A former American guard for the Israeli‑backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) says the organization’s aid sites endanger civilians, as France linked Gaza’s famine risk to Israel’s blockade and local officials reported fresh deaths from hunger and Israeli strikes.
In an interview aired by Israel’s Channel 12 and cited by Al Jazeera, the guard said GHF staff “pepper‑spray and hurl stun grenades” at Palestinians who pose no threat.
Once food hand‑outs ended, “the American security guards began shooting at them — at their feet and into earthen embankments — to make them leave,” he said.
“In all my military service, I have never seen such force against unarmed civilians,” he added, urging the aid system “be put to an end.”
Gaza’s health ministry said hospitals recorded 10 famine‑related deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the toll to 111.
More than 100 human‑rights and aid groups warned in an open letter that a “dire situation” was pushing ever more families toward starvation, warning colleagues were “wasting away”, blamed Israel’s siege for “chaos, starvation and death” and demanded a ceasefire.
France echoed those concerns on Wednesday, calling the famine threat “a result of” Israel’s blockade.
Its foreign ministry condemned Israeli shootings that the United Nations says have killed over 1,000 Palestinians seeking aid in the past two months and criticized new evacuation orders that have uprooted tens of thousands in central Gaza, hampering UN and NGO work.
Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed 17 people on Wednesday. Spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told French state-owned news agency AFP that eight, including a pregnant woman, died in a 2 a.m. blast in Gaza City’s Tel al‑Hawa district. Two others were killed elsewhere in the city, three in Bani Suheila in the south and four near a central‑Gaza food depot.
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Source: AFP, Guardian, FRANCE24, Le Monde