Palestinians in Gaza said they were fired again when they headed to one of aid distribution centers run by the Israeli and the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Monday.
Witnesses said they were fired for the first time by Palestinian gunmen near the GHF site in the southern Tar Surdan area. They also said Israeli troops fired at them.
Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza said six people were killed and 99 were injured and designated as the area for aid collection.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the report.
The Tal al-Sultan website was not open on Monday and there were no incidents of aid sent in two other locations, GHF said.
A few days later, the Israeli Prime Minister admitted that the Palestinian clan armed in Gaza opposed Hamas.
Since the GHF began distributing aid on May 26, fatal events have occurred almost every day in one or the other of the four centers so far.
Dozens of Palestinians were killed while approaching a location in the Thar-Suldan area of Rafah on a route across the Israeli military zone.
In previous incidents, witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire on the crowd. The Israeli military denied the troops that opened fire on civilians at the scene, but it said the troops that opened fire on the “suspects” ignored the warning shots and approached them.
During the incident on Monday, people at the scene said Palestinian gunmen and Israeli forces fired.
They said the gunmen appeared to be allied with Israeli forces as they operated near them and moved back to the Israeli military zone.
A witness told the BBC Arabic Middle East Daily Plan that he saw a group of young men wearing civilian clothes, whose faces were completely covered when he arrived in the area to obtain a box of food aid from the GHF site.
“At first we thought they might be help from young Palestinians, but suddenly, they started shooting us,” Hisham Saeed Salem said.
He added: “Even those who managed to get a box of aid was a target and shot. We still don’t know who these attackers are. They took everything from us – some even stole us in the chaos.”
Another man, Mohammed Sakout, said: “Several young men were shot dead behind me.
He added: “At first, it was the Israeli army that fired fire at civilians. But today, we were shocked to find the existence of gangs and militias.”
“A group of masked armed men who are organizing us to organize us to open fire directly at us,” Mohammed Kabaga, a man who was seriously injured in the Nasser Hospital in the nearby city of Khan Younis, told the Associated Press: “A group of masked armed men who are organizing us to fire directly at us.”
“We went to get aid. They said they were going to line up. We stood together and suddenly they started shooting us. When I was standing, I was surprised when the bullet hit me, I was dizzy and fell down.”
The IDF told the BBC it is working on the report.
GHF said in a statement that it opened two locations on Monday in Rafah and Wadi Gaza, located in the Strip centre, “no incidents occurred in the aid allocation at both locations”.
When the BBC asked about Tal al-Sultan’s report, a GHF spokesman said, “There’s nothing around our website.”
However, an article on the group’s Facebook account did say Monday afternoon that the Tal al-Sultan center was closed due to “crowds of the crowd.”
GHF interim executive director John Acree said it has delivered more than 11 million meals in the past two weeks, “no injuries or major incidents at our distribution sites.”
The Gaza Ministry of Health said the hospital received a total of 127 people and 1,287 injured people from “regions assigned to aid” during the same period.
GHF, which uses a U.S. private security contractor, aims to bypass the United Nations as a major Palestinian aid provider.
The United Nations and other aid organizations have refused to work with the new system, saying it violates humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence.
They also warned that Gaza’s 2.1 million people were facing catastrophic hunger levels, which was partially alleviated three weeks ago after nearly three months of total lockdown three months ago.
The U.S. and Israel said the GHF system would block the aid stolen by Hamas, a group denied doing so.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza on October 7, 2023 in response to Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 251 were taken hostage.
At least 54,927 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the regional health ministry.
