GAZA CITY and DUBAI — Israel's primary focus is now its war with Iran, but Israeli troops are still holding territory deep inside Gaza, and Tuesday marked the deadliest day in recent weeks for Palestinians there trying to reach food distribution sites and trucks.
Health officials in Gaza say at least 59 people were killed by Israeli military drones and artillery fire Tuesday, and more than 200 wounded, trying to get food. Most of the deaths, at least 45, occurred at an intersection in southern Gaza's city of Khan Younis, where a large crowd of people had amassed waiting for trucks to enter carrying flour.
It was the deadliest single incident of people desperately trying to lay their hands on food since late March, when Israel began allowing a trickle of aid into Gaza following nearly three months of total blockade.
Israeli attacks on Palestinians trying to reach food aid since March 27 have killed at least 400 people and wounded more than 3,000, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which releases daily death counts. Those killed while seeking aid are among the ministry's overall death toll of nearly 55,500 people killed in the war.
Israel says its restrictions on food and its continued blockade of other aid is to keep the items from benefiting Hamas. The group holds an estimated 20 hostages still alive and the bodies of 33 deceased hostages, taken in the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The aid restrictions have plunged families in Gaza into extreme hunger. Half a million people in Gaza are now starving and the entire territory is at risk of famine, according to a report last month by dozens of independent experts on hunger.
"I saw so many dead people"
People began amassing late Monday afternoon in an area of Khan Younis on word that aid trucks were going to enter from Israel, said Salim Saigaly.
The 32-year-old teacher walked from his tent encampment near the coast for several hours in the hopes of getting a sack of flour to feed his four children.
"Most of the time I try to distract my children when they talk of hunger, until they go to sleep," he said, adding that often doesn't work. "So, I decided to go and take the risk and get some flour."
He and others slept on the road overnight, waiting for the trucks. He said he was planning to grab a sack of flour off the trucks, but was also carrying the equivalent of $170 to buy one from others there in case he couldn't get it on his own.
Palestinian survivors and doctors say just before 9 a.m., the crowd swelled and moved closer to the main roundabout, which is in an area Israel has ordered evacuated. They say that's when Israeli drones fired onto the crowd. Artillery shells were also fired.
Israel's military told NPR the incident is under review and took place near an area where troops are.
"Luckily for me, shrapnel did not hit me, but what actually fell over me were pieces of human flesh and bones," Saigaly said. "I saw so many dead people."
He returned to his family empty-handed, having barely escaped with his life, Saigaly said.
Videos from the scene show pools of blood and bodies on the ground, some still wearing empty book bags they'd hoped to fill with flour.
Gaza's main hospital struggles to cope
The dead and wounded were brought to the nearby Nasser Hospital, the last functioning hospital in the area and currently Gaza's biggest. Videos taken by hospital staff and shared online showed bodies piled high on donkey-drawn carts outside its emergency room.
Nasser Hospital, which has been bombed and raided by the Israeli military throughout the war, has just six operating rooms. The hospital was already past capacity, with hundreds of patients being treated inside and around 50 people, including children, in its intensive care unit from other incidents of troops firing onto crowds of people trying to reach food aid in recent days and weeks. The hospital sits in an area Israel's military has ordered evacuated.
Doctors Without Borders, which has staff at the hospital, said its medical team had to evacuate the maternity ward to make room for the wounded from Israel's attack in Khan Younis on Tuesday. The group says many of the injured required amputations.
"The hospital has exceeded its capacity and is operating with limited supplies. It could collapse at any moment," the group's emergency coordinator Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa said.
Daily killings of people trying to get aid
The U.N. says most of the aid it's been able to bring into Gaza has been taken by hungry crowds off its trucks before they can reach warehouses.
Over the weekend, more than 20 people in northern Gaza were killed by Israeli fire while waiting for U.N. aid trucks to enter through a northern border crossing, also in a red evacuation zone. Israel's military did not respond to a request for comment on that incident.
Most of the deaths over the past three weeks, though, have been near new food distribution sites built by Israel's military and run by U.S. contractors and a company called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation or GHF. Israel says its forces have fired warning shots at crowds in these areas, without elaborating.
The Red Cross Field Hospital in southern Gaza said on Sunday it received more than 170 people, many of whom were wounded by gunshots, as they tried to access one of GHF's sites in southern Gaza. And on Monday, the field hospital said another 200 cases arrived at the hospital under similar circumstances.
There were additional casualties near GHF's sites on Tuesday, as well, Gaza's health ministry says.
The U.S. and Israel say the new mechanism run by GHF is aimed at keeping aid from enriching Hamas.
The food is being distributed at four fenced-off sites under erratic operating times. The sites are all located in military red zones of Gaza. This has drawn thousands of Palestinians almost daily to areas designated as off-limits to them, and where Israeli troops are positioned.
In a statement Tuesday, GHF said, "People are starving in Gaza and their desperation can create hazardous conditions." The group said that until there is enough food in Gaza, it will not always complete orderly deliveries but is doing everything it can to provide food quickly.
Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesperson, said the new system "needs to be stopped" before more people are killed.
"We have made clear, since this particular scheme for aid distribution was developed, that we did not think it would work," he said. "And now I think the whole world can see that that was the case."
NPR's Aya Batrawy reported from Dubai, Anas Baba reported from Gaza City, and Abu Bakr Bashir reported from London.
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