4 Palestinians seeking aid shot dead by Israeli forces

Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinian aid seekers traveling on Sunday through a military zone south of Gaza City that is regularly used to reach a food distribution point, a hospital and witnesses said.

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Gaza City is in famine after 22 months of war, while Israel's military moves ahead with a planned offensive to seize the city, perhaps within days. Israel's defense minister has warned that the city of hundreds of thousands of people could be destroyed.

Al-Awda Hospital and two witnesses told The Associated Press the Palestinians were killed when troops opened fire on a crowd heading to a site run by the Israeli-backed US contractor Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the Netzarim corridor area, hundreds of meters (yards) from the site.

"The gunfire was indiscriminate," said Mohamed Abed, a father of two from the Bureij refugee camp.

Abed and Aymed Sayyad, another aid-seeker, said troops opened fire when a group near the front of the crowd pushed toward the site before its scheduled opening. Sayyad said he and others helped two people wounded by gunshots.

"This incident didn’t occur near our site nor as described," the GHF said in an email. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.