Gaza sees one of deadliest days for aid seekers
GAZA CITY
Smoke and flames erupt from an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
The U.N. food agency accused Israel of using tanks, snipers and other weapons to fire on a crowd of Palestinians seeking food aid, in what the territory's Health Ministry said was one of the deadliest days for aid seekers in over 21 months of war.
Gaza's civil defense agency said at least 93 aid seekers were killed in a single day on July 20 when Israeli forces opened fire on crowds of Palestinians.
Eighty were killed as truckloads of aid arrived in the north, while nine others were reported shot near an aid point close to Rafah in the south.
Four were killed near another aid site in Khan Younis, also in the south.
The U.N. World Food Program said its 25-truck convoy carrying food aid "encountered massive crowds of hungry civilians which came under gunfire" near Gaza City, soon after it crossed from Israel and cleared checkpoints
Meanwhile, the health authorities in Gaza reported that at least 19 Palestinians died of hunger on July 20, warning that hundreds more are on the brink of imminent death.
“We warn that hundreds of people whose bodies have wasted away are at risk of imminent death due to hunger,” said a spokesperson for Gaza’s Health Ministry, as the besieged enclave slips deeper into an unfathomable humanitarian catastrophe.
The developments came as the Israeli military told residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area to move south immediately due to imminent operations in the area.
Whole families were seen carrying what few belongings they have on packed donkey carts heading south.
The displacement order was "another devastating blow to the already fragile lifelines keeping people alive across the Gaza Strip,” the U.N. OCHA said.
According to the aid agency, 87.8 percent of Gaza is now under displacement orders or within Israeli militarized zones, leaving "2.1 million civilians squeezed into a fragmented 12 percent of the strip, where essential services have collapsed."
