Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed another 46 people waiting for aid in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday as rights groups and UN agencies slammed the US-backed food distribution system.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 21 people were killed and around 150 wounded by Israeli fire near an aid point in central Gaza on Tuesday, and that another 25 were killed in a separate incident in south Gaza.
"Every day we face this scenario: martyrs, injuries, in unbearable numbers," paramedic Ziad Farhat told AFP at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. "Hospitals cannot accommodate the number of casualties arriving," he said.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,077 people, also mostly civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The latest deaths came as Israel's opposition leader and the families of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to widen a ceasefire with Iran to include the Palestinian territory.
Pressure also grew on the US- and Israeli-backed privately run aid group Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was brought into the Palestinian territory at the end of May to replace United Nations agencies.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) called the system an "abomination" while a spokesman for the UN human rights office, Thameen Al-Kheetan, condemned the "weaponization of food" in Gaza.
According to figures issued on Tuesday by the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, at least 516 people have been killed and nearly 3,800 wounded by Israeli fire while seeking rations since late May.
The territory of more than two million people is suffering from famine-like conditions after Israel blocked all supplies from early March to the end of May and continues to impose restrictions, according to human rights groups.
The Israeli military said the reports of deaths near the Netzarim corridor were "under review." Gaza civil defence spokesman Bassal reported a first deadly shooting "with bullets and tank shells" near the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza where thousands of Palestinians gather each night for rations from a nearby GHF distribution point.
