GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians waiting to collect humanitarian aid in the territory’s north on Sunday, killing 57 people and wounding dozens more.
Further to the south, the Israeli military ordered Palestinians to leave Deir el-Balah, in the center of the Strip, before launching its first operations against Hamas militants in the area.
Pope Leo XIV, meanwhile, called for peace in Gaza days after Israeli tank fire hit the territory’s only Catholic church, killing three.
Deaths of civilians seeking aid have become a regular occurrence, with the authorities in Gaza blaming Israeli fire as crowds facing chronic shortages of food and other essentials gather in huge numbers near aid centers.
Qasem Abu Khater, 36, told AFP he had rushed to the Al-Sudaniya area of Gaza City in the hope of getting a bag of flour, joining a “desperate” crowd of thousands.
“There was deadly overcrowding and pushing — women, men and children,” said Khater, who was displaced from Jabalia, north of the city.
“It felt like we were no longer alive, like we had no souls left. 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 defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “Israeli forces opened fire on civilians waiting for aid,” and that “dozens” were wounded.
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.
Asked for comment, the military said it was looking into the latest reports of deaths.
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.
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 pope’s Angelus prayer on Sunday, the leader of the world’s Catholics said the strike was part of the “ongoing military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza.”
“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,” he added.
The Catholic Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, held mass at the Gaza church on Sunday after traveling to the territory on Friday.
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 territory.
On Sunday, 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.
They called in a statement for Israeli authorities to “urgently explain to Israeli citizens and families what the fighting plan is and how exactly it protects the abductees who are still in Gaza.”
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.
