# Four Palestinians shot dead while seeking aid near Gaza City, witnesses and hospital say
Event date: August 24, 2025.
Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinian aid-seekers on Sunday in a military zone south of Gaza City that is regularly used by people trying to reach a food distribution point, according to witnesses and a hospital in Gaza. The account adds another deadly episode to a war that has driven Gaza City into famine while the Israeli military prepares a new offensive to seize the area.
Al-Awda Hospital and two witnesses told The Associated Press that troops opened fire on a crowd heading toward a site run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the Netzarim corridor area. The hospital said the dead were brought there after the shooting. The GHF rejected the description of the incident, saying in an email that it did not occur near its site or in the way described. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The witnesses said the crowd was moving through the area before the scheduled opening of the distribution point when the shooting began. Mohamed Abed, a father of two from the Bureij refugee camp, said the fire was indiscriminate. Another aid-seeker, Aymed Sayyad, said he and others helped two wounded people after shots rang out. The AP account does not say whether the dead were among people who reached the site or were still on the route there.
The incident took place as Palestinians continued to travel in large numbers across the enclave in search of flour and other staples. The AP reported that thousands again trekked on Sunday for a chance at food, even as the world's leading food-crisis authority said Gaza City is in famine. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said the famine could spread south to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of next month.
The shooting also came as Israeli tanks were seen at the border and the military advanced plans for an operation it says is aimed at Hamas. Israel's defense minister warned that Gaza's largest city could be destroyed unless Hamas yields to its terms. Residents and aid groups have repeatedly warned that no place in Gaza feels safe, including areas that Israel describes as humanitarian zones.
Sunday's toll joined a broader pattern of deaths linked to aid distribution and convoy routes. Gaza's Health Ministry said more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 13,500 wounded while seeking aid, and that the war's total death toll has passed 62,000. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, is regarded by the U.N. and independent experts as the most reliable casualty source, even though Israel disputes its figures.
The AP report also noted another eight malnutrition-related deaths on Sunday, including a child, pushing the wartime total to 289. Those figures underline how the fighting, displacement and restrictions on supplies have combined into a crisis that now reaches beyond the battlefield and into the daily effort to find food.
For families in Gaza, the weekend's gunfire fit a grim routine: long walks for flour, crowded distribution lines, and the risk that the path to food can itself become a place of death.
