Hamas says that it gave a “positive” response to the last cease-fire proposal in Gaza, but said that other talks were necessary for implementation.
It was not clear if Hamas’ declaration meant that it had accepted the proposal of US President Donald Trump for a 60-day ceasefire. The militant group asked for guarantees that the initial truce with Israel would lead to a total end of the war, now almost 21 months old.
In a statement published on Friday evening, Hamas said it had “given the mediators, which was positive”.
“The movement is seriously ready to immediately enter a series of negotiations on the mechanism to implement this framework,” he said, without developing.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Human Rights Office said it had recorded 613 Palestinians killed in the space of Gaza while trying to get help. Most were killed while they were trying to reach food distribution points managed by an American organization supported by the Israelis, while others were massaged while waiting for aid trucks linked to the UN or other humanitarian organizations, he said.
Warning: This video contains painful images | Dozens of aid organizations call for an immediate change in the way the aid is delivered to Gaza. They say that the Palestinians end up with an impossible choice: starving or risking being shot.
The spokesman Ravina Shamdasani said that the Rights Office was unable to assign the murders. But she said: “It is clear that the Israeli army bombed and shot the Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points” exploited by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
In a message to the Associated Press, Shamdasani said that on the total counted total, 509 murders were “linked to the GHF”, which means on or near its distribution sites. “The information continues to come,” she said. “It’s in progress and it’s unacceptable.”
The GHF has denied serious injuries or deaths on its sites and says that shots outside their immediate vicinity are within the reach of the Israeli army. On Friday, in a press release, GHF questioned victims’ figures and accused the UN of trying “to wrongly dirty our efforts”. The army says that it shoots warnings as a measure of control of the crowd or opens fire if its troops are threatened.
Friday, the Israeli army also published new evacuation orders in northeast Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and urged the Palestinians to move west before the military operations planned against Hamas in the region. The new evacuation zones have pushed the Palestinians into increasingly small spaces near the coast.
20 people killed on Friday while asking for help
Since the GHF began distributions at the end of May, witnesses said almost daily that Israeli troops opened fire to crowds of Palestinians on the roads leading to food centers. To reach the sites, people must walk several kilometers through an Israeli military area where troops control the road.
Officials from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said that at least three Palestinians were killed on Friday on the GHF sites in the Rafah region, southern Gaza.
On Friday, in response to the United Nations report, the Israeli army said that it was investigating reports of people killed and injured while asking for help and that it had given instructions to the troops on the ground on the basis of “learned lessons” of the examination of incidents. He said that he was working to “minimize possible friction between the population” and the Israeli forces, including installing fences and placing signs on the routes.
In addition, witnesses said that Israeli troops will open fire on crowds of Palestinians who meet in soldiers controlled by the military to wait until the assistance trucks entering Gaza for the UN or other aid organizations not associated with GHF. The crowd is generally made up of desperate people for food that catches the supplies of trucks passing, and the armed gangs also looted trucks.
On Friday, 17 people were killed while waiting for trucks in eastern Khan Younis, in the Tahliya region, officials from Nasser Hospital said.
Three survivors told AP that they had been waiting for the trucks in a military “red zone” to Khan Younis and that the troops opened fire from a reservoir and drones.
It was a “crowd of people, that God helps them, who want to eat and live,” said Seddiq Abu Farhana, who was shot in his leg, forcing him to drop a bag of flour he had caught. “There was a direct shot.”
The air strikes also struck the Muwasi region at the southern end of the Mediterranean coast of Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven out of their houses hiding in tent camps. Of the 15 people killed in strikes, eight were women and one was a child, according to the hospital.
The Israeli army said it was examining the reported air strikes on Friday. He made no immediate comments on reported shots surrounding the help trucks.
The UN SHOWS INSTRUCTION TO THE PROTE OF HELP SITE
In its declaration reacting to the report of the United Nations Rights Office, the GHF accused the United Nations of taking its victims’ figures “directly from the Ministry of Health of Gaza controlled by Hamas” and of “promoting the false propaganda of Hamas”.
Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the United Nations Rights Office, told AP that data “is based on our own information collection thanks to various reliable sources, including medical organizations, human rights and humanitarian organizations”.
Rik Peeperkorn, representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Palestinian territories, said that the Nasser Hospital, the largest hospital operating in southern Gaza, receives dozens or hundreds of victims every day, most of which came from the surroundings of food distribution sites. The outdated hospital has become “a massive trauma service,” he said. Which supports the Nasser Hospital and other health establishments.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also said in late June that its field hospital near one of the GHF sites had been overwhelmed more than 20 times in previous months by mass victims. He said that people were on their way to food distribution sites and that “the vast majority of patients have been shot wounds.”
Also Friday, the Israeli army said that it was investigating after two soldiers had been killed in combat in northern Gaza. More than 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of the war, including more than 400 during the fighting in Gaza.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that the number of Palestinians killed in the territory had exceeded 57,000. The ministry does not make the difference between civilians and combatants in its count, but says that more than half of the dead are women and children. The ministry is managed by health professionals employed by the government of Hamas, and its number is largely quoted by the UN and international organizations.
The war began when activists led by Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages.
