“This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing,” a new report from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), documents the horrors witnessed by MSF staff at two clinics in Gaza that regularly received mass influxes of casualties following violence at sites run by the GHF, an Israeli-US proxy that has militarized food distribution.
An analysis of MSF medical data, patient testimonies, and firsthand medical witnessing at the two clinics point to both targeted and indiscriminate violence by Israeli forces and private American contractors against starved Palestinians at food distribution sites run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). These are sites of orchestrated killing and dehumanization.
Between June 7 and July 24, 1,380 casualties, including 28 dead, were received at MSF’s Al-Mawasi and Al-Attar clinics in southern Gaza, near GHF-run distribution sites. During those seven weeks, MSF teams treated 71 children for gunshot wounds, 25 of whom were under the age of 15. Faced with no alternatives to find food, starved families frequently send teenage boys into this lethal environment as they are often the only males in the household physically able to make the journey. Patients have included a 12-year-old boy hit by a bullet that had passed all the way through his abdomen, and five young girls, one of whom was only 8 years old and suffered a gunshot wound to her chest.
Injury patterns suggest intentional fire
“In MSF’s nearly 54 years of operation, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians,” said Raquel Ayora, MSF general director. “The GHF distribution sites masquerading as ‘aid’ have morphed into a laboratory of cruelty—children shot in the chest while reaching for food, people crushed or suffocated in stampedes, and entire crowds gunned down at distribution points. This must stop now.”
An initial analysis of the gunshot wounds among patients arriving at the Al-Mawasi clinic found that 11 percent of the gunshot injuries were to the head and neck, while 19 percent were to areas covering the chest, abdomen, and back. By contrast, people arriving from the Khan Younis Distribution Center were far more likely to arrive with gunshot wounds to the lower limbs. The distinct patterns and anatomical precision of these injuries strongly suggests the intentional targeting of people within and around the distribution sites rather than accidental or indiscriminate fire.
“We’re being slaughtered,” said Mohammed Riad Tabasi, a patient who was treated at MSF’s Al-Mawasi clinic. “I’ve been injured maybe 10 times. I saw it with my own eyes, about 20 corpses around me. All of them shot in the head, in the stomach.”
The GHF must be immediately dismantled
The GHF began operating in May after Israeli authorities sought to dismantle the UN-led humanitarian response and replace it with a militarized food distribution scheme. All four GHF-run distribution sites are in areas under full Israeli military control and are “secured” by private American armed contractors. Instead of ending the siege and letting in aid trucks that are sitting on the other side of the borders, the Israeli and US governments’ “innovative solution” of the GHF was supposed to be an answer to their unproven claims of aid diversion in Gaza and unfounded accusations of UN failure. However, the GHF is nothing but a deadly scheme, institutionalizing the Israeli policy of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. Israel has imposed a full siege on Gaza since March 2 as part of an ongoing genocidal campaign.
The way this scheme operates attempts to strip people of their dignity. Over the seven weeks, MSF teams treated 196 patients with injuries following chaotic scrambles at the GHF distribution sites. Patients included a 5-year-old boy with severe head injuries and a woman who died of asphyxiation, likely caused by the suffocating crush of a crowd.
Palestinians who manage to secure any food at the sites often face the risk of violent looting and theft of aid by other starving people. MSF medical teams were required to add a new acronym to their patient registry: BBO—“Beaten By Others.” This refers to people injured either in the crush of the crowd or by being beaten and robbed of their supplies immediately after receiving them.
“On August 1—the same day the US special envoy to the Middle East visited GHF sites—15-year-old Mahmoud Jamal Al-Attar was killed around the Al-Shakoush GHF site while trying to get food,” said Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza. “He arrived at the MSF Al-Mawasi clinic after being shot in the chest. We treat only a fraction of the total number of people killed and injured at these sites. There is no way to describe the murder of children as anything but intentional. Despite the condemnations and calls for dismantling it, the global inaction to stop GHF is baffling.”
Between July 27 and August 2, 186 people with wounds from gunshots, shrapnel, assaults, or stabbings were treated in MSF’s Al-Mawasi or Al-Attar clinics after being wounded at GHF sites. Two of them died. On August 3, MSF clinics received three more wounded people, one of whom had been shot in the neck and two with shots to the head.
MSF calls for the immediate dismantling of the GHF scheme; the restoration of the UN-coordinated aid delivery mechanism; and for governments—especially the United States—as well as private donors to suspend all financial and political support for the GHF. Israel must also end its siege so that people’s access to food and other lifesaving humanitarian aid can be immediately scaled up. As the occupying power, Israeli authorities are responsible for ensuring the rapid, unimpeded, and safe delivery of humanitarian aid at the level sufficient to address people’s needs.
This is not aid
MSF’s frontline medical testimony on systematic mass casualties from GHF sites.
Read the report
