Authorities in Gaza said 23 people were also injured while waiting for bags of flour and aid supplies near the Kuwait roundabout.

At least 19 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack on civilians waiting for help southeast of Gaza City, the Gaza Strip’s health ministry and media office said.

“The Israeli occupation carried out a massacre, killing 19 civilians and wounding 23, while thousands of citizens waited for flour and help near the Al-Kuwait roundabout,” Gaza’s media office said in a statement on Saturday.

It said the Israeli army and tanks opened fire with machine guns “on the hungry people who were waiting for sacks of flour and relief supplies in a place far from any danger to the occupation.”

Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Civil Defense Ministry in Gaza, said there had been “heavy shooting of civilians” and that the victims had been transported to a nearby Ahli Arab hospital.

But with Gaza’s health system on the verge of collapse, many people were treated outdoors.

“There were very serious injuries, some of them sustained by shrapnel. The reality is tragic, difficult and challenging,” he said.

Alaa al-Khudary, a witness at the scene, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces fired on the crowd, leaving “many dead” and more injured as they tried to “get a bite to eat” for their children.

Impending famine

Half of Palestinians in Gaza suffer from “catastrophic” hunger famine According to a United Nations-backed food assessment on Monday, the northern part of the territory is expected to continue until May unless urgent intervention is made.

But aid distribution has become increasingly dangerous and sometimes deadly.

Last Tuesday, 23 Palestinians were killed and several others injured Israeli bombing that was aimed at the waiting Palestinians humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip.

On February 29, Israeli forces opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians as they gathered south of Gaza City awaiting humanitarian aid.Flour massacreAccording to the Ministry of Health in the enclave, there were 118 dead and 760 injured.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Saturday during a Visit to the Rafah border crossing That the line of blocked aid trucks is stuck on the Egyptian side of the Gaza border while Palestinians starve on the other side is a “moral scandal.”

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah, said the latest shooting was part of a “clear, systematic policy that Israel has pursued over the past few months.”

He said Israeli forces had imposed restrictions on aid deliveries to the north of the enclave while attacking people trying to reach humanitarian aid convoys.

He said that despite the risks, people in Gaza continue to wait for the convoys because they are “hungry, dehydrated and want to return to their families with something.” break the fast“.

Reports of shootings ‘are false’: Israel

The Israeli army denied firing on the crowd.

“The reports claim that the [Israeli military] “The fact that dozens of people in the Gaza Strip were attacked during an aid convoy is false,” the army said in a statement.

“Preliminary findings indicate that there was no airstrike on the convoy and no incidents were detected [Israeli] Forces are shooting at the people in the aid convoy.”