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GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed at least 43 people on Friday, including 26 who had gathered near an aid distribution center, the latest in a string of deadly incidents targeting aid seekers in the Palestinian territory.
“Forty-three martyrs have fallen as a result of the ongoing Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip since dawn today, 26 of whom were waiting for humanitarian aid,” Mohammad Al-Mughayyir, director of medical supply at the civil defense agency in Gaza, told AFP.

GENEVA: Gaza is facing a manmade drought as its water systems collapse, the United Nations’ children agency said on Friday.

“Children will begin to die of thirst ... Just 40 percent of drinking water production facilities remain functional,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva.

Israel is now channelling much of the aid into Gaza through a new US – and Israeli-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which uses private US security and logistics firms and operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Israeli forces.

Israel has said it will continue to allow aid into Gaza, home to more than 2 million people, while ensuring it doesn’t get to Hamas. Hamas denies seizing aid, saying Israel uses hunger as a weapon.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, called the current system for distributing aid “a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness,” in a post on X on Wednesday.

Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, displaced almost all the territory’s residents, and caused a severe hunger crisis.

The World Food Programme called on Wednesday for a big increase in food distribution in Gaza, saying that the 9,000 metric tons it had dispatched over the last four weeks inside Gaza represented a “tiny fraction” of what was needed.

“The fear of starvation and desperate need for food is causing large crowds to gather along well-known transport routes, hoping to intercept and access humanitarian supplies while in transit,” the WFP said in a statement.

“Any violence resulting in starving people being killed or injured while seeking life-saving assistance is completely unacceptable,” it added.

Palestinians in Gaza have been closely following Israel’s air war with Iran, long a major supporter of Hamas.

“We are maybe happy to see Israel suffer from Iranian rockets, but at the end of the day, one more day in this war costs the lives of tens of innocent people,” said 47-year-old Shaban Abed, a father of five from northern Gaza.

“We just hope that a comprehensive solution could be reached to end the war in Gaza, too. We are being forgotten.”