More than 30 killed and 200 Palestinians injured by Israeli gunfire near U.S. food aid site in Gaza
The Gaza Strip, a densely populated enclave along the Mediterranean coast, has long been a focal point of geopolitical tensions and humanitarian challenges. In recent years, the situation has escalated, leading to severe shortages of essential resources and a dire need for humanitarian assistance. This article explores the complexities surrounding aid distribution in Gaza, focusing on the events of June 2025, when Israeli forces killed at least 32 Palestinians seeking food at a U.S.-backed aid site — an atrocity that proved to be only the beginning of a months-long pattern of slaughter at the very places Palestinians were told they would find relief.
The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
Gaza’s humanitarian situation has deteriorated catastrophically under Israel’s blockade, bombardment, and political strangulation of the enclave. The United Nations has consistently highlighted the severity of the crisis, with Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), warning that aid distribution under the new system had become a death trap. The crisis intensified sharply after Israel sealed Gaza off almost entirely on March 2, 2025, halting food, water, fuel, and medicine for roughly eleven weeks and pushing the territory’s population toward famine. By the time aid trickled back in, the conditions for mass starvation were already entrenched, as documented in our earlier report on the catastrophic conditions in Gaza despite renewed aid.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)
The U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) launched operations on May 26, 2025, in response to the worsening situation. Rather than working through the roughly 400 distribution points that UNRWA and partner agencies had long operated, GHF set up only four heavily militarized “mega-sites” — three in southern Gaza and one near Gaza City — and required hungry families to walk for miles, often through active evacuation zones, to reach them. The foundation’s approach was controversial from the outset. The United Nations and more than 170 charities and NGOs, including Oxfam and Save the Children, refused to cooperate with it, accusing the group of politicizing and weaponizing aid and of providing cover for Israel’s stated goal of depopulating Gaza. Critics warned that funneling two million desperate people toward a handful of fenced, contractor-guarded points would predictably end in bloodshed. Even GHF’s own first executive director, former U.S. Marine Jake Wood, resigned on the eve of operations, saying it was impossible to run the scheme while adhering to humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence.
The June 2025 Massacre
On June 1, 2025, a devastating incident occurred near a GHF-operated aid distribution site in Rafah, southern Gaza. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 32 Palestinians were killed and more than 200 others were injured as they attempted to collect food. Witnesses reported that Israeli forces opened fire on the crowd, leading to widespread panic and chaos. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed receiving scores of casualties, many with gunshot or shrapnel wounds. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its paramedics recovered at least 23 dead and 23 wounded from the area, while Nasser Hospital reported receiving 28 bodies and roughly 150 injured. (reuters.com)
Eyewitness Accounts
Eyewitnesses provided harrowing accounts of the incident. Mohammed al-Gharib, a local journalist, recounted seeing many people with gunshot wounds, including a young man who died at the scene. Survivors of later massacres described the same pattern again and again: crowds advancing toward the promised food, then tank, drone, and machine-gun fire raining down without warning. “We shouted: ‘food, food,’ but they didn’t talk to us. They just opened fire,” one 55-year-old woman told reporters after fleeing a July incident at another GHF hub.
Official Responses
The Israeli military denied targeting civilians, stating that an initial inquiry indicated its soldiers did not fire at civilians near or within the distribution site, and claiming only warning shots were fired at “suspects.” Those denials grew increasingly difficult to sustain. In late June 2025, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that IDF soldiers had been ordered to fire on unarmed crowds to keep them away from the food sites, an operation soldiers reportedly nicknamed “Operation Salted Fish” after a children’s version of the game red light, green light. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz dismissed the report as a “blood libel,” but former contractors, including whistleblower Anthony Aguilar, separately described U.S. security personnel firing live ammunition and lobbing stun grenades at starving families. “They call that warning shots, I call it a war crime,” Aguilar said.
International Reactions
The killings drew mounting condemnation across the international community. The United Nations and other aid organizations repeatedly described the GHF system as a death trap and an “abomination,” with Lazzarini stating that the mechanism humiliated and degraded desperate people while costing more lives than it saved. In August 2025, 28 UN experts called outright for GHF’s dismantlement, describing it as “an utterly disturbing example of how humanitarian relief can be exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas in serious breach of international law.” Doctors Without Borders, after treating nearly 900 patients wounded at the four hubs, labeled the distribution points “sites of orchestrated killing.”
A Rising and Relentless Death Toll
The June 1 massacre was not an aberration but the start of near-daily carnage. By July 13, 2025, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) had recorded 875 people killed while trying to obtain food, 674 of them in the vicinity of GHF sites. By July 22, the toll of those killed seeking aid topped 1,000. On August 7, the Palestine Football Association announced that prominent footballer Suleiman Obeid had been killed by Israeli forces while waiting to collect humanitarian aid. By the time the shooting at the sites largely stopped, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that more than 2,600 Palestinians had been killed and at least 19,182 wounded while trying to reach food during the GHF’s operation, a scale of killing that human rights monitors say is consistent with the broader UN finding of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. (UN News)
Historical Context
This pattern of lethal violence at aid points predates the GHF. In February 2024, an incident known as the “Flour Massacre” occurred when Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians seeking food from aid trucks in Gaza City, resulting in at least 118 deaths and over 760 injuries. (en.wikipedia.org) The recurrence of such killings — and the broader conduct of Israel’s campaign — has drawn comparisons to its operations elsewhere in the region, as detailed in our coverage of Israeli military tactics in Lebanon.
The Role of International Aid Organizations
International aid organizations have faced significant obstruction in delivering assistance to Gaza, much of it imposed by Israel itself. The World Food Programme’s representative for Palestine, Antoine Renard, said that over a three-month stretch the agency had been left without the capacity to assist 1.1 million people, according to Al Jazeera. Experienced agencies warned from the start that GHF’s militarized model was designed to fail Palestinians, and the results bore that out.
The Impact on the Civilian Population
The civilian population in Gaza continues to bear the brunt of the war and the engineered scarcity of aid. With over 2.3 million residents, many Palestinians walked miles to reach aid hubs only to face gunfire and leave without provisions — if they survived at all. (apnews.com) In August 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification formally declared famine in Gaza City; within the famine’s first month at least 175 Palestinians, a likely undercount, died of starvation-related conditions while the GHF remained the only distributor Israel permitted.
The End of the GHF
A U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, and the GHF abandoned and then suspended its sites. On November 24, 2025, the foundation announced it was permanently ending its “mission,” with executive director John Acree claiming it had “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans” and touting 187 million meals delivered. That self-congratulation stood in stark contrast to the record: more than 2,600 dead and over 19,000 wounded aid seekers, a declared famine, and a system that the UN, Human Rights Watch, and the world’s most reputable relief networks had demanded be shut down for months. (Al Jazeera) Even after the ceasefire, Israel continued to restrict aid, blocking more than 100 delivery requests from established NGOs in the first month, underscoring that the obstruction of food into Gaza was a matter of policy, not logistics.
Conclusion
The killings that began near Rafah on June 1, 2025, and continued for months expose the deadly consequences of subordinating humanitarian aid to military and political objectives. An operation marketed as a lifeline became, in the words of survivors and aid workers alike, a death trap. Protecting the impartiality of aid organizations and the safety of the people they serve cannot be optional. The international community must reckon with how a scheme backed by two of the world’s most powerful governments was allowed to funnel starving civilians into the line of fire — and ensure that the GHF model is never replicated anywhere.
