned he saw the area around the stove on fire,” the release says.

CNN —

The young girl sits on the dusty floor, clutching her father’s shoe close to her chest as she cries and screams in anger. Bisan Qwaider is unconsolable. Her father has just been killed while trying to get food for her and her 10 hungry siblings.

Khaled Sha’ath, the photojournalist who captured the scene of Qwaider’s grief on Sunday, told CNN that Bisan’s father, Shadi, had left the family’s tent in Mawassi, in southern Gaza, a few days earlier for Ma’an, just east of Khan Younis.

Shadi knew travel to the area was dangerous: Ma’an had been under an Israeli evacuation order for some time and has come under Israeli bombardment. But, despite the risk, his children were hungry and he believed he could get some food there for them.

Gaza is facing a hunger crisis. A UN-backed report published in late April warned that one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation and that the entire enclave was edging closer to famine. The situation has only worsened since then, according to the UN.

Sha’ath said Qwaider was killed in an airstrike and his body was pulled from the rubble on Sunday. He is one of hundreds of people who have died while attempting to find food in Gaza in recent weeks, according to Gaza health authorities.

CNN has asked the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) about the situation in Ma’an. The IDF responded by sending CNN a map of Gaza with “dangerous combat zones” highlighted in red, which included Ma’an – as well as more than half of the territory.

In late May, Israel partially lifted an 11-week total blockade on Gaza, but humanitarian organizations say the aid entering now is only a tiny fraction of what is needed.

“Without immediate and massively scaled-up access to the basic means of survival, we risk a descent into famine, further chaos, and the loss of more lives,” the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said last week.

The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has sparked outrage around the world, recently prompting even some of Israel’s closest allies to speak up.

France, the United Kingdom and Canada issued a rare statement last month criticizing Israel and threatening “concrete steps” if the situation in Gaza does not improve. The UK paused trade negotiations with Israel and sanctioned West Bank settlers last month, and the European Union said it would review a key cooperation agreement with Israel.

Palestinians carry boxes and bags containing food and humanitarian aid packages delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation earlier this month. Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

But as tensions continue to escalate between Israel and Iran, people in Gaza are now worried that even the limited pressure on Israel over their suffering will quickly evaporate.

“The war between Israel and Iran made people forget about us completely. No one is looking at us, there’s no food or water or anything. Every day, people go to try to get food and aid, and they end up being carried in body bags,” Mohammad, a Gazan who did not want to share his last name, told CNN on Monday.

Umm Mustafa, another Gazan, told CNN the growing conflict between Iran and Israel means that their suffering has disappeared from the international news agenda.

“All the (focus) has shifted to the Israeli-Iranian war, even though the Gaza Strip has been wiped off of the map,” Mustafa said.

Abu Juma’a, who lives in Gaza City, told CNN that while there were “some voices calling and standing in solidarity with Gaza and calling for humanitarian aid to be let in, the Israeli-Iranian war meant there is no one calling for the food and water to be provided in Gaza.”

Palestinian women at a food distribution kitchen in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, on May 30, 2025. Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

One in 40 dead

More than 55,300 people have been killed and more than 128,700 injured in Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to health authorities there.

The numbers are staggering: The death toll represents some 2.5% of the entire Gaza population, meaning that out of every 40 Palestinians living in Gaza before the war, one is now dead.

A peer-reviewed study published earlier this year in The Lancet journal, said that the number of people killed in Gaza is significantly higher than the figure reported by authorities in the enclave. CNN cannot independently verify those claims and Israel has barred international journalists from traveling to Gaza independently since October 7.

And the deadly hunger crisis is worsening. The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday that people are struggling to access basic goods because of Israeli restrictions on what can be brought into the territory.

Meanwhile, a US and Israeli-backed aid initiative, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – a controversial organization that was established amid Israeli accusations that Hamas is stealing aid in Gaza and profiting off its sale – is struggling to fulfill the task.

The organization has been criticized by multiple international aid agencies that it isn’t fit for purpose.

According to Gaza health authorities, at least 300 people have been killed since the GHF opened its distribution points in late May, which are located in areas surrounded by active combat zones.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said last week that Israeli authorities have allowed only a select number of UN agencies and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to resume the delivery of aid into Gaza after partially lifting the blockade and that “only very limited amounts of certain food items, nutrition supplies, some health supplies, and water purification items” are allowed.

Other aid supplies, such as shelter materials, hygiene products and medical equipment are still being blocked by Israel, according to OCHA.

“People can’t find anything to eat or drink. The price of a bag of flour is now 300 to 500 times more expensive than before … it does feel like the world has forgotten us,” another Gaza resident, Abu Mohammed, told CNN.

For young Bisan Qwaider, the only thing from her father she could get a hold of was his shoe.

As she screamed for her father, she looked to the sky and shouted a message for those she believed were responsible for his death. “May God hold you accountable,” she said.