UN reports 798 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks

The UN rights office said on Friday it had recorded at least 798 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and near convoys run by other relief groups.

The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led fighters loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.

After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians trying to reach the GHF's aid hubs in zones where Israeli forces operate, the United Nations has called its aid model "inherently unsafe" and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.

"(From May 27) up until the seventh of July, we've recorded 798 killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, and 183 presumably on the route of aid convoys," UN rights office (OHCHR) spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a regular media briefing in Geneva.

The GHF, which began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May after Israel lifted an 11-week-old aid blockade, told Reuters on Friday the UN figures were "false and misleading". It has repeatedly denied that deadly incidents have occurred at its sites.

"The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys," a GHF spokesperson said.

The OHCHR said it bases its figures on a range of sources such as information from hospitals in the Gaza Strip, cemeteries, families, Palestinian health authorities, NGOs and its partners on the ground.

Most of the injuries to Palestinians in the vicinity of aid distribution hubs recorded by OHCHR since May 27 were gunshot wounds, Shamdasani said.

"We've raised concerns about atrocity crimes having been committed and the risk of further atrocity crimes being committed where people are lining up for essential supplies such as food," she said.

Israel has repeatedly said its forces operate near the relief aid sites to prevent supplies falling into the hands of Hamas it has been fighting in the Gaza war triggered by the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7, 2023.

The GHF said on Friday it had delivered more than 70 million meals to hungry Gaza Palestinians in five weeks, and that other humanitarian groups had "nearly all of their aid looted" by Hamas or criminal gangs. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has previously cited instances of violent pillaging of aid, while the UN World Food Programme said last week that most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by "hungry civilian communities".

There is an acute shortage of food and other basic supplies 21 months into Israel's military campaign during which much of the enclave has been reduced to rubble and most of its 2.3 million inhabitants displaced.