Attack kills Red Crescent member, wounds 3 others

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Sunday that one of its staff members was killed and three others wounded in an Israeli attack on its Khan Younis headquarters in the Gaza Strip.

"One Palestine Red Crescent Society staff member was killed and three others injured after Israeli forces targeted the Society's headquarters in Khan Younis, igniting a fire on the building's first floor," the aid organization said in a post on X.

A video, which the PRCS said "captures the initial moments" of the attack, shows fires burning in a building, with the floors covered in rubble.

It came two days after United States envoy Steve Witkoff visited a US-backed aid station in Gaza to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory.

Nearly two years after the conflict began, United Nations agencies have warned that time was running out and that Gaza was "on the brink of a full-scale famine".

Eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Gaza civil defense agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were killed in an attack by Israeli forces in southern Gaza in March, according to the UN humanitarian office OCHA.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces opened fire near two aid distribution sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as crowds of hungry Palestinians again sought food, killing at least 10 people, witnesses and health workers said on Saturday.

Another 19 people were shot dead as they crowded near the Zikim crossing from Israel in the hope of obtaining aid, said Fares Awad, head of the Gaza Health Ministry's ambulance and emergency service.

Hamas' October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the conflict, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,430 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory's Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.

Agencies Via Xinhua