Tuesday's injuries at US-backed aid distribution facility in southern city of Rafah caused due to shooting by Israeli army, says head of UN Human Rights Office in Palestinian territories
At least 47 people were injured, most of them by gunfire from Israeli forces, when large crowds surged toward a newly opened aid distribution center in Gaza, a UN human rights official said Wednesday.
Ajith Sunghay, the head of the UN human rights office in the occupied Palestinian territories, told an Association of Accredited Correspondents at the United Nations (ACANU) media briefing in Geneva that "most of those injured are due to gunshots," and those injuries were "caused due to shooting by the IDF (Israeli army)."
On Tuesday, starving Gazans stormed a US-backed aid distribution facility, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the southern city of Rafah, local authorities said.
"The Israeli occupation's plan for aid distribution in the so-called buffer zone has failed disastrously," Gaza's government media office said in a statement.
It said Israeli forces opened fire after thousands of starving Palestinians rushed into the aid distribution facility.
The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said American workers affiliated with the GHF were evacuated from Rafah after the storming.
Sunghay painted a grim picture of the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza, warning that the situation continues to deteriorate.
"Just over the past week, we have seen strikes in which the Israeli military appears again to be using large explosive weapons against residences and shelters," he said, noting that hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured and thousands displaced. He stressed that such attacks reflect a disregard for international humanitarian law, particularly the principles of distinction and proportionality.
Describing the past weekend as "frightening," he shared harrowing examples: children burned alive in shelters, others killed while sheltering in tents with their families, and nine siblings killed in a single strike while their mother, a doctor, was working at a hospital.
"This constitutes only a snapshot of the inhumanity we are witnessing in Gaza," he said.
Sunghay also raised alarm over the deepening food crisis. "We see children suffering from hunger, malnutrition and starvation, and their parents unable to provide any food. The images we see of emaciated babies are heart-wrenching."
"Israel is inflicting conditions incompatible with the existence of the Palestinian people as a group in Gaza," he said, echoing the UN High Commissioner Volker Turk's earlier statement that this is "tantamount to ethnic cleansing."
He reiterated calls for an immediate end to the violence: "We call again for the killing to stop. For the wanton destruction to stop. For the hostages to be freed."
Israel has kept Gaza crossings closed to food, medical, and humanitarian aid since March 2, deepening an already severe humanitarian crisis in the enclave, according to government, human rights, and international reports.
The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has pursued a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing over 54,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
