Global charities, NGOs call for closure of Israel-backed aid agency

Cairo: Dozens of international charities and non-governmental organisations, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty, called Tuesday for an Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to disband over repeated incidents of chaos and deadly violence against Palestinians heading toward its sites, the Associated Press reported.

More than 165 major international charities and non-governmental organisations, including Oxfam, Save the Children, and Amnesty, called for an immediate end to the Gaza Humanitarian Fund on Tuesday.

“Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” the group said in a joint news release.

The call by the charities and NGOs was the latest sign of trouble for the GHF — a secretive US and Israeli-backed initiative headed by an evangelical leader who is a close ally of Trump.

GHF started distributing aid on May 26, following a nearly three-month Israeli blockade that has pushed Gaza's population of more than 2 million people to the brink of famine.

Meanwhile, at least seven Palestinians were killed seeking aid in southern and central Gaza between late Monday and early Tuesday.

The deaths came after Israeli forces killed at least 74 people in Gaza earlier Monday with airstrikes that left 30 dead at a seaside cafe and gunfire that left 23 dead as Palestinians tried to get desperately needed food aid, witnesses and health officials said.

The war has killed over 56,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half of the dead were women and children.

The Hamas attack in October 2023 that sparked the war killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 others hostage. Some 50 hostages remain, many of them thought to be dead.