Hamas has killed five staff belonging to a new US aid delivery company in Gaza and may also have taken hostages, the organisation said.
In a statement early on Thursday, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) team said the terror group attacked a bus carrying more than two-dozen of its team at around 10pm on Wednesday.
GHF said Palestinians working “side-by-side with the US” to deliver critical aid were “brutally attacked by Hamas”.
A statement said: “At the time of the attack, our team was en route to one of our distribution centres in the area west of Khan Younis.
“We are still gathering facts, but what we know is devastating: there are at least five fatalities, multiple injuries, and fear that some of our team members may have been taken hostage.”
The spokesman said both Americans and Palestinians were on the bus, and talked about staff being “unaccounted for”. Americans are not believed to be among those missing.
Any taking of hostages would be likely to complicate the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The group is believed to still hold 20 living Israelis somewhere in the strip from the October 7 raids.
However, GHF has released statements in the past that turned out to be misleading, and the IDF has yet to comment officially.
The US firm has been mired in controversy since it took over aid in Gaza as part of a US and Israeli plan to prevent humanitarian aid from falling into the hands of Hamas.
A Palestinian shouts in Arabic ‘we get food with the taste of death and blood’ – Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
The plan has been opposed by the UN and much of the international community. A number of mass-casualty events have taken place near its distribution sites in the last two weeks, with eyewitnesses blaming Israeli troops, who provide an outer ring of security.
Twenty five were killed near a site early on Wednesday, according to local hospitals, which fall under the authority of Hamas.
However, the Israeli government has consistently claimed that Hamas is trying to undermine the new system, and in recent days, the sites have been temporarily closed, with the GHF citing threats from the terror group.
The GHF spokesman added: “This attack did not happen in a vacuum. For days, Hamas has openly threatened our team, our aid workers, and the civilians who receive aid from us. These threats were met with silence.”
“The GHF holds Hamas fully responsible for taking the lives of our dedicated workers who have been distributing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people at the foundation’s sites in central and southern Gaza.
“Tonight, the world must see this for what it is: an attack on humanity.”
NGOs and the UN argue that the system forces Palestinians, many of whom are on the brink of starvation, to walk large distances through dangerous areas to collect food, which itself is unsuitable because much of it needs cooking at a time of acute fuel shortage.
Israel said that, under the old system, which shipped humanitarian aid directly into Palestinian communities in Gaza, Hamas routinely purloined the aid, selling it back to the population at inflated prices as a means of keeping control and bolstering its coffers.
