Netanyahu denounces report that Israeli soldiers have orders to shoot at Palestinians seeking aid

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahurejected a report in Haaretz, which claimed Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot at Palestinians approaching aid sites inside Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz emphatically rejected a report in the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz on Friday, which claimed Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot at Palestinians approaching aid sites inside Gaza. They called the report’s findings “malicious falsehoods designed to defame” the military.
More than 500 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded while seeking food since the newly formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began distributing aid in the territory about a month ago, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Palestinian witnesses say Israeli troops have opened fire at crowds on the roads heading toward the sites. Reacting to the Haaretz piece, Israel’s military confirmed that it was investigating incidents in which civilians had been harmed while approaching the sites. It rejected the article’s allegations “of deliberate fire toward civilians.”
The foundation, which is backed by an American private contractor, has been distributing food boxes at four locations, mainly in the far south of Gaza, for the past month.
At Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Palestinians prepare the bodies of people killed a day earlier while attempting to get aid at a distribution point near the Israeli-controlled Zikim border crossing.OMAR AL-QATTAA / AFP - Getty Images“GHF is not aware of any of these incidents but these allegations are too grave to ignore and we therefore call on Israel to investigate them and transparently publish the results in a timely manner,” the group said in a social media post.
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