GAZA CITY:
Twenty-seven people were killed in southern Gaza on Tuesday as Israeli troops opened fire near a US-backed aid centre, with the military saying the incident was under investigation.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres decried the deaths of Palestinians seeking food aid as “unacceptable” and the UN rights chief condemned attacks on civilians as “a war crime”, after a similar shooting near the same site on Sunday.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said that “27 people were killed and more than 90 injured in the massacre targeting civilians who were waiting for American aid in the Al-Alam area of Rafah”, in the territory’s south.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal earlier told AFP the deaths occurred “when Israeli forces opened fire with tanks and drones”, while Israel said troops fired towards “suspects” who had ignored warning shots.
The International Committee of the Red Cross gave the same death toll but without mentioning the Israeli forces.
The organisation said Gazans face an “unprecedented scale and frequency of recent mass casualty incidents”.
The latest shooting occurred about a kilometre (just over half a mile) from a centre run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which Israel has worked with to implement a new aid distribution mechanism. AFP
