Palestine: MSF report reveals so-called GHF-run food distributions in Gaza as sites of “orchestrated killing and dehumanization”
MSF calls for the immediate dismantling of the GHF scheme.
“This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing,” a new report from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), documents the horrors witnessed by MSF staff at two clinics in Gaza that regularly received mass influxes of casualties following violence at sites run by the GHF, an Israeli-US proxy that has militarized food distribution.
An analysis of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical data, patients’ testimonies, and first-hand medical witnessing at the two clinics reveals evidence of targeted and indiscriminate violence by Israeli forces and private American contractors against starved Palestinian civilians at food distribution sites run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). These are sites of orchestrated killing and dehumanization.
Between June 7 and July 24, 2025, 1,380 casualties, including 28 dead, were received at MSF’s Al-Mawasi and Al-Attar clinics in southern Gaza, located near the GHF-run distribution sites. During those seven weeks, our teams treated 71 children for gunshot wounds, 25 of whom were under the age of 15. Faced with no alternatives to find food, starved families frequently send teenage boys into this lethal environment, as they are often the only males in the household physically able to make the journey. Patients have included a 12-year-old boy hit by a bullet that had passed through his abdomen and five young girls, one of whom was only eight years old and suffered a gunshot wound to her chest.
This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing.
“Children shot in the chest while reaching for food. People crushed or suffocated in stampedes. Entire crowds gunned down at distribution points,” says Raquel Ayora, MSF general director. “In MSF’s nearly 54 years of operations, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians. The GHF distribution sites masquerading as ‘aid’ have morphed into a laboratory of cruelty. This must stop now.”
“We treat only a fraction of the total number of people killed and injured at these sites. There is no other way to describe the murder of children as anything but intentional.”
Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza
An initial analysis of the gunshot wounds among patients arriving at the Al-Mawasi clinic found that 11 per cent of the gunshot injuries were to the head and neck, while 19 per cent were to areas covering the chest, abdomen and back. By contrast, people arriving from the Khan Younis distribution centre were far more likely to arrive with gunshot wounds to the lower limbs. The distinct patterns and anatomical precision of these injuries strongly suggests the intentional targeting of people within and around the distribution sites, rather than accidental or indiscriminate fire.
“We’re being slaughtered. I’ve been injured maybe 10 times,” says Mohammed Riad Tabasi, a patient who was treated at the MSF Al-Mawasi clinic. “I saw it with my own eyes, about 20 corpses around me. All of them shot in the head, in the stomach.”
People who manage to secure any food rations at the sites often face the risk of violent looting and theft of aid by other starved people. Our medical teams were required to add a new acronym to their patient registry: BBO – Beaten By Others. This refers to people injured either in the crush of the crowd or by being beaten and robbed of their supplies immediately after receiving them. It is dehumanization by design.
“On Aug. 1, the same day the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East visited GHF sites, 15-year-old Mahmoud Jamal Al-Attar was killed around the Al-Shakoush GHF site while trying to get food,” says Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza. “He arrived at the MSF Al-Mawasi clinic after being shot in the chest.”
“We treat only a fraction of the total number of people killed and injured at these sites,” says Zabalgogeazkoa. “There is no other way to describe the murder of children as anything but intentional. Despite the condemnations and calls for dismantling it, the global inaction to stop GHF is baffling.”
Between July 27 and Aug. 2, 186 people with wounds from gunshots, shrapnel or assault and stabbing were treated in MSF’s Al-Mawasi or Al-Attar clinics after being wounded at GHF sites. Two of them died. On Aug. 3, MSF clinics received three more wounded people, one who had been shot in the neck and two with shots to the head.
“We treat only a fraction of the total number of people killed and injured at these sites,” says Zabalgogeazkoa. “There is no other way to describe the murder of children as anything but intentional. Despite the condemnations and calls for dismantling it, the global inaction to stop GHF is baffling.”
The GHF must be shut down immediately
In May, Israeli authorities sought to dismantle the UN-led humanitarian response and replace it with a militarized food distribution scheme operated by GHF. All four GHF-run distribution sites are in areas under full Israeli military control and “secured” by private American armed contractors. Instead of ending the siege and letting in aid trucks that are sitting on the other side of the borders, the Israeli and US governments’ “innovative solution ” of the GHF was supposed to be an answer to their unproven claims of aid diversion in Gaza and unfounded accusations of UN failure. The sites are nothing but a deadly scheme, institutionalizing the Israeli authorities’ starvation policy of Gaza. Israel has imposed a full siege on Gaza since March 2 as part of an ongoing genocidal campaign.
The way this scheme operates attempts to strip people of their dignity. Over the seven weeks, MSF teams treated 196 patients with injuries following chaotic scrambles at the GHF distribution sites. Patients included a five-year-old boy with severe head injuries and a woman who died of asphyxiation, likely caused by the suffocating crush of a crowd.
MSF calls for the immediate dismantling of the GHF scheme; the restoration of the UN-coordinated aid delivery mechanism; and for governments — especially the United States — as well as private donors to suspend all financial and political support for the GHF. Israel must also end its siege so that people’s access to food and other lifesaving humanitarian aid can be immediately scaled up. As the occupying power, Israeli authorities are responsible for ensuring the rapid, unimpeded, and safe delivery of humanitarian aid at the level sufficient to address people’s needs.
