Live: Six more Palestinians die of famine as Israel blocks Gaza aid

Palestinian international athlete Allam Abdullah al-Amour was killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday morning close to a US-backed aid centre near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The runner, who won a bronze medal in the 3,000-metres event at the West Asia Championships in 2023, was trying to seek humanitarian relief.

The Palestinian Athletics Federation announced al-Amour's killing in a Facebook post on Wednesday, writing: "With deep sorrow and grief, the Palestinian Athletics Federation mourns the young runner, Allam al-Amour, who has ascended to his Lord as a martyr."

According to the federation, the young athlete was killed by Israeli shelling as he was collecting food aid for his family, amid the Israeli-manufactured famine in the besieged enclave, which has led to the deaths of 317 Palestinians from starvation and malnutrition.

"He never expected that his end would be a bullet to the head, instead of carrying food to feed his family," the post read.

Read more: Israel kills Palestinian athlete as he looks for aid in southern Gaza

The Health Ministry said on Thursday that Israel’s war on Gaza has now killed at least 62,966 Palestinians and wounded 159,266 since 7 October  2023.

It added that the death toll among people seeking aid has risen to 2,180, with more than 16,046 wounded, since Israel introduced a new so-called aid distribution system with the US-based GHF on 27 May that has been widely condemned as a death trap.

Genocide. That’s the word more than 500 staff at the United Nations human rights office say their boss must use to describe Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed nearly 63,000 Palestinians in less than two years and pushed the besegied Strip into famine. Thousands more are missing and presumed dead.

In a letter sent Wednesday to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, employees said Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal threshold for genocide and accused the organisation of failing to speak out.

“OHCHR has a strong legal and moral responsibility to denounce acts of genocide,” the letter said, Reuters reported. “Failing to denounce an unfolding genocide undermines the credibility of the UN and the human rights system itself.”

The letter compared the UN’s inaction over Gaza to its widely criticised failure to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which killed an estimated 800,000 people.

Rights groups including Amnesty International, along with UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, have already called Israel’s campaign a genocide. However, the UN itself has stopped short of using the term, insisting genocide determinations are for international courts.

South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in 2023, but a ruling on the merits could take years.

At least 71 Palestinians, including 22 people seeking aid, have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza over the past 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry reported on Thursday.

The ministry said 339 others were wounded in the same period as Israel’s assault on the besieged enclave continues.

At least 17 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Thursday, hospital sources told Al Jazeera Arabic.

Among the dead are nine people who were waiting for desperately needed aid when they were killed by Israel. 

Dozens of Israeli settlers entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem under heavy police guard, according to the Wafa news agency.

Local sources told Wafa the settlers stormed the site in groups, roamed its courtyards in what they described as performing “provocative” rituals.

The director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza has warned of a looming catastrophe if Israeli forces invade Gaza City.

Speaking to Al Jazeera Arabic, he said hospitals are struggling with a severe shortage of operating rooms and medical supplies, leaving staff unable to treat the 1,500 to 2,000 wounded currently without space.

“We are facing a catastrophe if the occupation invades Gaza City,” he said, adding that diseases are spreading in camps and homes amid the collapse of the health system.

He called on the international community to protect medical staff and open humanitarian corridors to deliver relief to patients, warning that an invasion would result in a major massacre.

Nasser Medical Complex reported that Israeli occupation forces have killed five Palestinians waiting for aid in the southern Gaza Strip.

Two of the victims were shot dead in Khan Younis, south of the territory, the hospital said.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported on Thursday that four more people, including two children, have died from starvation and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, as Israel continues its siege, blocking food, water and medicine.

The total number of deaths from hunger and malnutrition in the territory has now reached 317, including 121 children.

The head of Save the Children, Inger Ashing, told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that children in Gaza are dying slowly from famine, with some too weak to even cry.

Addressing the council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ashing said famine is not a “dry technical term.” She described how starving children first burn fat to survive, then consume muscle and vital organs, wasting away over weeks.

“Yet our clinics are almost silent. Now, children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony. They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away,” she said.

Aid organisations have repeatedly warned that famine was imminent as Israel blocked food and other essentials from entering Gaza. Ashing urged the international community to act: “Everyone in this room has a legal and moral responsibility to act to stop this atrocity.”

The UN officially declared famine in Gaza last Friday, attributing it to systematic obstruction of aid by Israel during more than 22 months of war.

A UN-backed hunger monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), reported that 500,000 people are already affected and projected famine could engulf two-thirds of Gaza by the end of September.

Following the Security Council meeting, 14 members – all except the United States – issued a joint statement expressing “profound alarm and distress,” calling on Israel to stop using starvation as a weapon.

“The use of starvation as a weapon of war is clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law. Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately,” the statement said.

Gaza hospital sources told Al Jazeera Arabic that Israeli forces have killed at least 12 Palestinians in multiple locations across the Strip since dawn. Among them were five civilians waiting for aid.

Emergency and ambulance sources added that a separate Israeli drone strike on Jabalia al-Nazla, in northern Gaza, killed one person and injured several others.

Newly released footage shows that Monday’s Israeli attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis involved two consecutive “double-tap” strikes, CNN reported on Thursday.

The report said the assault followed a tactic where strikes are launched in rapid succession to target rescuers and journalists arriving at the scene.

The final two strikes, which hit first responders and media workers after the initial bombing, caused the highest number of casualties, according to CNN’s investigation.

The death toll from the Israeli strike on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis has risen to 22, after two more Palestinians died of their wounds on Wednesday, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.

The air strike, which also killed five journalists working for Middle East Eye, Reuters, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other outlets, has sparked global outcry.

Israeli settlers assaulted a Palestinian shepherd and stole at least 300 sheep in an attack near Kafr Malek, northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, according to Wafa news agency.

Security sources told Wafa that a group of settlers targeted shepherds east of the village, stealing 300 sheep belonging to Khaled Ghneimat and Mustafa Rabie. Rabie was beaten while trying to stop them from taking his flock.

Israeli forces stationed at the Ein Siniya checkpoint north of Ramallah blocked the ambulance transporting him from passing.

Settlers also carried out a separate assault on the nearby village of Taybeh, east of Ramallah, Wafa reported.

Microsoft has sacked two employees who staged a sit-in at company president Brad Smith’s office to protest its collaboration with Israel as it wages a genocidal war on Gaza and ongoing apartheid in the occupied West Bank.

The workers, Anna Hattle and Riki Fameli, were among seven protesters arrested on Tuesday after occupying Smith’s office.

“We are here because Microsoft continues to provide Israel with the tools it needs to commit genocide while gaslighting and misdirecting its own workers about this reality,” Hattle said in a statement.

No Azure for Apartheid has called for Microsoft to sever all business with Israel and compensate Palestinians.

Investigations by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call have revealed that Israel’s surveillance apparatus relies heavily on Microsoft’s Azure cloud to store vast quantities of intercepted phone calls and data from Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Gaza hospital sources told Al Jazeera Arabic that Israeli occupation forces have killed seven Palestinians in separate attacks across the Strip since dawn today.