At least 20 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza on Thursday, including four journalists in a hospital in the enclave’s north, local health authorities said. The military said that it had targeted an Islamic Jihad militant who was operating a command-and-control center.
The Hamas-run government media office says that 225 journalists in Gaza have been killed since the war began.
The renewed military campaign has further isolated Israel amid mounting international pressure. On Wednesday, a U.S. veto blocked a U.N. Security Council draft resolution, backed by the 14 other members, demanding an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” and full, unrestricted aid access to Gaza.
Under global pressure, Israel allowed limited U.N.-led aid deliveries to resume on May 19. A week later, the relatively unknown GHF launched a new aid distribution system that bypasses traditional relief agencies.
The GHF halted distributions on Wednesday and said it was pressing Israeli forces to improve civilian safety beyond the perimeter of its operations after dozens of Palestinians were shot dead near the Rafah site over three consecutive days this week.
What exactly occurred remains unclear, but the Israeli military said its soldiers fired warning shots in each incident. GHF has said that aid was safely handed out from its sites without any incident.
The American organization, which uses private U.S. security and logistics companies to transport aid to its distribution points inside Gaza from where it is collected, has said that it has so far distributed at least 7 million meals.
The U.N. and international humanitarian groups refuse to work with the GHF because they say aid distribution is essentially controlled by Israel’s military and forces the displacement of Palestinians by limiting distribution points to a few venues in central and southern Gaza.
Navigating the Gaza Strip is dangerous, with unexploded rockets and shells making it hard for many to reach aid handout sites. For Palestinians in north Gaza, cut off from distribution points in the south, even that remains out of reach.
Footage released by the GHF this week showed hundreds of Palestinians crowding its site in Rafah, collecting aid from piles of stacked boxes without any clear system of distribution.
