GAZA: Zionist tanks fired into a crowd trying to get aid from trucks in Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least 59 people, according to medics, in one of the bloodiest incidents yet in mounting violence as desperate residents struggle for food. Medics said at least 14 other people were also killed by Zionist gunfire and airstrikes elsewhere in the densely populated enclave, taking Tuesday’s overall death toll to at least 73.

The health ministry in Gaza denounced “a terrible massacre” as a result of shelling on a crowd of “thousands of civilians” Tuesday. “There are dozens of martyrs who are still on the ground and others who were turned into pieces because of the shells falling directly among the civilians,” a ministry official told a press conference. Video shared on social media showed around a dozen mangled bodies lying in a street in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. The Zionist military acknowledged firing in the area. Witnesses interviewed by Reuters said Zionist tanks had launched at least two shells at a crowd of thousands who had gathered on the main eastern road through Khan Younis in the hope of obtaining food from aid trucks that use the route.

“All of a sudden, they let us move forward and made everyone gather, and then shells started falling, tank shells,” said Alaa, an eyewitness, interviewed by Reuters at Nasser Hospital, where wounded victims lay sprawled

on the floor and in corridors due to the lack of space. “No one is looking at these people with mercy. The people are dying, they are being torn apart, to get food for their children. Look at these people, all these people are torn to get flour to feed their children.” Mohammad Abu Amer, who was present at the scene, told AFP that “ordinary, unarmed people” were targeted. “They went to buy bread and flour for their children, and (Zionist forces) killed them in cold blood”, he said from Nasser Hospital.

Palestinian medics said at least 59 people were killed and 221 wounded in the incident, at least 20 of them in critical condition. Casualties were being rushed into the hospital in civilian cars, rickshaws and donkey carts. It was the worst death toll in a single day since aid resumed in Gaza in May. The health ministry said 397 Palestinians, among those trying to get food aid, had been killed and more than 3,000 were wounded since late May.

“(Zionist) drones fired at the citizens. Some minutes later, (Zionist) tanks fired several shells at the citizens, which led to a large number of martyrs and wounded,” Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said. He said that four additional people were killed by Zionist fire Tuesday near the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said Monday that during recent aid distributions, several children have been “temporarily separated from their families due to mass movements around militarized distribution points.” Workers raced to restore Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, one of the last remaining functioning health facilities in Gaza’s north, an area particularly hard-hit by the war.

They cleared piles of rubble out of the courtyard to make space for ambulances, breaking large chunks of concrete from a collapsed storey with sledgehammers. Amer Abu Safiya, a patient at the hospital who suffered from a wound on his hand, told AFP there was little doctors could do to help him. “Every day we are being bombed from the north to the south. Al-Ahli Hospital has been destroyed. Medical services are halted. As you can see, there’s nothing to wrap around my hand, and there’s no medication”, he said, holding up his swollen hand while laying down on a makeshift bed in the hospital’s backyard.

“We are reactivating the emergency department as well as the physiotherapy. This is important”, Alessandro Maracchi, head of the UN Development Program’s Gaza’s office, told AFP. OCHA further reported that its humanitarian partners in Gaza “continue to warn of the risk of famine in Gaza, amid catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity”.

The incident was the latest in nearly daily large-scale killings of Palestinians seeking aid in the three weeks since the Zionist entity partially lifted a total blockade on the territory it had imposed for nearly three months. The Zionist entity has been channeling much of the aid it is now allowing into Gaza through a new US- and Zionist-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Zionist forces.

The United Nations rejects the system as inadequate, dangerous and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules. Gaza authorities say hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to reach GHF sites. Since last week, Gaza Palestinians have kept an eye on the new air war between the Zionist entity and Iran, which has long been a major supporter of Hamas. Gaza residents have circulated images of buildings in the Zionist entity wrecked by Iranian missiles, some saying they are happy to see Zionists experiencing a measure of the fear of airstrikes that they have endured for 20 months. – Agencies