Gaza hunger crisis: Desperate crowds storm US aid distribution site in Rafah as operation collapses

AJ By Urooba Jamal, Federica Marsi and Tim Hume 29 May 2025

• Major Israeli strikes on central Gaza kill 19 in Bureij refugee camp
• Gaza’s healthcare system has been dismantled by Israeli blockade, attacks: Doctor
• Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 37 people so far today, including 19 killed in an intense wave of strikes on central Gaza’s Bureij
• Condemnation is growing over the killings of 10 Gaza aid seekers by Israeli troops in southern Gaza, with authorities in the Strip saying soldiers opened fire on hungry people.
• Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 54,249 Palestinians and wounded 123,492, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The Government Media Office updated its death toll to more than 61,700, saying thousands of people missing under the rubble are presumed dead.
• An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive. 
• More than 300 public figures call on UK premier to end ‘complicity’ in Gaza
• Actors, singers, writers and intellectuals have signed an open letter to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer calling on his government to end its “complicity” in Gaza.

More than 300 public figures, including Sherlock Holmes star Benedict Cumberbatch, singer and activist Annie Lennox and sports broadcaster Gary Lineker have signed the letter led by refugee charity Choose Love.

“You can’t call it ‘intolerable’, yet do nothing … Prime minister, what will you choose? Complicity in war crimes, or the courage to act?” the letter read, before calling on the government to take steps to “prevent and punish genocide”.

Israel orders northern Gaza hospital evacuation, Health Ministry says

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza says the Israeli army has ordered the forced evacuation of al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia.

The ministry called on the international community to protect Gaza’s health system and uphold international humanitarian law.

Aid distribution chaos brings further ‘dehumanisation’ to Gaza

Tareq Abu Azzoum Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Gaza

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has opened a new distribution centre in central Gaza close to the Netzarim Corridor, where thousands of desperate families have gathered to get aid.

The distribution process has played out there chaotically, in a sign of a failing strategy to safely distribute aid.

Let’s compare this with how UN agencies have operated over the past decades. The UN usually follows a very established humanitarian network, using some sort of concrete data to distribute aid – sending messages for every family individually with a time and location for collection, in order to ensure that the operation will go smoothly and safely.

By contrast, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s mechanism is bringing more cycles of turmoil to Gaza – a new episode of dehumanisation.

Multiple explosions near food distribution point in central Gaza

There have been multiple explosions near a food distribution point opened by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the centre of the Strip.

That’s after Israeli shots were fired near one of their aid points in the south on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum has the latest from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Palestine: WATCH