Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd in Gaza on Tuesday (today) as people tried to receive food aid from trucks.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 51 people were killed and over 200 others were injured in the shooting.

Mahmoud Anaba, a Gaza resident, said: “While I was coming here I saw with my own eyes 10 people who were killed, and multiple injured people, and most of them were women and children.”

Another resident, Firas Al-Arja, said: “We’ve been walking since early morning, with no food or water. Every day we’re getting flour and oil, flour and oil, we need fish, we need meat, we need to live. We want this war to be over, we’re tired, people are dying and people are hungry.”

A UNICEF spokesperson visiting hospitals in Gaza said the use of hunger as a weapon of war is a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

He added that with over 90 percent of families in Gaza facing severe water shortages and health systems collapsing, child malnutrition is rapidly spreading.

James Elder, the UNICEF spokesperson, stated: “On the amount of food that Gazans are allowed now… It's a clear breach of international humanitarian law to use starvation as a weapon of war. Now, whether or not that gets legally determined, the point is that agencies like UNICEF, World Food Program, we know we are getting through a fraction of what children need right now. And that is having a devastating effect on their nutrition at a time where there's 90% of families in the Gaza Strip are water insecure and sanitation systems are being destroyed.”

In the three weeks since the launch of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), hundreds have been killed or wounded in such shootings.

Meanwhile, Israel and the US claim these centers aim to prevent Hamas from accessing humanitarian aid.