CAIRO — (AP) — Dozens of international charities and humanitarian groups called Tuesday for disbanding a controversial Israeli- and U.S.-backed system to distribute aid in Gaza because of recurring chaos and violence against Palestinians seeking food at its sites.
The call by groups including Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty International was made as at least seven Palestinians were killed while seeking aid in southern and central Gaza from late Monday to early Tuesday. On Monday, Israeli gunfire left 23 people dead as they tried to get desperately needed food, witnesses and health officials said.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 37 people Tuesday in southern Gaza's Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital. Those deaths came a day after witnesses and health officials said 30 Palestinians were killed in a strike on a seaside cafe in Gaza City.
Next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and other administration officials. Trump has signaled he is ready for Israel and Hamas to wind down the war in Gaza, which is likely to be a focus of their talks.
Speaking to a meeting of his Cabinet on Tuesday, Netanyahu did not elaborate on plans for the visit, except to say he will discuss a trade deal.
Iran, following the 12-day war with Israel, is also expected to be a main topic of discussion. After brokering a ceasefire between those two countries, Trump has indicated that he's turning his attention to ending the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
That war has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half of the dead were women and children.
The bodies of 116 people killed by Israeli strikes were brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the ministry said Tuesday afternoon.
The Hamas attack in October 2023 that sparked the war killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and resulted in 251 others being taken hostage. Some 50 hostages remain, many of them thought to be dead.
More than 165 major international charities and non-governmental organizations called Tuesday for an immediate end to the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, which the U.S. and Israel backed to take over aid distribution in Gaza from a network led by the United Nations.
“Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” the group said in a joint news release.
The call by the charities and NGOs was the latest sign of trouble for the GHF, a secretive U.S.- and Israeli-backed initiative headed by an evangelical leader who is a close ally of Trump.
The GHF started distributing aid on May 26, following a nearly three-month Israeli blockade that pushed Gaza's population of more than 2 million people to the brink of famine.
In a statement Tuesday, the organization said it has delivered more than 52 million meals over five weeks.
“Instead of bickering and throwing insults from the sidelines, we would welcome other humanitarian groups to join us and feed the people in Gaza,” the statement said. “We are ready to collaborate and help them get their aid to people in need.”
Last month, the organization said there has been no violence in or around its distribution centers and that its personnel have not opened fire. It has called for the Israeli military to investigate allegations from Gaza's Health Ministry that more than 500 Palestinians have been killed at or near the aid distribution program over the past month.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The GHF is the linchpin of a new aid system that wrested distribution away from aid groups led by the U.N. The new arrangement limits food distribution to a small number of hubs guarded by armed contractors. Currently four hubs are set up, all close to Israeli military positions. Palestinians are often forced to travel long distances to access the hubs.
Israel demanded an alternative plan because it accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid. The United Nations and aid groups deny there is significant diversion. They reject the new mechanism, saying it allows Israel to use food as a weapon, violates humanitarian principles and will not be effective.
The Israeli military said it recently took steps to improve organization in the area.
Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing the militants of hiding among civilians because they operate in populated areas.
At least seven Palestinians were killed late Monday and early Tuesday in three separate locations while seeking aid, hospitals said.
Three of the deaths by Israeli fire occurred in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, while four were killed in central Gaza.
More than 65 others were wounded, according to the Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp, and the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, which received the casualties.
The casualties were among thousands of starved Palestinians who gather at night to take aid from passing trucks in the area of the Netzarim route in central Gaza.
In other developments, an 11-year-old girl was killed Tuesday when an Israeli strike hit her family's tent west of Khan Younis, according to the Kuwait field hospital that received her body.
The U.N. Palestinian aid agency said the Israeli military also struck one of its schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza City on Monday. The strike left no casualties but caused significant damage to the facility, UNRWA said.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in the occupied West Bank said Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in the territory, including a 15-year-old, in separate events.
The Israeli military said it was reviewing the shooting of the teen, saying it appeared to happen when people threw rocks toward soldiers. In the second death, military officials said a “suspicious individual” was seen trying to cross into Israel from the southern West Bank, prompting soldiers to open fire.
Elsewhere, the Shifa hospital in Gaza City suspended services at the dialysis unit amid a shortage of fuel for generators, the Health Ministry announced Tuesday. The unit provides treatment to dozens of kidney failure patients in northern Gaza.
It called for international agencies to press Israel to quickly allow the delivery of fuel to Shifa and other overwhelmed hospitals across Gaza.
“The continued lack of fuel means the inevitable death of all patients and wounded in hospitals,” it said.
Mourners held Muslim funeral prayers Tuesday for seven people from the same family who were killed in an airstrike the previous day in central Gaza.
The strike hit a family house in the central town of Zawaida late Monday, killing two parents, two siblings and three grandchildren, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, which received the casualties.
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Associated Press Writer Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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