The UN human rights office reported on Friday it had documented at least 798 deaths over the last six weeks at aid sites in Gaza operated by the US- and Israeli-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and near convoys operated by other aid agencies.
The GHF employs private American security and logistics firms to deliver aid into Gaza, mostly circumventing a UN-run system which Israel accuses of allowing militants Hamas-led to plunder aid shipments meant for civilians. Hamas has denied the accusation.
Following the martyrdom of hundreds of Palestinian civilians attempting to gain access to the GHF's assistance centers in areas where Israeli forces are active, the United Nations has described its aid model as "inherently unsafe" and an infringement of humanitarian neutrality norms.
"(From May 27) up until the seventh of July, we've recorded 798 killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, and 183 presumably on the route of aid convoys," UN rights office (OHCHR) spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a media briefing in Geneva.
The GHF, which started handing out food parcels in Gaza towards the end of May following Israel's relaxation of an 11-week-old aid blockade, said the UN statistics were "false and misleading". It has consistently claimed that there have been no fatal incidents on its premises.
"The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys," a GHF spokesperson said.
The Israeli military stated it was assessing recent large-scale casualties and that it had attempted to reduce tension between Palestinians and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) by putting up fences and signposts and creating more pathways.
The OHCHR stated that it derived its estimates from a variety of sources including reports from hospitals in Gaza, cemeteries, families, Palestinian health authorities, NGOs and its local partners.
The majority of the Palestinian injuries near aid distribution centers documented by the OHCHR since May 27 were gunshot wounds, Shamdasani added.
"We've raised concerns about atrocity crimes having been committed and the risk of further atrocity crimes being committed where people are lining up for essential supplies such as food," she said.
Following the GHF assertion that the OHCHR figures are false and misleading, Shamdasani said: ""It is not helpful to issue blanket dismissals of our concerns - what is needed is investigations into why people are being killed while trying to access aid."
Israel repeatedly stated that its troops move near the relief aid areas to deny the supplies from ending up with militants it has been battling in the Gaza war sparked by the Hamas-led cross-border raid on October 7, 2023.
"Following incidents in which harm to civilians who arrived at distribution facilities was reported thorough examinations were conducted in the Southern Command," an IDF spokesperson said in a statement, adding that such incidents were under review by the army.
The GHF said on Friday it had delivered more than 70 million meals to hungry Gaza Palestinians in five weeks, and that other humanitarian groups had "nearly all of their aid looted" by Hamas or criminal gangs. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has previously cited instances of violent pillaging of aid, and the UN World Food Programme said last week that most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by "hungry civilian communities".
There remains a severe deficit of food and other basic necessities 21 months into Israel's war in Gaza, in which much of the enclave has been destroyed and the majority of its 2.3 million residents displaced.
