Two top US officials visited aid distribution sites in Gaza on Friday, hailing the work of a controversial agency delivering food, after the UN said hundreds of Palestinians have died while seeking help.
Ambassador Mike Huckabee joined Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for a visit to an aid site in Rafah run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which took control of aid distribution in May.
The pair are the first high-profile US officials to visit the enclave, which has been in the grip of a hunger crisis in recent weeks, since the war began. Mr Witkoff said the visit was part of a bid to put together a new US-backed aid plan for the war-shattered territory.
Mr Witkoff said the purpose of the visit was to give Mr Trump “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
“We received briefings from @IDF and spoke to folks on the ground,” Mr Huckabee said on X following the visit. “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!” he added, echoing claims by the agency.
But experts say that controversial distribution methods have contributed to hundreds of Palestinian deaths since the GHF took control of aid in May.
At least 1,373 have been killed while seeking aid, including 859 near GHF sites, mostly by the Israeli military, the UN’s humanitarian agency (UNHCR) said on Thursday. Gaza’s health ministry said 91 had died in the past day alone.
The UN says GHF aid distribution methods are inherently dangerous and violate humanitarian neutrality principles. In a report issued Friday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said GHF was at the heart of a “flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.”
The GHF contends that nobody has been killed at its distribution points and says it does a better job of protecting aid deliveries from looting than the UN.
It has yet to respond to the Human Rights Watch report directly but in a statement on Friday marking the 100 million meals the GHF says it has delivered since May, it said: “GHF remains the only reliable food aid system in Gaza, delivering millions of meals each day to aid seekers.
“Meanwhile, new data shows nearly 90% of aid trucks for the UN and other humanitarian groups are being looted by military age men, with many civilians being injured and trampled.”
The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots at people who approach its forces, and GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding.
Hours after the visit by Mr Witkoff and Mr Huckabee, Palestinian medics reported Israeli forces had shot dead three Gazans near a GHF site on the enclave’s southern edge. It is unclear whether these deaths were at the same location visited by US officials.
The Israeli military said it was still looking into the incident, in which soldiers had fired warning shots at what it described as a “gathering of suspects” approaching its troops, hundreds of meters from the aid site.
GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay said: “President [Donald] Trump understands the stakes in Gaza and that feeding civilians, not Hamas, must be the priority.”
During a visit to Scotland earlier this week, Mr Trump announced a new aid plan which would involve the US setting up foot centres in Gaza – but he is yet to reveal any details about the plan.
Starvation in Gaza remains significant, and the chief of Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa, Philippe Lazzarini, said on Friday the UN “has 6,000 trucks loaded with aid stuck outside Gaza waiting for the green light to enter”, two days after he described the crisis as an “entirely man-made famine”.
On Friday, the Israeli military said that 200 trucks of aid were distributed by the UN and other organizations on Thursday, with hundreds more waiting to be picked up from the border crossings inside Gaza.
Israel says Hamas and the UN are to blame for the failure of food to get to desperate Palestinians in Gaza.
Germany made its first airdrops into Gaza on Friday, following in the footsteps of Jordan, the UAE and France. Mr Lazzarini said the airdrops are “highly costly, insufficient and inefficient”, adding that the “only way to respond to the famine is to flood Gaza with assistance”.
In addition to the three shot near a GHF site, medics said at least 12 other Palestinians were killed in air strikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday. The Israeli military has not yet commented on the deaths.
The war, which began after Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in an attack on southern Israel in October 2023, has now killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities.
