Dozens of Palestinians killed amid US envoy’s Gaza visit
Local medical sources reported on Friday that a total of 24 Palestinians had since dawn been killed by Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip, including five who were seeking humanitarian aid amid US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to the besieged territory and Israel’s ongoing starvation campaign.
Palestine’s official news agency WAFA, citing medical sources, said at least 83 Palestinians were killed and 554 others were injured in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours as a result of the ongoing Israeli genocide in the region.
Local health authorities confirmed that the Palestinian death toll from the Israeli onslaught since October 2023 has risen to 60,332 fatalities, with an additional 147,643 people sustaining injuries. The majority of the victims are women and children.
According to the same sources, the death toll since Israel’s resumption of the genocide on March 18 after a two-month truce has also climbed to 9,163 , in addition to 35,602 others injured. Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former military affairs minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Witkoff’s visit to Gaza aid sites
The latest casualties occurred as Witkoff travelled to Gaza to inspect aid distribution amid mounting pressure on Israel over its starvation policy in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.
Witkoff and US ambassador to the occupied territories, Mike Huckabee, visited aid distribution sites run by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed GHF on Friday.
The two “spent over five hours inside Gaza,” Witkoff said in a post on X, accompanied by a photo of himself wearing a protective vest and meeting staff at a distribution site. He claimed that the purpose of the trip was to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”
Friday’s visit was “to learn the truth” about the GHF’s distribution activities, Hucakbee claimed on X. During the trip, they were briefed by the Israeli military and spoke to “folks on the ground,” he added. Earlier this week, Donald Trump contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that reports of hunger in Gaza were untrue, with the US president saying the enclave was experiencing “real starvation.”
The United Nations and independent experts had warned for months that starvation was taking hold in Gaza due to the Israeli military blockade on humanitarian relief, and this week, they said “famine is now unfolding.”
Hamas slams US envoy’s Gaza visit as ‘publicity stunt’
Moreover, a senior official of Palestinian resistance movement Hamas decried Witkoff’s visit to Gaza as a “publicity stunt” aimed at containing growing anger over US-Israeli involvement in the ongoing starvation of people in the blockaded territory.
“Witkoff only sees in Gaza what the Israeli occupation wants him to see. He views the ongoing tragedy through a distorted Israeli lens,” Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement.
He stressed that the US envoy “will not witness the workings of the hunger guillotine known as the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’, nor how it prepares the killing ground for the Zionist war machine.”
Al-Rishq added that the White House’s recent recognition of famine in Gaza — after months of denial — without holding Israel accountable, “amounts to absolving the perpetrator and offering political cover for what is the worst crime in modern history.”
The remarks come as suffering in the besieged enclave worsens, with warnings that hunger has reached extreme levels and reports of rising deaths due to starvation.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), founded in February 2025 amidst the prolonged Israeli assault on Gaza that started in October 2023, is a US-funded initiative working in collaboration with the Israeli military.
Nearly 170 non-governmental organizations have called for the immediate discontinuation of the controversial GHF program, and called for a return to the UN-led aid mechanism that existed in the war-torn territory until March, when the Israeli regime imposed a full blockade on humanitarian assistance entering Gaza.