Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff visited one of the controversial aid sites in Gaza on Friday, at which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since they began operation in late May, according to the UN.

Witkoff and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee inspected a site run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.

The visit came after the Gaza health ministry reported on Thursday that a further 91 Palestinians were killed and more than 600 wounded seeking aid over the past 24 hours.

The figure included 54 deaths in mass shooting incident near the Zikim border crossing in northern Gaza.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said Palestinians surrounded aid trucks and the soldiers fired warning shots into the crowd, adding that it was not aware of any injuries stemming from their fire.

Huckabee shared images from the US visit on social media.

US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, centre, during a visit to a GHF aid site on Friday, in a photo shared by US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee (Photo: Mike Huckabee/X)

Another image shared by Huckabee, showing GHF banners (Photo: Mike Huckabee/X)

His posts included images of GHF banners with the words, “100 million meals delivered”.

Huckabee posted on X: “Hamas hates GHF because it gets food to people without it being looted by Hamas. Over 100 MILLION meals served in 2 months, an incredible feat!”

Figures from GHF for aid distribution have not been independently verified.

Witkoff also posted a message on the platform.

“Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza – level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions, and meeting with GHF and other agencies,” he said.

“The purpose of the visit was to give @POTUS [President of the United States] a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”

Separate images from a GHF site in central Gaza, released by Reuters on Friday, showed a snaking queue of hundreds of Palestinians collecting aid parcels watched by armed security.

Palestinian journalist Ruwaida Amer, from Khan Yunis, accused the US of “supporting Israel’s killing and starvation while ignoring the images and voices from Gaza and beyond”.

“No one is interested in [Witkoff] visiting because if he sees the truth, he will issue a false narrative that is at odds with the tragic reality in Gaza,” she said.

Motasem Dalloul, a Palestinian resident of Gaza, told The i Paper the visit was “staged” and challenged the American diplomats to ask aid recipients “how long they walked on foot though dirt roads and destroyed homes to get this aid”.

Dalloul added that they should step outside the GHF site and see how Israel had “wiped out all of the city of Rafah“.

Witkoff, the US President’s special envoy for the Middle East, had earlier met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid mounting international horror over conditions of starvation in Gaza.

Palestinians leaving a GHF site in the central Gaza Strip on Friday (Photo: Reuters)

Security contractors of the GHF stand guard as Palestinians receive aid supplies, in the central Gaza Strip (Photo: Reuters)

Aid groups have expressed alarm at the near daily reports of Palestinians being killed near the GHF’s sites, which are inside Israeli military zones.

Eyewitnesses and medics have on several occasions described Israeli forces opening fire on crowds near aid points.

The campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Israeli forces and US-backed private contractors of putting in place “a flawed, militarised aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths”.

A new report from the group released on Friday said the killings at aid sites “amount to serious violations of international law and war crimes”.

The IDF has previously said it “did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centres”.

According to the UN human rights office, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food aid since late May.

Palestinians in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip rush towards a plane conducting an airdrop of aid above the besieged territory as the US officials’ visit takes place (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP)

In Jerusalem, about 50 people, including families of some of the approximately 50 hostages still being held in Gaza, demonstrated on Thursday in front of Netanyahu’s office calling for an end to the war.

Under heavy international pressure, Israel announced a series of measures over the weekend to facilitate the entry of more international aid to Gaza, but aid workers say much more is needed.

The Israeli defence body in charge of co-ordinating humanitarian aid in Gaza said 270 trucks of aid entered the enclave on Wednesday, and 32 pallets of aid were airdropped into the Strip. That amount is far lower than the 500 to 600 trucks per day that aid organisations say are needed.

Thursday represented the first meeting between Witkoff and Netanyahu since both Israel and the US summoned their negotiation teams home from Qatar last week. Witkoff said at the time that Hamas had shown “a lack of desire” to reach a truce.

Hamas started the war with its attack on southern Israel on 7 October, 2023, in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others. It still holds 50 hostages, including around 20 believed to be alive.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, more than half of whom are women and children, according to health officials in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas. The count does not distinguish between militants and civilians, however the figures are not disputed by international aid organisations.

With input from agencies

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