Aid Truck Overturn Killed 20 Palestinians in Gaza

At least 20 people were killed when an aid truck overturned on a crowd of aid seekers in the central Gaza Strip, the enclave's civil defence agency said on Wednesday.

At least 20 people were killed when an aid truck overturned on a crowd of aid seekers in the central Gaza Strip, the enclave's civil defence agency said on Wednesday.

"Twenty people were killed and dozens injured around midnight last night in a truck carrying aid overturned... while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid," the agency's spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP. The incident took place near the Nuseirat refugee camp, as the truck was driving on an unsafe road that Israel had previously bombed, Bassal added.

Hamas accused Israel of forcing truck drivers to take dangerous routes to reach aid distribution centres, and to "intentionally engineer starvation and chaos". Israel "forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities," Hamas's media office said in a statement. "This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks," it added.

Since dawn on Wednesday, at least 31 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza, including a family of five and several aid seekers. Israel's attacks on the enclave continue despite a so-called "tactical pause" allowing the entry of aid to Gaza's Palestinians, as famine and malnutrition continue to grip the Strip.

Additionally, Gaza's health ministry said that at least five Palestinians have died from starvation in the past 24 hours.