US envoy visits Gaza food distribution site as UN says 1,373 killed waiting for aid since late May.
Israel-Gaza war: US envoy visits Gaza food distribution site as UN says 1,373 killed waiting for aid since late May – as it happened
Steve Witkoff visits Rafah site where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.
Donald Trump’s envoy visits Gaza aid ‘death trap’
Aneesa Ahmed (now) and Jane Clinton (earlier)
Fri 1 Aug 2025 12.10 EDT
Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has visited Gaza and been shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.
Witkoff, the US president’s special envoy for the Middle East, had earlier met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid mounting international horror over conditions of starvation in Gaza occurring amid months of Israeli-imposed aid restrictions.
The visit to the site in Rafah by Witkoff – a former real estate lawyer with no foreign policy or humanitarian background, who has also met Vladimir Putin on Trump’s behalf – was reported by a number Israeli media organisations and comes as Human Rights Watch on Friday described the aid sites run by the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – as “death traps” that had become the scene of regular “bloodbaths”. The UN has said almost nine hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces attempting to reach the sites.
Here is a recap of today’s events
Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Gaza and was shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. Witkoff visited the site in Rafah and was accompanied by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee praised the GHF as he visited the site in Rafah – one of four GHF sites where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. In a social media post, he wrote: “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!”
Witkoff later said on Friday that his visit to US-backed aid stations in Gaza would help Washington draw up a plan to deliver more aid to the Palestinian territory. “Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza,” Witkoff said in a post on X. He added that the purpose of the visit was to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
The UN human rights office said on Friday that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military, AFP reports. “In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement. “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.
France has started to airdrop 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and is urging Israel to allow full access to the area which it said was slipping into famine. President Emmanuel Macron said:“Airdrops are not enough. Israel must open full humanitarian access to address the risk of famine.”
Finland’s president Alexander Stubb has said he is ready to approve a recognition of a Palestinian state if the government moves forward with such a proposal.
Award-winning Israeli author David Grossman called his country’s campaign in Gaza “genocide” and said he was using the term with a “broken heart”, AFP reports. This came days after a major Israeli rights group also used the same term, amid growing global alarm over starvation in the besieged territory.
Donald Trump said he wants Palestinians in Gaza “fed”, saying that this is something which should have happened a long time ago.
Speaking to Axios’s journalist Barak David, Trump said: “We want to help people. We want to help them live. We want to get people fed. It is something that should have happened a long time ago.”
This comes after the US president said yesterday “the fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis” was for Hamas to surrender and release all captives.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli gunfire and airstrikes killed at least 22 people in Palestinian territory on Friday, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid.
Spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed in a strike in the southern Gaza Strip, and four more when a vehicle was hit in the central area of Deir el-Balah.
The civil defence agency reported deadly fire at Palestinians who were seeking humanitarian aid, in a territory where UN-backed experts have reported that “famine is now unfolding”.
The Israeli military did not comment, and told AFP it could not confirm any of the incidents without specific coordinates for each of them.
Steve Witkoff visits Rafah site where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.
Donald Trump’s envoy visits Gaza aid ‘death trap’
Aneesa Ahmed (now) and Jane Clinton (earlier)
Fri 1 Aug 2025 12.10 EDT
Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has visited Gaza and been shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.
Witkoff, the US president’s special envoy for the Middle East, had earlier met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid mounting international horror over conditions of starvation in Gaza occurring amid months of Israeli-imposed aid restrictions.
The visit to the site in Rafah by Witkoff – a former real estate lawyer with no foreign policy or humanitarian background, who has also met Vladimir Putin on Trump’s behalf – was reported by a number Israeli media organisations and comes as Human Rights Watch on Friday described the aid sites run by the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – as “death traps” that had become the scene of regular “bloodbaths”. The UN has said almost nine hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces attempting to reach the sites.
Here is a recap of today’s events
Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Gaza and was shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. Witkoff visited the site in Rafah and was accompanied by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee praised the GHF as he visited the site in Rafah – one of four GHF sites where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. In a social media post, he wrote: “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!”
Witkoff later said on Friday that his visit to US-backed aid stations in Gaza would help Washington draw up a plan to deliver more aid to the Palestinian territory. “Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza,” Witkoff said in a post on X. He added that the purpose of the visit was to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
The UN human rights office said on Friday that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military, AFP reports. “In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement. “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.
France has started to airdrop 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and is urging Israel to allow full access to the area which it said was slipping into famine. President Emmanuel Macron said:“Airdrops are not enough. Israel must open full humanitarian access to address the risk of famine.”
Finland’s president Alexander Stubb has said he is ready to approve a recognition of a Palestinian state if the government moves forward with such a proposal.
Award-winning Israeli author David Grossman called his country’s campaign in Gaza “genocide” and said he was using the term with a “broken heart”, AFP reports. This came days after a major Israeli rights group also used the same term, amid growing global alarm over starvation in the besieged territory.
Donald Trump said he wants Palestinians in Gaza “fed”, saying that this is something which should have happened a long time ago.
Speaking to Axios’s journalist Barak David, Trump said: “We want to help people. We want to help them live. We want to get people fed. It is something that should have happened a long time ago.”
This comes after the US president said yesterday “the fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis” was for Hamas to surrender and release all captives.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli gunfire and airstrikes killed at least 22 people in Palestinian territory on Friday, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid.
Spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed in a strike in the southern Gaza Strip, and four more when a vehicle was hit in the central area of Deir el-Balah.
The civil defence agency reported deadly fire at Palestinians who were seeking humanitarian aid, in a territory where UN-backed experts have reported that “famine is now unfolding”.
The Israeli military did not comment, and told AFP it could not confirm any of the incidents without specific coordinates for each of them.
