Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinian aid-seekers travelling on Sunday through a military zone south of Gaza City that is regularly used to reach a food distribution point, a hospital and witnesses said.
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Gaza City is in famine after 22 months of war, while Israel’s military moves ahead with a planned offensive to seize the city, perhaps within days.
Israel’s defence minister has warned that the city of hundreds of thousands of people could be destroyed.
Al-Awda Hospital and two witnesses told Associated Press the Palestinians were killed when troops opened fire on a crowd heading to a site run by the Israeli-backed US contractor Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the Netzarim corridor area, hundreds of metres from the site.
“The gunfire was indiscriminate,” said Mohamed Abed, a father of two from the Bureij refugee camp.
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Abed and Aymed Sayyad, another aid-seeker, said troops opened fire when a group near the front of the crowd pushed towards the site before its scheduled opening.
Sayyad said he and others helped two people wounded by gunshots.