At least 45 Palestinians were killed in theGazaStrip on Tuesday morning while waiting for UN and commercial trucks to enter the territory with desperately needed food, according to Gaza’s health ministry and a local hospital.
The circumstances of the killings in Khan Younis were not immediately clear. It did not appear to be related to a new Israel- and US-supported aid delivery network that was rolled out last month and has been marred bycontroversy and violence.
Palestinians say Israeli forces have repeatedlyopened fire on crowdstrying to reach food distribution points run by the US and Israel-backed aid group since the centres opened last month. Local health officials say scores have been killed and hundreds wounded.
In those instances, the Israeli military has acknowledged firing warning shots at people who it said had approached its forces in a suspicious manner.
Israel says the new system is designed to prevent Hamas from siphoning off aid to fund its militant activities.
UN agencies and major aid groups deny there is any major diversion of aid and have rejected the new system, saying it cannot meet the mounting needs in Gaza and violates humanitarian principles by allowing Israel to control who has access to aid. Experts have warned of widespread famine in Gaza.
The UN-run network has delivered aid across Gaza throughout the 20-month Israel-Hamas war, but has faced major obstacles since Israel loosened a total blockade it had imposed from early March until mid-May. UN officials say Israeli military restrictions, a breakdown of law and order, and widespread looting make it difficult to deliver the aid that Israel has allowed in.
Israel’s military campaign since October 2023 has killed over 55,300 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Its count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
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 otherrestrictionsinclude 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 over180 killedsince 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 alegal petitionseeking access to Gaza, but it was rejected by the supreme court on security grounds. Private lobbying by diplomats and public appeals byprominent journalistsandmedia outletshave 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 verify 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
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 more than 50 hostages, fewer than half of them alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.