Medical sources reported that 27 Palestinians were killed by Israeli occupation forces' fire and shelling since dawn today, including 11 aid recipients.
Eyewitnesses said that Israeli army vehicles and drones opened indiscriminate fire on groups of starving people waiting to receive aid near a distribution center affiliated with the US-Israeli mechanism in the Netzarim axis area.
In this context, Palestinian National Council Speaker Rawhi Fattouh described the Israeli occupation's targeting of civilians seeking food aid in the Gaza Strip on Saturday as "ethnic cleansing," amid worsening famine caused by the strict Israeli closure for more than three months.
Fattouh said in a statement that Israel's policies in Gaza "threaten national security and push the region toward a widespread explosion." He asserted that Israel is committing a "bloody war crime" by luring starving Palestinians in Gaza into "death traps" it has set up under the guise of humanitarian aid, a reference to US-Israeli aid distribution points.
In the northern Gaza Strip, four Palestinians were killed and others injured as a result of Israeli artillery shelling of the Shuja'iyya neighborhood east of Gaza City, and Israeli gunboats targeting the tents of displaced people around the Khalidi Mosque northwest of the city.
Civil Defense reported injuries as a result of the occupation forces' shelling of a house in Jabalia al-Balad. Meanwhile, naval forces continued to fire heavily at Palestinians gathered on Rashid Street near al-Nabulsi Roundabout, as they waited for aid. The incident resulted in deaths and several injuries.
In the central Gaza Strip, specifically on Salah al-Din Street and north of the Nuseirat refugee camp, Israeli occupation forces perpetrated a new massacre against civilians after targeting them with drones and military vehicles as they waited for aid. This resulted in the deaths of at least two people and the injury of 27 others, according to Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, which announced its inability to accommodate the large number of wounded.
The occupation forces also directly targeted a gathering of people waiting for aid near the Wadi Gaza Bridge, resulting in a number of deaths and injuries amid urgent calls for ambulances to head to the site.
In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli artillery shelled the residential towers of Hamad City, north of Khan Yunis. Military vehicles also opened heavy fire on displaced persons' tents in the Asdaa area, causing civilian casualties.
Beyond the supervision of the United Nations and international relief organizations, Tel Aviv began implementing a plan to distribute humanitarian aid on May 27 through the so-called "Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation," an organization supported by Israel and the United States but rejected by the United Nations.
This comes as Israel has tightly closed the Gaza Strip crossings to trucks carrying supplies and aid, which have been piling up at the border since March 2.
Israel has allowed only a limited number of aid trucks to enter through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is under its control east of Rafah, while Palestinians in Gaza need a minimum of approximately 500 trucks per day.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a war of extermination in Gaza, including killing, starvation, destruction, and forced displacement, ignoring all international calls and orders from the International Court of Justice to halt it.
The genocide, with American support, left more than 183,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, in addition to hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, and a famine that claimed the lives of many, including children.
