Israel turning Gaza into ‘graveyard of children and starving’: UNRWA chief

Israel is engineering a “cruel and Machiavellian scheme to kill” in Gaza, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees says, as the world body reports that since May, some 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.

“Under our watch, Gaza has become the graveyard of children [and] starving people,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X on Friday.

People in Gaza have “no way out”, he said. “Their choice is between 2 deaths: starvation or being [shot] at.”

Lazzarini was reacting to the Israeli military’s killing of 15 people, including nine children and four women, as they waited in line for nutritional supplements in the city of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Thursday.

His comments came on another bloody day in the Strip, with medical sources reporting that 45 people had been killed – 11 of them near a GHF-run aid centre in Rafah.

The controversial US- and Israel-backed GHF has effectively sidelined Gaza’s vast UN-led aid delivery network since it started operations in May, after Israel eased a more than two-month total blockade on the Strip.

Since then, 819 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for food, the spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday. He said 634 were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites – of which there are four for the entire enclave – and 185 were killed close to other humanitarian aid convoys, including some run by the UN.

Earlier in the day, Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN human rights office, said between May and July 7, the UN had recorded 798 killings near aid points in Gaza.

Israeli soldiers and US contractors working with GHF have admitted to shooting unarmed Palestinians gathering for food, according to separate recent reports by Israeli outlet Haaretz and The Associated Press news agency.