CAIRO — A unit of Gaza’s Hamas-run police force said it killed 12 members of an Israeli-backed militia after detaining them early Thursday. Hours earlier, an Israel-supported aid group said Hamas attacked a bus carrying its Palestinian workers, killing at least five of them.
The militia, led by Yasser Abu Shabab, said its fighters had attacked Hamas and killed five militants but made no mention of its own casualties. It also accused Hamas of detaining and killing aid workers. It was not immediately possible to verify the competing claims or confirm the identities of those killed.
The Israeli military circulated the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation ‘s statement on its social media accounts but declined to provide its own account of what happened.
Aid initiative already marred by controversy and violence
The aid group’s operations in Gaza have already been marred by controversy and violence since they began last month, with scores of people killed in near-daily shootings as crowds headed toward the food distribution sites inside Israeli military zones. Witnesses have blamed the Israeli military, which has acknowledged firing only warning shots near people it said approached its forces in a suspicious manner.
Earlier this week, witnesses also said Abu Shabab militiamen had opened fire on people en route to a GHF aid hub, killing and wounding many.
The United Nations and major aid groups have rejected the Israeli and U.S.-backed initiative, accusing them of militarizing humanitarian aid at a time when experts say Gaza is at risk of famine because of Israel’s blockade and renewed military campaign.
Last week, Israel acknowledged it is supporting armed groups of Palestinians in what it says is a move to counter Hamas. Abu Shabab’s militia, which calls itself the Popular Forces, says it is guarding the food distribution points set up by the Israeli- and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in southern Gaza. Aid workers say it has a long history of looting U.N. trucks.
GHF has denied working with the Abu Shabab group.
‘They were aid workers’
In a statement released early Thursday, the foundation said Hamas had attacked a bus carrying more than two dozen “local Palestinians working side-by-side with the U.S. GHF team to deliver critical aid” near the southern city of Khan Younis.
“We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms,” it said. “These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons, and friends, who were risking their lives everyday to help others.”
It did not identify the men or say whether they were armed at the time.
Rev. Johnnie Moore, a Christian evangelical advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump who was recently appointed head of GHF, called the killings “absolute evil” and lashed out at the U.N. and Western countries over what he said was their failure to condemn them.
“The principle of impartiality does not mean neutrality. There is good and evil in this world. What we are doing is good and what Hamas did to these Gazans is absolute evil,” he wrote on X.
Israel and the United States say the new system is needed to prevent Hamas from siphoning off aid from the long-standing U.N.-run system, which is capable of delivering food, fuel and other humanitarian aid to all parts of Gaza. U.N. officials deny there has been any systematic diversion of aid by Hamas, but say they have struggled to deliver it because of Israeli restrictions and the breakdown of law and order in Gaza.
U.N. officials say the new system is unable to meet mounting needs, and that it allows Israel to use aid as a weapon by controlling who has access to it and by essentially forcing people to relocate to the aid sites, most of which are in the southernmost city of Rafah, now a mostly uninhabited military zone. Some fear this could be part of an Israeli plan to coerce Palestinians into leaving Gaza.
