DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces and drones opened fire toward hundreds of Palestinians waiting for aid in southern and central Gaza on June 24, killing at least 44 people, according to witnesses and hospitals cited in the supplied report.
The dead were people gathered near aid access points in two separate incidents, one in central Gaza and one in Rafah. The report says the victims were waiting for food assistance, which makes the incident especially significant because it turned a humanitarian search into a mass-casualty event. In central Gaza, witnesses described tanks and drones firing as people moved toward aid trucks. In Rafah, witnesses said troops opened fire as crowds approached a distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
The casualty figures in the source are precise enough to show how severe the day was. In central Gaza, the Awda hospital said it received 25 bodies and 146 wounded, 62 of them in critical condition. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah said it received six bodies from the same incident. In Rafah, Nasser hospital and Gaza’s Health Ministry said 19 people were killed and 50 wounded. Those totals add to at least 44 dead across the separate scenes.
The report also says Gaza’s Health Ministry put the broader death toll from the war at 56,077. That figure is part of the context, but the immediate story here is the lethal risk attached to aid access. When people seeking food are shot at in large numbers, the humanitarian crisis deepens beyond shortages alone.
The GHF sites are described in the source as being in Israeli military zones with no independent media access. That matters because it limits external verification and makes witness and hospital accounts especially important. The report says the GHF opened one site at 10 a.m. and closed after completing distribution, and later told people not to go there. But those operational details do not alter the core casualty count.
The article should avoid assigning blame beyond what the source supports. The Israeli military said it was reviewing one incident and has previously said it fired warning shots at people it viewed as suspicious. The report also notes that Israel and the United States accuse Hamas of stealing aid, while the U.N. denies there is systematic diversion. Those disputes form part of the broader conflict, but the verified incident remains the same: people waiting for aid were shot and killed.
The human picture is grim. In the central incident, witnesses described chaotic gunfire as crowds tried to flee. In the south, wounded people were taken to hospital after shots were fired near the aid site. The report does not say how many children were among the dead or injured, so this article should not speculate.
What happened on June 24 is clear enough without embellishment. Palestinians waiting for aid were killed in multiple incidents in Gaza, hospitals confirmed the bodies, and the death toll reached at least 44. In a war already marked by vast civilian suffering, the killing of people seeking food is a particularly stark measure of how dangerous daily survival has become.
