Hostages’ families protest against Gaza plan – as it happened

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The medical NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has called for the immediate closure of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the US- and Israeli-backed aid organisation operating in Gaza, describing GHF-run food distribution sites in Gaza as having become sites of orchestrated killing and dehumanisation".

In a social media post on Thursday, MSF wrote:

In MSF's nearly 54 years of operations, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians."

The GHF-run food distributions in Gaza, Palestine, have become sites of orchestrated killing and dehumanisation", not humanitarian aid.

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 also included a 12-year-old boy hit by a bullet that had passed all the way through his abdomen, and five young girls, one of whom was only 8 years old and suffered a gunshot wound to her chest.

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.