The controversial US-backed initiative to distribute aid in Gaza, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has said it will not hand out any food to starving Palestinians for a second day, saying operations will only restart when maintenance and repair work at its distribution sites are complete.
In a statement posted on its Facebook page late on Wednesday, the GHF said its “distribution sites will not open as early as” Thursday morning and that it would “share information on opening times as soon as work is complete.”
The GHF also strongly urged aid seekers travelling to its locations to “follow the routes” set by the Israeli military to “ensure safe passage.”
On Wednesday, Israeli forces warned Palestinians against approaching GHF sites whilst “reorganisation work” was under way, saying access to roads near those locations would be “considered combat zones.”
The Israeli military did not appear to have issued any new directives on early on Thursday, suggesting areas near the sites were still “considered combat zones.”
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The suspension of the GHF’s aid distribution system comes after more than 100 Palestinians were gunned down near its sites in less than a week.
Earlier this week, eyewitnesses and local officials told Middle East Eye that Israeli troops opened fire directly on civilians, with many of the fatalities receiving gunshot wounds to their head or chest.
A spokesperson for the GHF lamented the killings, telling the Associated Press on Wednesday that the group “was saddened to learn that a number of civilians were injured and killed after moving beyond the designated safe corridor.”
The UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, has slammed the “deadly attacks” and suggested they were a war crime.
“Deadly attacks on distraught civilians trying to access the paltry amounts of food aid in Gaza are unconscionable,” Turk said.
“Attacks directed against civilians constitute a grave breach of international law and a war crime.”
Since launching operations last Tuesday, the GHF has claimed – without providing any evidence – to have handed out more than 87,000 food boxes to needy Palestinians – a fraction of what aid agencies say is needed to address the mass starvation unfolding in the strip.
Gaza’s Government Media Office has also slammed the aid distribution system and on Wednesday said the sites “situated in exposed and perilous red zones controlled by the occupying forces, have become bloodbaths.”
“Starving civilians are lured there due to the crippling famine and tight siege,” the media office said in a statement. “They are then deliberately and coldly shot, a scene that exposes the true malice of the operation and its real objectives.”
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The office described these actions as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, calling for immediate global action and an investigation into the latest Israeli assaults.
“The continuation of these crimes, amid shameful international silence, is a stain on humanity and proves that the occupation continues to perpetrate the most heinous forms of genocide under the world’s gaze, without deterrence or accountability,” the statement added.
Earlier this week, the GHF appointed evangelical leader Johnnie Moore, a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, as its new chief.
Moore, a former member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, has dismissed reports of mass killings at the GHF aid sites as “fictional massacres.” He was appointed after the initiative’s former head, Jake Wood, resigned hours before its launch.
Moore has emerged as a vocal advocate for the scandal-plagued initiative, claiming that reports of the killings were “lies… spread by terrorists,” contradicting eyewitness accounts, footage, and reports by hospital directors and medical staff.
