GENEVA (Reuters) -World Health Organization officials said that it had received reports of a mass casualty incident on Tuesday that affected people waiting for food supplies, saying that initial reports point to at least 20 fatalities.
“This is again the result of another food distribution initiative,” said Thanos Gargavanis, WHO trauma surgeon and emergency officer, without giving further details.
Earlier, the territory’s health ministry said that Israeli tank shellfire killed at least 51 Palestinians as they awaited aid trucks in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The incident was the latest in nearly daily mass deaths of Palestinians who were seeking aid in past weeks, including near sites operated by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
“There’s a constant correlation with the positions of the four announced food distribution sites and the mass casualty incidents,” Gargavanis added, saying the trauma injuries in recent days were mostly from gunshot wounds.
Half a million people in the Gaza Strip face starvation, a global hunger monitor said last month. Since then Israel, which controls supplies into the enclave, has lifted an 11-week-long total blockade on supplies but aid groups say it is not nearly enough to meet the needs.
In the same briefing, Gargavanis said that the WHO was running short of therapeutic supplies to treat malnutrition. “We are running excessively low in therapeutic feeding formulas, and we’re trying to rationalize its use,” he said.
(Reporting by Emma Farge, editing by Rachel More)
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