Hamas “Kills Five Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Aid Workers” and “May Have Taken Others Hostage”

At least five Palestinians working with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation have been killed in an ambush by Hamas terrorists and others may have been taken hostage, the GHF has said. The Mail has more.

Israel this morning declared that Hamas was “weaponising suffering” in the embattled Strip after the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US and Israeli-backed aid organisation, claimed the group attacked a bus transporting Palestinian aid workers.

At least five Palestinians working with GHF were killed in the ambush on the bus headed to an aid facility in southern Gaza, the group said.

A statement read: “At the time of the attack, our team was en route to one of our distribution centres in the area west of Khan Younis.

“We are still gathering facts, but what we know is devastating: there are at least five fatalities, multiple injuries, and fear that some of our team members may have been taken hostage.”

The attack came days after the GHF warned Hamas had threatened members of the organisation as well as Palestinians who risked the journey to the distribution points for sorely needed aid. 

Meanwhile, Gaza hospitals retorted that at least 39 Palestinians were killed yesterday at two separate GHF aid distribution points, claiming that Israeli soldiers opened fire on the crowds.

Some 25 starving Palestinians were reportedly killed close to a GHF facility in the Netzarim Corridor, an Israeli military zone.

Another 14 Gazans are said to have died near a GHF site close to the city of Rafah.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claims that more than 220 people have now been killed while attending GHF aid distribution sites in the past two weeks, primarily as a result of Israeli soldiers and security guards opening fire. 

There have also been reports of armed Palestinians gunning down countrymen at the aid checkpoints after Israel admitted it was working with the Popular Forces, a Gazan militia led by Hamas opponent Yasser Abu Shabab, and other local groups to counter Hamas’s influence.

The Israeli military, which guards GHF sites from a distance, has refuted claims it shot starving Gazans, admitting only that its soldiers fired only warning shots at individuals they believed were acting suspiciously. …

Hamas has also rejected the new system and threatened to kill any Palestinians who cooperate with the Israeli military. 

But Israel and the United States say the new system is needed to prevent Hamas from siphoning off aid from the long-standing UN-run system, which is capable of delivering food, fuel and other humanitarian aid to all parts of Gaza. …

There is also speculation over the extent to which Israel’s military is delegating the task of securing the GHF to Palestinian militias, including Abu Shabab’s Popular Forces.

Abu Shabab’s militia says it is has been guarding several of the food distribution points set up by the GHF in southern Gaza. 

But the aid organisation has denied any links to the Popular Forces.

Worth reading in full.

Meanwhile, it’s reported that Israel is preparing to launch a military strike on Iran following the failure of a nuclear agreement with the US and the UN nuclear watchdog finding that Iran has broken its non-proliferation agreement for the first time in 20 years. According to the Telegraph, a senior Iranian official has told Reuters that Tehran will not abandon its right to uranium enrichment because of mounting frictions in the region, adding that a “friendly” country had alerted Tehran over a potential military strike by Israel. Jonathan Sacerdoti has more on the brewing tensions in the region in the Spectator.