Twenty Killed in Hamas Attacks on Criminal Groups in Southern Gaza

Twenty Palestinians were killed in operations carried out by Hamas authorities in the south of the Gaza Strip against criminal groups looting humanitarian aid trucks entering the enclave, official sources in Gaza confirmed.

"About 20 aid truck thieves were killed yesterday [Monday] in an operation carried out by security services in collaboration with tribal committees," a Gaza Interior Ministry source told the Hamas-linked Al Aqsa television channel today.

The looting of aid vehicles has become a growing problem in the enclave, where on Saturday a convoy of 109 trucks chartered by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was "violently looted", the most serious incident of its kind in more than 13 months of war in Gaza, according to the UN.

Only 11 trucks have reached their destination and 98 so far remain missing in the hands of these gangs.

"This security operation will not be the last. It is the beginning of a larger and meticulously planned operation that aims to target all those involved in the theft of aid trucks," said an Interior Ministry source.

The UN said on Thursday that 14 of the 20 trucks its agencies had brought in through the newly opened Kisufim crossing, also in the south, “were targeted and looted” by local armed groups.

“We need greater access for aid and the opening of new routes to reach more people in need, but also security guarantees,” said a UN spokesman, who insisted that at least 350 trucks a day were needed to meet the population’s pressing needs.

Israel says there is no limit to the amount of aid that can enter Gaza and blames the UN and other humanitarian agencies for not having enough resources to distribute the supplies.

October was the month in which the fewest humanitarian aid trucks entered the enclave, 990, since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023.

The Gaza Interior Ministry insisted that this campaign, which is being carried out with the support of several Palestinian factions, is not directed "against specific clans", but aims to eliminate the phenomenon of truck theft, "which has seriously affected society and caused signs of famine in the southern Gaza Strip.