Palestinians pushing a cart in which there are bodies of people killed in Israeli gunfire on Gazans going to a food aid distribution, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on June 1, 2025. (Credit: AFP.)
At least 31 people were killed, according to rescuers, by Israeli gunfire on Sunday during an aid distribution in the Gaza Strip, where hope for a truce is still hindered by the absence of an agreement between Israel and Hamas on an American proposal.
On top of the 31 killed over 120 others, including children, were injured by "gunfire from Israeli vehicles at thousands of citizens heading early Sunday morning to the American aid site west of Rafah" in the southern Gaza Strip, said Civil Defense.
"There were many people, it was chaos, screaming, and pushing," and "the army fired from drones and tanks," Abdallah Barbakh, 58, who says he went to this center of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private company supported by Israel and the United States, told AFP.
Dr. Marwan al-Hams, a Health Ministry official at Nasser Hospital, told The Guardian that most of the injured suffered gunshot wounds to the upper body, including the head, neck, and chest. He said 24 patients were in intensive care.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, however, denied that any injuries or fatalities occurred at its aid distribution site.
The GHF stated that Israeli soldiers fired "warning shots" as aid seekers gathered to receive food early Sunday morning, according to the Associated Press. The Israel-backed humanitarian group denied reports that dozens of Palestinians were killed, calling them "false information about deaths, mass injuries, and chaos." In an earlier statement, the GHF said that 16 aid trucks had been distributed early Sunday "without incident."
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it was examining the facts reported by Civil Defense.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) condemned the "new massacre of the starving people of Rafah." "What happened is a true war crime," declared the left-wing group, which warned Palestinians several days ago that the aid distribution points set up by Israel and the United States were "death traps."
The humanitarian situation is dire in the Gaza Strip, where "100% of the population" is "threatened by famine," according to the U.N., after a more than two-month aid blockade, which Israel only partially eased last week. Relying on the GHF, Israel has set up a new aid distribution system there, criticized by the international humanitarian community.
"Basis for talks"
Despite increasing international pressure to cease its offensive in Gaza, Israel intensified its military operations there in mid-May, with the stated goal of taking control of the entire Palestinian territory, annihilating Hamas, and freeing the last hostages kidnapped during the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war.
Resumed this week with an American proposal, indirect negotiations for a cease-fire and the release of the Oct. 7 hostages still held in Gaza have so far failed to silence the guns. Hamas claimed on Saturday to have responded "positively" to the American project, but Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, rejected this response as "completely unacceptable."
According to Hamas, this proposal includes handing over to Israel ten living hostages and 18 dead in exchange for the release of an "agreed number of Palestinian prisoners" detained by Israel.
Of the 251 people kidnapped on Oct.7, 57 are still held in the Gaza Strip, including at least 34 dead, according to Israeli authorities. Hamas "should accept the proposal we have presented as a basis for talks, which we can start next week," Witkoff commented on X, without further details. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also deemed the Hamas response "unacceptable," judging it "setback to the process."
"Bias"
According to Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas' political bureau, the movement has not rejected the American plan, but it was the Israeli response to this proposal "that disagreed with all the terms we had agreed upon." Hamas, he specified, demands a guarantee that a 60-day cease-fire be respected by Israel and be accompanied by an influx of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, as well as negotiations to definitively end the war. He denounced "total bias in favor of the other side."
On May 19, Netanyahu said he was open to an agreement including the end of the military offensive, but on the condition of the "exile" of Hamas and the "disarmament" of the Gaza Strip, demands publicly rejected by the Palestinian movement that took power in Gaza in 2007.
According to two sources close to the negotiations, the new American proposal covers a 60-day truce that can be extended up to 70, and the handover by Hamas of five living hostages and nine dead in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners during the first week, and a second exchange involving the same number of living and dead hostages during the second week.
The Oct. 7 attack resulted in the death of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to AFP's count based on official data. More than 54,321 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the Israeli military retaliation campaign, according to data from the Hamas government's health ministry for Gaza, deemed reliable by the U.N.
