Sawt Falasteen - Gaza civil defence says Israeli fire kills 67 aid seekers

The UN World Food Programme said its 25-truck convoy carrying food aid "encountered massive crowds of hungry civilians which came under gunfire", soon after it crossed the border from Israel and cleared checkpoints.

Israel's military disputed the death toll and said soldiers had fired warning shots "to remove an immediate threat posed to them" as thousands gathered near Gaza City.

Deaths of civilians seeking aid have become a regular occurrence in Gaza, with the authorities blaming Israeli fire as crowds facing chronic shortages of food and other essentials flock in huge numbers to aid centres.

The UN said earlier this month that nearly 800 aid-seekers had been killed since late May, including on the routes of aid convoys.

In the southern Gaza Strip, the civil defence agency said six others were killed on Sunday near an aid distribution centre northwest of Rafah, where dozens of people lost their lives a day earlier.

- 'Sniper' fire -

In Gaza City, Qasem Abu Khater, 36, told AFP he had rushed to try to get a bag of flour but instead found a desperate crowd of thousands and "deadly overcrowding and pushing".

"The tanks were firing shells randomly at us and Israeli sniper soldiers were shooting as if they were hunting animals in a forest," he added.

"Dozens of people were martyred right before my eyes and no one could save anyone."

Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the death toll was 67 and expected to rise while the WFP condemned violence against civilians seeking aid as "completely unacceptable".

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the agency and other parties.

The army has maintained that it works to avoid harm to civilians, saying this month that it issued new instructions to its troops on the ground "following lessons learned" from a spate of similar incidents.

- Papal call -

The war was sparked by Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, leading to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed 58,895 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday expressed his regret to Pope Leo XIV after what he described as a "stray" munition killed three people sheltering at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.

At the end of the Angelus prayer on Sunday, the pope slammed the "barbarity" of the Gaza war and called for peace, days after the Israeli strike on the territory's only Catholic church.

The strike was part of the "ongoing military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza", he added.

"I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians, as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations."

The Catholic Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, held mass at the Gaza church on Sunday after travelling to the devastated territory in a rare visit on Friday.

- 'Expanding' operations -

Most of Gaza's population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war and there have been repeated evacuation calls across large parts of the coastal enclave.

On Sunday morning, the Israeli military told residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area to move south immediately.

Israel was "expanding its activities" against Hamas around Deir el-Balah, "where it has not operated before", the military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.

The announcement prompted concern from families of hostages held since October 7, 2023 that the Israeli offensive could harm their loved ones.

Delegations from Israel and militant group Hamas have spent the last two weeks in indirect talks on a proposed 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and the release of 10 living hostages.

Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas's 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

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N.Awad--SF-PST