Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed over the past month in the vicinity of areas where food was being handed out, local hospitals and officials have said.

Israel’s Military Advocate General has directed a probe into potential war crimes following claims that Israeli troops intentionally targeted civilians near aid distribution points in Gaza, according to a report published in the Haaretz newspaper on Friday.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed over the past month in the vicinity of areas where food was being handed out, local hospitals and officials have said.

Haaretz, a left-leaning Israeli newspaper, quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they were told to fire at the crowds to keep them back, using unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.

Review Of Incidents

The military said that the Israel Defence Forces had not instructed soldiers to deliberately shoot at civilians. It added that it was looking to improve “the operational response” in the aid areas and had recently installed new fencing and signs, and opened additional routes to reach the handout zones.

Haaretz quoted unnamed sources as saying that the army unit established to review the alleged war crimes that may involve breaches of international law had been tasked with examining soldiers’ actions near aid locations over the past month.

The military said that some incidents were being reviewed by relevant authorities.

It added: “Any allegation of a deviation from the law or IDF directives will be thoroughly examined, and further action will be taken as necessary.”

There is an acute shortage of food and other basic supplies after the nearly two-year-old military campaign by Israel against Hamas terrorists in Gaza that has reduced much of the enclave to rubble and displaced most of its two million inhabitants.

Thousands of people gather around distribution centres desperately awaiting the next deliveries, but there have been near daily reports of shootings and killings on the approach routes. Medics said six people were killed by gunfire on Friday as they sought to get food in southern Gaza Strip.

Over 500 Deaths

In all, more than 500 people have died near aid centres operated by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) or in areas where U.N. food trucks were set to pass since late May, the Gaza health authorities have said.

The unnamed Israeli soldiers told Haaretz that military commanders had ordered troops to shoot at the crowds of Palestinians to disperse them and clear the area.

During a closed-door meeting with senior Military Advocate General officials this week, legal representatives rejected IDF claims that the incidents were isolated cases, Haaretz reported.

There has been widespread confusion about access to the aid, with the army imposing for a time a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew on approach routes to GHF sites. But locals often have to set out well before dawn to have any chance of retrieving food.

The Gaza war began when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 others hostage into the enclave.

In response, Israel launched a military campaign that has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, according to local health authorities in Gaza.

The Gaza health ministry said on Friday that at least 72 people were killed and more than 170 wounded by Israeli fire across Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours.

(With inputs from Reuters)

The Israeli military has killed at least 410 people trying to get food at Israeli-run aid sites in Gaza in the past month.

This constitutes “a likely war crime” that violates international standards on aid distribution, according to the United Nations. “Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food,” the U.N. human rights office said. Palestinian health authorities reported that Israel killed 44 people waiting for aid in separate incidents in southern and central Gaza just on Tuesday this week. Israeli soldiers have reportedly killed aid-seekers with bullets, tank shells, and drone-mounted weapons.

Israeli officers and soldiers said that they were ordered to deliberately fire at unarmed civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in an investigation published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday; the military prosecution has called for a review into possible war crimes.

The Israeli military has said reports about casualties at aid sites have prompted “thorough examinations … in the Southern command” and that “instructions were issued to forces in the field following lessons learned.” “The aforementioned incidents are under review by the competent authorities,” an unnamed spokesperson for the Israeli military said in a statement emailed to The Intercept.

The aid distribution sites are run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit formed earlier this year for the purpose of distributing aid in collaboration with the Israeli government and American private military and security companies, under a plan created by the U.S. and Israeli governments.

An open letter published earlier this week by more than a dozen human rights and legal advocacy groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Commission of Jurists, condemned the organization. The letter stated that the privatized, militarized aid distribution system — and close collaboration with Israeli authorities — undermines “the core humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” They urged corporate entities, donors, and individuals to suspend action or support that undermines international humanitarian law and “to reject any model that outsources life-saving aid to private, politically-affiliated actors and to press for the urgent restoration of independent, rights-based humanitarian access for all civilians in Gaza.”

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been marred with controversy from the start; the former head, Jake Wood, quit in May, worrying that “it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” Boston Consulting Group, which helped run the business, also backed out. The Israeli military said that they allow “the American civilian organization (GHF) to distribute aid to Gaza residents independently, and operate in proximity to the new distribution zones to enable the distribution alongside the continuation of IDF operational activities in the Gaza Strip” in a statement to the Intercept. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

The American government, however, appears to be committed to this way of providing aid. On Tuesday, the Trump administration authorized a $30 million grant for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to documents viewed by Reuters.

Security guards ride aboard trucks carrying humanitarian aid in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on June 25, 2025. Photo: Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Finding food has become a horrific risk for many in Gaza. Rolla Alaydi, a Palestinian American, provided The Intercept with a voice note from her cousin, Maher Ahmed, detailing how he went to an aid site on June 1 and witnessed a fatal bullet strike his friend.

Maher had gone three days without flour, so when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation first opened its facilities, he went with three friends, prompted by an invitation from a food bank. At 6 a.m., on June 1, they went to Dewar Al’aalam for food distribution, and the Americans started to signal to them with their hands to enter and take the food, by shouting on a mic “Take only one box and go home,” Mahar said in the voice note. A group of about 1,000 people went inside. Suddenly, they heard the chaotic sound of gunfire. His friend, Mohammed, was shot in the head, chest, and belly — and killed immediately. They couldn’t move for about an hour because of heavy gunfire, so they tried to give Mohammed first aid but failed. The three of them managed to get Mohammed onto a donkey carriage before taking him to Nasser Hospital. “I survived by a miracle, by a big miracle,” Maher says. “And I lost my friend, Mohammed. Mohammed was only dreaming of getting a bag of flour for his mother and family.”

Maher wrote in a June 11 Instagram post accompanying a video of Mohammed’s funeral that they “survived the worst together … until a bag of flour took him from me.”

For months, environmental researcher Yaakov Garb has been using satellite data to analyze the design, location, and expansion of these facilities. Garb, a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, found in an analysis published earlier this month on Harvard Dataverse that most of Gaza’s population cannot access these centers in a safe and practical way. Doing so requires crossing the dangerous Netzarim Corridor, entering a buffer zone from which Israel has banned them from entering, or a long walk across a barren rubble field, while carrying a heavy box of food.

Four Israeli-run aid compounds have already been widely reported on by the media, and Garb suspects a fifth is being formed on the coast —given that its construction features appear identical to the other four. All are close to fortified Israeli military positions, he says. “The fact that four of the five compounds lie south of the Morag corridor — repeatedly indicated by Israeli officials as the intended destination for concentration of Palestinians to be displaced from the remainder of Gaza in an impending intensification of the military attacks — is not reassuring,” Garb notes in his analysis.

Israel’s upheaval of Gaza’s existing aid distribution system amid warnings of famine has angered Garb. “To cloak this kind of tactical intervention in humanitarian wrapping rubs me the wrong way,” Garb says. “If you can’t do it properly then get out of the way and let the people who can do it get to work.”

Humanitarian aid experts agree. “We all saw this coming. To anyone that knows this stuff, it’s not a surprise. It is tragic,” says Maryam Z. Deloffre, an associate professor of international affairs at George Washington University who has researched aid distribution systems globally; she explains that this is why multiple nongovernmental organizations and the U.N. said they would not be involved in this way of distributing aid.

Before the war in Gaza broke out, Garb was focused on reviewing satellite imagery to look into waste burning and land contamination in the West Bank and Gaza. But over the last year, he started posting his observations about confusing evacuation warnings, which did not clearly describe which areas populations should flee from, or the so-called humanitarian safe areas, as well as the expansion of these aid compounds. “They are part and parcel of the same callousness,” he says. “These evacuation maps — if a student gave me a map like that in an introductory GIS course they would fail — and these are maps where people’s lives are hanging in the balance.” Garb has grown increasingly skeptical of the Israeli government’s actions. “I learned to trust less what people are saying and instead trust what I could see from the satellite,” he says.

“I learned to trust less what people are saying and instead trust what I could see from the satellite.”

Garb first started seeing the emergence of these compounds in late April, when he spotted intensive work on some big clearings that seemed different in size and formation to other military installations. He wasn’t sure if they would be used to relocate refugees instead. But as Israeli government declarations and media reports started mentioning an alternative aid distribution model in Gaza, he realized that is what these sites were going to be.

Garb’s report unpacks how the physical layout of the compounds prioritizes control and surveillance over safety. The aid sites appear to lack key facilities — such as toilets, water, and shade for recipients — and involve crowds moving in narrow lines through fenced aisles. This creates a “chokepoint”: a predictable movement path that allows for no cover or concealment. For the visitor, this kind of design is supposed to induce stress and fear. “This setup would be particularly distressing for an already traumatized population, especially given the compound’s proximity to the Israeli army forces that have been sources of violence they have experienced for almost a year and a half,” Garb writes. Aid sites should ideally have multiple exit points and freedom of movement, as well as facilities, trained deescalation facilitators, and dedicated lanes for vulnerable groups.

Read our complete coverage Israel’s War on Gaza

Asked to respond to Garb’s study and broader criticisms of their conduct around aid sites, an unnamed spokesperson with the Israeli military said it had “recently worked to reorganize the area through the installation of fences, signage placement, the opening of additional routes, and other measures.” It did not provide further detail on how many routes have opened up, or where the routes are located.

A small detail from Garb’s most recent paper has been turned into a meme in recent days. Some readers have interpreted population estimates he included in his report as proof that 377,000 people in Gaza are missing per official Israeli military statistics; Garb clarified to The Intercept that this is a misinterpretation. The numbers in his report refer to estimates for just three particular areas of Gaza, not its entirety; he also noted there was a typo in the map for the al-Mawasi area that he would promptly correct.

The official death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza, as reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, stands at more than 55,000. Two reports published in the British medical journal Lancet estimated that the real number is likely closer to 64,000 dead from direct attacks, with the number of deaths from disease, malnutrition, and other health issues related to the conflict potentially climbing above 180,000.

Deloffre, the GWU professor, points out that military involvement in handing out food can be problematic. Two of the key principles of humanitarian work are neutrality (not taking sides in a conflict) and impartiality (providing assistance to everyone without discrimination), Deloffre says. Militaries can’t be impartial and neutral when they are party to the conflict, she adds. What’s more, “people are generally afraid of the military; you don’t see the military and feel you can approach them.”

Deloffre worries more broadly about backsliding to a time when humanitarian need was not the main driving force behind humanitarian action and decisions about who to help were driven by political interests. She also notes that the core humanitarian principles — mentioned in the open letter — are not legally binding, and are instead adopted by nonstate actors such as NGOs and the Internatinoal Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The principles are part of a Red Cross code of conduct, which was codified in the early 90s.

Israel claims that it needs this level of control to ensure aid doesn’t get diverted to Hamas. But humanitarian experts say that Israel could have used a good-faith effort to address any such concern through the existing system.

In the four weeks since the launch of a controversial US- and Israeli-backed aid system in Gaza, there have been repeated incidents of killings and injuries of Palestinians seeking aid.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, in the past month more than 500 people on their way to get aid have been killed and 4,000 injured.

To get a clearer understanding of how the last month has unfolded, BBC Verify has analysed dozens of videos from across Gaza that offer an insight into what this aid system looked like on the ground. Footage shows a near-daily cycle of chaos, panic, live gunfire and dead or injured Palestinians.

While the videos show an overall picture of danger and chaos, they do not definitively show who is responsible for firing in each incident. However in many cases, eyewitnesses and medics have described Israeli forces opening fire on crowds near aid sites.

In statements over the past month, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have several times said they fired “warning shots” at individuals who they described as “suspects” or said posed a threat.

The IDF has told BBC Verify that Hamas does “everything in its power to prevent the success of food distribution in Gaza, tries to disrupt aid, and directly harms the citizens of the Gaza Strip”.

On 18 May Israel announced it was partially easing its 11-week long blockade of aid into Gaza, which it had said was aimed at putting pressure on Hamas to release hostages.

The IDF built four aid distribution sites – three in the far south-west of Gaza and one in central Gaza by an Israel security zone known as the Netzarim Corridor – which began operations on 26 May.

These sites in IDF-controlled areas – known as SDS 1, 2, 3 and 4 – are operated by security contractors working for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), with the Israeli military securing the routes to them and the perimeters. On Thursday the US State Department announced $30m (£22m; €26m) in funding for the GHF – the first known direct contribution to the group.

From the start the UN condemned the plan, saying it would “militarise” aid, bypass the existing distribution network and force Gazans to make long journeys through dangerous territory to get food.

Within days of the plan starting, dozens of Palestinians were killed in separate incidents on 1 and 3 June, sparking international condemnation. Since then there have been near-daily reports of killings of people travelling to collect aid.

The Israeli military has launched an investigation into possible war crimes following growing evidence that troops have deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians gathering to receive aid in Gaza.

Hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks after being subjected to air attacks, shootings and bombardments by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while waiting for food to be distributed or while making their way to distribution sites.

On Friday the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they had been told to fire at crowds near food distribution sites to keep them away from Israeli military positions. The soldiers said they had concerns about using unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.

Haaretz also quoted unnamed sources as saying that the army unit established to review incidents that may involve breaches of international law had been tasked with examining soldiers’ actions near distribution locations over the past month.

In a statement reported by Israeli media, the IDF rejected the accusations, saying that no forces had been ordered “to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers”.

“To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,” the IDF said.

In a joint statement issued late on Friday, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and Israel Katz, the defence minister, accused Haaretz of “malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world”.

View image in fullscreen Palestinians carry humanitarian aid packages near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution centre on Thursday. Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

Food has become extremely scarce in Gaza since a tight blockade on all supplies was imposed by Israel throughout March and April, threatening many of the 2.3 million people who live there with famine.

Since the blockade was partly lifted last month, the UN has tried to bring in aid but has faced major obstacles, including rubble-choked roads, Israeli military restrictions, continuing airstrikes and growing anarchy. Hundreds of trucks have been looted by armed gangs and by crowds of desperate Palestinians.

On Thursday, 18 people were killed in an Israeli strike targeting Palestinian police distributing flour in a market in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, medical officials said.

The strike appears to have targeted members of a security force set up by the Hamas-led interior ministry to target looters and merchants who sell stolen aid at high prices.

The unit, known as Sahm, or Arrow, confiscates stolen aid which it then distributes. Witnesses said many of the casualties were ordinary civilians who had gathered to receive sacks of flour from a warehouse near the Baraka crossroads in the northern part of Deir al-Balah.

The dead included a child and at least seven Sahm members, according to the nearby al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where casualties were taken. There was no immediate comment on the attack from the Israeli military.

Razeq Abu Mandil, a paramedic from the al-Maghazi refugee camp, said: “Among the injured were men, women, and children. In my ambulance, there was a woman and her daughter – both wounded.

“When we arrived, there were people torn to pieces – severely wounded and dead … We started transporting the injured and the dead to the hospital, then returned again to load the ambulances. I repeated this three or four times. The situation in the hospital was catastrophic.”

Ahmed Abu Zubeida, 36, from nearby al-Bureij, was among the wounded.

“I was far from the point of impact but some shrapnel injured my leg. I looked around and saw people lying on the ground – torn bodies, wounded individuals, blood and its smell filling the air, cries and screams,” he said.

The strike came shortly after Israel closed crossings into northern Gaza, cutting the most direct route for aid to the parts of the territory where the humanitarian crisis is most acute.

View image in fullscreen A mourner during the funeral of Palestinians who, according to the Gaza health ministry, were killed in the strike in Deir al-Balah on Thursday. Photograph: Ramadan Abed/Reuters

For most of the war, aid in Gaza was distributed mainly by the UN and other international humanitarian organisations, but Israel said Hamas diverted and sold supplies to finance its military and other operations.

The UN and other aid groups deny the charge and say their monitoring of their distribution networks is robust.

Israel has backed an American private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which started distributing food boxes in Gaza last month from four hubs.

To reach the GHF sites, which open intermittently and unpredictably and often at night, Palestinians must cross rubble-strewn roads and Israeli military zones where witnesses say troops often fire on them with mortars, tanks and machine guns.

A senior aid official in Gaza said many of the shootings occurred in darkness when civilians gathered near Israeli troops to wait for distribution sites to open or to receive aid looted from trucks.

“The soldiers fire to keep them away, or because they don’t know who is there, or because they don’t care, or all three,” the official said.

Medical records from independent NGOs working in Gaza, seen by the Guardian, confirm hundreds of lethal injuries from bullets and some from shelling.

The IDF insists its internal processes are robust but critics say few investigations are thoroughly pursued and only a tiny fraction result in any sanction.

Israel has continued to allow a smaller number of aid trucks into Gaza for distribution by the UN and other organisations, with about 70 entering the territory each day on Monday and Tuesday. On Thursday, Israel shut entry points used to access directly the north of the territory, where the need for aid is greatest.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said on Friday that the US-backed aid operation in Gaza is “inherently unsafe”, giving a blunt assessment: “It is killing people.”

“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.

The war was triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel in which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostage.

The overall death toll in Gaza in the 20-month conflict has reached 56,331 fatalities, mostly civilians, according to local health authorities.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

‘Each day Palestinians continue to be killed while attempting to collect aid for their families from food hubs in Gaza.’ Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

“We cannot be asking civilians to go into a combat zone so that then they can be killed with the justification that they are in a combat zone.” It defies belief that the Unicef spokesperson, James Elder, should have needed to spell that out this week. And yet each day Palestinians continue to be killed while attempting to collect aid for their families from food hubs in Gaza, forced to make a lethal choice between risking being shot and letting their families slowly starve. More than 500 have died around the centres since the system was introduced – yet, with attention fixed on Israel’s attacks on Iran, there has been little to spare for recent deaths.

The Israeli military has given shifting accounts of events. But soldiers told the newspaper Haaretz that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds that posed no threat. The Israeli prime minister and defence minister attacked the allegations as “blood libels”. Médecins Sans Frontières has accurately described the system as “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”. Meanwhile, Israel has closed crossings into the north.