A UNITED STATES and Israel-backed organisation that runs an aid programme in the Gaza Strip said yesterday that 20 Palestinians were killed near a distribution site. 

This comes as Israeli strikes killed 41 others, including 11 children, according to hospital officials.

The Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) said that 19 people were trampled in a stampede and one person was fatally stabbed in the violence near a distribution hub in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

The United Nations human rights office and Gaza’s Health Ministry say some 850 Palestinians in the enclave have been killed while waiting to receive aid since May, both at GHF distribution points or elsewhere.

Israeli forces killed 22 people in northern Gaza, including 11 children, and 19 people in the city of Khan Younis yesterday. 

Israel claims without evidence to be targeting Hamas military infrastructure hidden amid civilian areas in Gaza.

Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians are living through a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Israel has bombarded and laid siege to the strip, leaving many teetering on the edge of famine, according to food security experts.

The deepening crisis has helped bring together a coalition of global South nations determined to end the slaughter of the Palestinians.

United Nations special rapporteur for Gaza and the West Bank Francesca Albanese told an “emergency conference” organised by The Hague Group in Bogota, Colombia on Tuesday that it’s time for nations around the world to take concrete actions to stop the slaughter of the Palestinians.

Speaking to delegates from more than 30 countries, Ms Albanese said:

“Each state must immediately review and suspend all ties with the State of Israel and ensure its private sector does the same.”

Ms Albanese, who was sanctioned by the US last week, said: “The Israeli economy is structured to sustain the occupation that has now turned genocidal.”

Ms Albanese also called for sanctions on Israel until it withdraws from Gaza and the West Bank.

“I ask you to consider this moment as if we were sitting here in the 1990s, discussing the case of apartheid South Africa. Would you have proposed selective sanctions on South Africa for its conduct in individual Bantustans? Or would you have recognised the state’s criminal system as a whole?” Ms Albanese said.

The two-day conference, co-chaired by the governments of Colombia and South Africa, includes delegates from developing nations including Brics powers Brazil and China, as well as developed European countries including Ireland and Spain.

Israel has rejected genocide allegations against it as an anti-semitic “blood libel.”