AN Israeli attack on Palestinian security guards escorting an aid shipment in Gaza has left at least 12 people dead and dozens injured.
Medics and local residents told the Reuters news agency that at least 30 people were injured, with several in critical condition, following the Israeli attack on Thursday.
The attack is the latest by Israeli forces on humanitarian aid workers, convoys and those trying to assist the safe entry of food and other supplies into Gaza, which is facing food shortages and fears of famine.
It comes after we told on Thursday how humanitarian aid into Gaza has largely been blocked for the past 66 days, according to the United Nations.
Al Jazeera also reports that at least 10 Palestinian people were killed while lining up to buy flour in an Israeli attack on Rafah.
The news outlet further reports that six people, including children, were killed in an Israeli attack on a residential building in western Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Thursday morning.
In a statement on Wednesday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that at least 44,805 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel’s bombardment on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.
The attack on security trying to protect aid shipments comes after UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said it had taken the “difficult decision” to pause aid deliveries through the main crossing into the Gaza Strip at the start of December.
The agency’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said at the time that humanitarian operations had become “unnecessarily impossible” due to the “ongoing siege, hurdles from Israeli authorities, political decisions to restrict the amounts of aid, lack of safety on aid routes and targeting of local police” who secure aid convoys.
He called on Israel to make sure aid flowed to Gaza and said the country “must refrain from attacks on humanitarian workers”.
He did however say that a joint UN aid convoy was able to provide urgent food supplies for 200,000 people in southern and central areas of Gaza.
Speaking to reporters in New York on Wednesday after returning from Gaza, Haoliang Xu, associate administrator of the UN's Development Programme, said conditions in Gaza were unlike anything he had witnessed before.
He said: "I've been to many conflicts and disaster situations or disasters themselves that I experienced, I can say that I've never seen the kind of devastation that I've seen in Gaza in my career.
"What I know is that at least for the last month, no fresh fruit and vegetables have been imported" into Gaza.
