Gaza Humanitarian Foundation doles out 2.6m meals after Hamas murders eight staffers
"We are still collecting more information on the deadly and unprovoked attack on our dedicated local team members and volunteers," the group said.
Palestinians carry humanitarian aid in Gaza
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distributed some 2.6 million meals on Thursday, it said, only hours after Hamas terrorists murdered eight of the U.S.-backed organization’s Palestinian staff members.
The NGO’s three distribution sites in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan area, the nearby Saudi neighborhood and Wadi Gaza in the central Strip continued operations “without incident” on Thursday, it said.
Thursday’s distribution of 2,605,680 meals brings the total number of meals distributed since the GHF started its operations in the Strip on May 26 to approximately 18,647,662, through roughly 316,320 boxes.
Hamas attacked a bus carrying about two-dozen members of the GHF team at about 10 p.m. in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, with at least eight fatalities and multiple injuries confirmed by the organization.
“We are still collecting more information on the deadly and unprovoked attack on our dedicated local team members and volunteers. As of now, we can confirm at least eight fatalities, multiple injuries, and we fear that some of our team members have been taken hostage,” said John Acree, the group’s interim executive director, on Thursday afternoon.
“We carefully considered closing our sites today given the heightened security risks and safety concerns, but we decided that the best response to Hamas’ cowardly murderers was to keep delivering food for the people of Gaza who are counting on us,” continued the director.
“We will not be deterred from our mission towards providing food security for the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he vowed, adding: “We hope to provide more details as additional information is available.”
The group, which is independent of the United Nations and aims to deliver aid to Palestinians while preventing its theft by Hamas, has endured threats from the terrorist organization since its inception.
On June 7, the NGO said that it had been unable to distribute food parcels that day due to “direct threats” that “made it impossible to continue working today without endangering innocent lives.”
The group at the time accused Hamas of “seeking to return to a broken regime it previously controlled and exploited—by diverting aid routes, manipulating distribution processes, and advancing its own agenda regarding the basic needs of the people of Gaza.”
US sanctions Hamas, PFLP-linked sham charities
The federal government also sanctioned another charity linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on Tuesday.
“Today’s action underscores the importance of safeguarding the charitable sector from abuse by terrorists like Hamas and the PFLP, who continue to leverage sham charities as fronts for funding their terrorist and military operations,” stated Michael Faulkender, the deputy U.S. treasury secretary.
“Treasury will continue to use all available tools to prevent Hamas, the PFLP and other terrorist actors from exploiting the humanitarian situation in Gaza to fund their violent activities at the expense of their own people,” Faulkender stated.
The entities sanctioned include the Gaza-based Al Weam Charitable Society, the Turkey-based Filistin Vakfi, the Algerian-based El Baraka Association for Charitable and Humanitarian Work, the Netherlands-based Israa Charitable Foundation and the Italy-based Associazione Benefica.
© JNS
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