An Israeli strike hit a street in central Gaza on Thursday, where witnesses said a crowd of people were getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit which had confiscated the goods from gangs looting aid convoys.
Hospital officials said 18 people were killed.
The strike was the latest violence surrounding the distribution of food to Gaza’s population, which has been thrown into turmoil over the past month.
After blocking all food for two and a half months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May.
Efforts by the United Nations to distribute the food have been plagued by armed gangs looting trucks, and by crowds of desperate people offloading supplies from convoys.
The strike in the central town of Deir al-Balah appeared to target members of Sahm, a security unit tasked with stopping looters and cracking down on merchants who sell stolen aid at high prices.
The unit is part of Gaza’s Hamas-led interior ministry, but includes members of other factions.
Witnesses said the Sahm unit was distributing bags of flour and other goods confiscated from looters and corrupt merchants, drawing a crowd, when the strike hit.
Video of the aftermath showed bodies of multiple young men in the street with blood splattering on the pavement and walls of buildings.
The dead included a child and at least seven Sahm members, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where casualties were taken.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has accused the militant Hamas group of stealing aid and using it to prop up its rule in the enclave.
Israeli forces have repeatedly struck Gaza’s police, considering them a branch of Hamas.
An association of Gaza’s influential clans and tribes said on Wednesday they have started an independent effort to guard aid convoys to prevent looting.
The National Gathering of Palestinian Clans and Tribes said it helped escort a rare shipment of flour that entered northern Gaza that evening.
It was unclear, however, if the association had co-ordinated with the UN or Israeli authorities.
“We will no longer allow thieves to steal from the convoys for the merchants and force us to buy them for high prices,” Abu Ahmad al-Gharbawi, a figure involved in the tribal effort, told the Associated Press.
The move by tribes to protect aid convoys brings yet another player in an aid situation that has become fragmented, confused and violent, even as Gaza’s more than two million Palestinians struggle to feed their families.
Throughout the more than 20-month-old war, the UN led the massive aid operation by humanitarian groups providing food, shelter, medicine and other goods to Palestinians despite the fighting.
Israel, however, seeks to replace the UN-led system, saying Hamas has been siphoning off large amounts of supplies from it, a claim the UN and other aid groups deny.
Israel has backed an American private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has started distributing food boxes at four locations, mainly in the far south of Gaza for the past month.
Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the hubs, moving through Israeli military zones where witnesses say Israeli troops regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.
Health officials say hundreds of people have been killed and wounded. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots.
