GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (AFP) — An American- and Israeli-backed charity operating in Gaza accused Palestinian militant group Hamas of attacking aid workers en route to a distribution center on Wednesday, saying at least five people were killed.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said a bus carrying its staff to a distribution site near Khan Yunis in the south was “brutally attacked by Hamas” around 10 p.m.

“We are still gathering facts, but what we know is devastating: there are at least five fatalities, multiple injuries, and fear that some of our team members may have been taken hostage,” GHF said in a statement.

In an email to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the group added that all five of the people killed were Palestinian aid workers for GHF.

“These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons and friends, who were risking their lives every day to help others,” the group said in its statement condemning the attack.

The distribution of food and basic supplies in the besieged Gaza Strip has become increasingly fraught and perilous, exacerbating the territory’s deep hunger crisis.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed while trying to reach distribution points since late May, according to Gaza’s civil defense.

It said Israeli forces killed 31 people waiting for aid on Wednesday.

Gaza’s medics have said hospitals were being inundated with people attacked while trying to obtain food.

Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat Camp said early Thursday that four people were killed and 100 wounded in an overnight Israeli drone attack on a gathering at an aid distribution site close to a key checkpoint along the road to northern Gaza.

At Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the emergency room said it had started receiving dozens of victims who had been waiting for aid, including 200 in a single day.

“Many Gazans went to the Nabulsi and Netzarim areas to receive aid and were shot at and shelled with tanks,” said Mutaz Harara, head of Al-Shifa’s emergency department.

But with few medical supplies and no operating rooms, “many patients died while waiting for their turn,” he said.

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment about the incident.

Hostages’ bodies retrieved

Israeli forces have retrieved the bodies of two hostages from the Gaza Strip, the military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, as Israel presses its offensive in the Palestinian territory.

A military statement said a joint operation by the army and the Shin Bet security agency recovered the bodies of Yair Yaakov and “an additional hostage whose name has not yet been cleared for publication” from the Khan Yunis area of southern Gaza.

Yaakov, a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was 59 when he was seized in the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and killed the same day.

The military statement said he had been abducted and killed by fighters from Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally.

Yaakov was abducted along with his partner Meirav Tal, as they sheltered in their safe room in Nir Oz.

She was freed on 28 November 2023 during the first truce.

Abducted separately at the home of their mother, Yair’s two children Yagil and Or were also released on 27 November during the first truce.