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GAZA’S CIVIL DEFENCE agency said Israeli forces have killed at least 36 Palestinians today, six of them in a shooting near a US-backed aid distribution centre.
The shooting deaths were the latest reported near the aid centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) in the southern district of Rafah and came after it resumed distributions following a brief suspension in the wake of similar deaths earlier this week.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that at around 7am (5am Irish time), “six people were killed and several others wounded by the forces of the Israeli occupation near the Al-Alam roundabout”.
Gazans have gathered at the roundabout almost daily since late May to collect humanitarian aid from the GHF aid centre about one kilometre away.
AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls compiled by the civil defence agency or the circumstances of the deaths it reports.
The Israeli military told AFP that troops had fired “warning shots” at individuals that it said were “advancing in a way that endangered the troops”.
Samir Abu Hadid, who was there early today, told AFP that thousands of people had gathered near the roundabout.
“As soon as some people tried to advance towards the aid centre, the Israeli occupation forces opened fire from armoured vehicles stationed near the centre, firing into the air and then at civilians,” Abu Hadid said.
UN agencies and major aid groups have declined to work with the GHF, citing concerns it serves Israeli military goals.
The Israeli military has stepped up its operations in Gaza in recent weeks in what it says is a renewed push to defeat Hamas.
Earlier today, a military statement said the army and the Shin Bet security agency carried out an operation on Friday and recovered the body of Nattapong Pinta, a Thai taken hostage during Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, from the Rafah area of southern Gaza.
In a statement, Defence Minister Israel Katz said that his body was “returned to Israel” in “a special operation” in the Rafah area.
“Nattapong came to Israel from Thailand to work in agriculture, out of a desire to build a better future for himself and his family,” Katz said.
He was “brutally murdered in captivity by the terrorist organisation Mujahideen Brigades”, the minister charged.
The military statement alleged that the militant group which stormed Nir Oz during Hamas’s 2023 attack was to blame for the deaths of several other hostages, including Gad Haggai and Judi Lynn Weinstein, whose bodies were returned earlier this week..
The statement said Nattapong’s family and Thai officials had been notified of the operation to recover his body.
Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was “deeply saddened” by Nattapong’s death.
Nattapong Pinta, pictured with his wife and son, had come to Israel from Thailand to work in agriculture. Hostage’s Family Forum
Hostage’s Family Forum
In a video statement, spokesman Nikorndej Balankura said Nattapong was one of three Thais held hostage in Gaza. The other two were confirmed dead in 2024 but Nikorndej said Israel has “not yet been able to retrieve their corpses”.
He said the Thai Embassy in Tel Aviv has contacted Nattapong’s family to inform them and would work with the Israeli side to return his body to Thailand as soon as possible.
Nikorndej said the ministry “expresses its deepest condolences to Nattapong’s family”.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group urged Israeli authorities in a statement to “do what is needed to reach an agreement” to free the remaining captives.
Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s attack that triggered the Gaza war, 55 remain in captivity, including 31 the Israeli military says are dead.
According to the Nir Oz community, 117 residents were killed and more than 60% of its houses destroyed during the Hamas attack.
The 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 54,677 people have been killed in the territory since 7 October 2023, also mostly civilians.
Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it.
Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a “criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks”.
Knesset member and ex-defence minister Avigdor Lieberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu’s direction, was “giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons”.
“What did Lieberman leak? … That on the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What is bad about that?” Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday.
“It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers.”
Netanyahu said his government is saving Israeli lives by backing the group. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told news organisation AFP that the Abu Shabab clan was part of a Bedouin tribe that spans across the border between Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.
Some of the tribe’s members, he said, were involved in “all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that”.
Army spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin on Friday confirmed the military supported arming local militias in Gaza but remained tight-lipped on the details.
“I can say that we are operating in various ways against Hamas governance,” Defrin said during a televised press conference when questioned on the subject, without elaborating further.
Milshtein said that Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza and that his clan chiefs had recently denounced him as an Israeli “collaborator and a gangster”.
“It seems that actually the Shabak (Israeli security agency) or the (military) thought it was a wonderful idea to turn this militia, gang actually, into a proxy, to give them weapons and money and shelter” from army operations, Milshtein said.
He added that Hamas killed four members of the gang days ago.
The ECFR said Abu Shabab was “reported to have been previously jailed by Hamas for drug smuggling. His brother is said to have been killed by Hamas during a crackdown against the group’s attacks on UN aid convoys.”
Israel regularly accuses Hamas, with which it has been at war for nearly 20 months, of looting aid convoys in Gaza.
Hamas said the group had “chosen betrayal and theft as their path” and called on civilians to oppose them.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, said it had evidence of “clear coordination between these looting gangs, collaborators with the occupation (Israel), and the enemy army itself in the looting of aid and the fabrication of humanitarian crises that deepen the suffering of” Palestinians.
The Popular Forces, as Abu Shabab’s group calls itself, said on Facebook it had “never been, and will never be, a tool of the occupation”.
“Our weapons are simple, outdated and came through the support of our own people,” it added.
Milshtein called Israel’s decision to arm a group such as Abu Shabab “a fantasy, not something that you can really describe as a strategy”.
“I really hope it will not end with catastrophe,” he said.
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