Security collapses in Gaza amid desperate search for food

Chaos erupted across Gaza’s main city in the north as desperate Palestinians searched for food amid a breakdown of security and limited aid access.

The Hamas-run interior ministry reported that seven police officers trying to stop looting at a busy market were killed in an Israeli air strike.

At the same time, violent scenes unfolded at aid centers where thousands clashed over scarce supplies.

The interior ministry said the officers were armed and on duty near Gaza City's central al-Saraya junction when the strike happened.

Videos shared on social media showed bodies and blood on the ground after what the ministry described as "another massacre" by Israeli forces targeting those confronting looters.

Local medics confirmed that at least 44 people were killed across Gaza on Thursday, including 23 at the Bureij refugee camp.

This came a day after the UN’s World Food Programme said two people were shot dead as hungry crowds broke into its warehouse in Deir al-Balah to find food after 11 weeks of a total Israeli blockade. It is unclear who fired the shots.

Tensions also erupted at a new aid center run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supported by the US and Israel, in the southern city of Rafah.

Thousands of people tried to rush the site on Tuesday, with around 50 reportedly injured.

The Israeli military said its troops fired warning shots into the air but denied shooting directly at the crowds.

Witnesses described chaotic scenes at the Rafah distribution center on Thursday morning.

A drone reportedly warned the crowd to approach the site in an orderly way, but after ten minutes, people broke through the gate to grab food.

"People grabbed boxes and sacks of flour and left, all under the surveillance of the Israeli quadcopter," one witness said.

Many young men were able to carry away aid, but the elderly and vulnerable struggled to access supplies.

Abu Fawzi Faroukh, a 60-year-old Palestinian, said, "The young men are the ones who have received aid first but the old people and women cannot enter due to the crowding."

He added, “We have been humiliated, the Palestinian people are humiliated.”

At another GHF site in central Gaza, people reported leaving empty-handed.

Umm Mohammed Abu Hajar said, “I found all the people hungry. So, I couldn't get anything. I left like this... empty-handed.” She called for better organization, saying, “Some people eat and some people don't.”

GHF said it distributed around 17,280 food boxes on Thursday, enough for nearly a million meals, and plans to open more sites, including in northern Gaza. It rejected claims that its guards fired shots at people, saying, “No shots have ever been fired.”

The GHF system operates independently from the UN and requires Palestinians to pick up aid at guarded centers in areas controlled by the Israeli military.

The UN refuses to work with this system, calling it "unethical and unworkable." The head of the UN’s humanitarian office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said the GHF approach "could not possibly meet the needs of the 2.1 million population" and accused it of "engineering scarcity."

Meanwhile, the Israeli military has struck "dozens of terror targets" across Gaza, but it has not commented on the specific incident involving the police officers.