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SvennoJ on 01 June 2025
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Israeli forces opened fire as people went to receive aid near Rafah: Witness

Ibrahim Abu Saoud, who witnessed the Israeli attack on aid seekers near Rafah, says Israeli forces opened fire at people moving towards the Israeli-backed distribution centre.

“There were many martyrs, including women”, Abu Saoud, 40, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency. “We were about 300 metres [328 yards] away from the military.”

Abu Saoud said he saw many people with gunshot wounds, including a young man who he said had died at the scene. “We weren’t able to help him.”

Timeline of Israeli attacks on new US-backed aid sites

  • On Monday, the newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operations in the Gaza Strip, opening its first of four distribution points in Rafah, in the south.
  • Early the next morning, as thousands of Palestinians lined up at the aid site, Israeli forces opened fire, killing three Palestinians and injuring dozens.
  • The GHF said it opened a second site on Wednesday, the same day that Israeli forces again opened fire on aid seekers at one of its sites west of Rafah, this time killing at least six Palestinians.
  • Early on Sunday morning, less than a week after the Israel and US-backed GHF opened in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces again opened fire, killing at least 30 people at a GHF site in Rafah.
  • Soon after, a Palestinian was reported killed in a shooting at the GHF’s fourth distribution point, in Gaza City, south of the so-called Netzarim Corridor.


Israel committed ‘full-fledged war crime’ by killing aid seekers in Rafah: PFLP

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has condemned “the new massacre of the starving people in Rafah”, in which at least 30 people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians approaching a US-backed aid point, saying it was “a genocide with international complicity and American participation”.

“What happened constitutes a full-fledged war crime,” said the leftist group, which warned Palestinians several days ago that the aid distribution points set up by Israel and the US were “death traps”.

“We demand urgent international and Arab intervention to stop this ongoing massacre and impose strict accountability mechanisms on the criminal occupation, in addition to immediately breaking the siege,” the PFLP said.


Palestinians push a cart with bodies after people were reportedly hit by Israeli fire near a food distribution centre in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on June 1


Flour prices hit $20 per kg in Gaza as Israeli blockade leaves families scavenging

Gaza’s flour markets reveal the brutal economics of survival under blockade, where a kilogram of flour, globally averaging $1.50, now costs up to $20 amid Israel’s restrictions.

With pre-war daily wages at just $18 and unemployment rampant, families ration tiny portions, some stretching a single kilogram over days while relying on besieged charity kitchens.

Parents speak of impossible choices: paying exorbitant prices or watching children beg for food as malnutrition deaths rise. Widows and vulnerable groups face hardship, often dependent on dwindling aid that rarely reaches them.