TEHRAN – The Joint American-Israeli aid distribution mechanism in Gaza comes under further condemnation after scores killed while waiting for food.

The Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said 79 Palestinians were killed and 289 others injured as a result of the ongoing Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday.

Medics say among this toll, at least 50 were killed and over 150 injured when Israeli occupation forces targeted a crowd of people awaiting humanitarian aid near the “Netzarim corridor” in central Gaza.

The so-called Israeli and American-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), responsible for limited aid distribution, has come under sharp condemnation for its inability to distribute aid to Palestinians.

Civilians waiting for basic food supplies at GHF distribution centers have repeatedly come under deadly Israeli fire.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday the recently established, U.S.-backed system for aid distribution was “an abomination”.

Philippe Lazzarini said at a press conference in Berlin that “the newly created so-called aid mechanism is an abomination that humiliates and degrades desperate people. It is a death trap costing more lives than it saves.”

The UN human rights office also said on Tuesday that the ‘weaponization” of food for civilians in Gaza constitutes a war crime, in its strongest remarks yet on a new model of aid distribution run by an Israeli-backed American company.

Referring to a series of deadly shootings near distribution sites of the GHF, Thameen al-Kheetan told reporters at a Geneva press briefing that “desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food.”

Al-Kheetan also emphasized that “the weaponization of food for civilians, in addition to restricting or preventing their access to life-sustaining services, constitutes a war crime and, under certain circumstances, may constitute elements of other crimes under international law.”

Medical sources at al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat reported receiving more than 20 dead Palestinians and 146 injured individuals following a strike on hundreds of civilians gathered for humanitarian aid along Salah al-Din Street, south of Wadi Gaza.

Among the wounded, 62 are reported to be in critical condition.

Rescue and civil defense teams also recovered five bodies from beneath the rubble of a house in the Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City.

On Monday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced dozens of Palestinians had been killed and 317 others injured due to the Israeli airstrikes targeting various areas across the Gaza Strip.

Since October, 2023, the Israeli occupation regime has intensified its genocidal assault in Gaza, relentlessly targeting residential neighborhoods, aid distribution points, and displaced persons’ camps with air, naval and artillery strikes.