Witnesses and aid groups report a surge in looting in desperate Gaza

TEL AVIV — Armed groups and others have looted warehouses of supplies in northern Gaza as desperation rises after more than two months of Israel’s blockade of the territory, locals and aid workers say.

Meanwhile, Israel’s latest airstrikes continued into Saturday, killing more than a dozen people.

Messages circulated among security officials for aid groups and seen by the Associated Press, and witnesses and organizations in the Gaza Strip say looting has occurred since Wednesday by unidentified people, armed and unarmed. They’ve broken into warehouses held by the United Nations and aid groups as well as commercial warehouses, bakeries, stores and shops, they say.

Israel has blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ended the latest ceasefire with Hamas in March, throwing the territory of more than 2 million people into what is believed to be the worst humanitarian crisis in nearly 19 months of war.

Israel has said the blockade and its renewed military campaign are intended to pressure Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages it still holds, and to disarm the Palestinian militant group.

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights previously warned that starving civilians as a military tactic constitutes a war crime.

Aid groups have said Gaza’s civilian population is facing starvation, and there is concern the desperation could lead to a breakdown of law and order. While there have been incidents of looting by armed gangs throughout the war, aid workers say this week’s incidents mark an escalation, with it being less organized and reaching urban areas.

The ransacking in Gaza City began Wednesday evening after reports that aid trucks had entered the north from the south, said one aid worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. A security report circulated among aid agencies that night saying a group of armed people broke into a bakery, driven by rumors of stored food supplies.

The storage was empty and the group moved to a soup kitchen affiliated with an international aid group in the Shati camp and looted it, the report said.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency said its staffers were safely evacuated Wednesday after thousands of Palestinians breached its Gaza City field office and took medications. Louise Wateridge, a senior emergency officer at UNRWA, called the looting “the direct result of unbearable and prolonged deprivation.”

The ransacking continued through Friday night. Three witnesses told the AP that dozens of armed men stormed into at least two U.N. warehouses, pushing past police and local security guards protecting the facilities.

“There were organized gangs,” said Ahmed Abu Awad, a resident of western Gaza City, where some of the looting took place.

Yahya Youssef, another witness, said he saw dozens of armed men on the streets in western Gaza City in gunfights on two consecutive nights with policemen and security guards that protect U.N. and aid groups’ facilities.

Curfew enforced

Both men said Israeli drones and aircraft were flying over the area while looting was underway.

An Israeli strike Friday night killed three people — two tasked with guarding the area in western Gaza City and a child — the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said in a statement. Staff at Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies, confirmed the deaths.

The Israeli military said it could not comment on the strike without being provided with the exact coordinates of the incident.

Gaza’s Interior Ministry said Saturday it killed six suspects and wounded 13 others with gunshots to the legs in the last two days over looting activities. The ministry also enforced a curfew starting Friday in some of Gaza City’s main streets.

The Al-Najjar family, one of Gaza City’s most prominent, condemned the pillaging and called for respect and the protection of public and private property. “We categorically reject the chaos that harms the interests of the nation and its citizens,” it said in a statement.

In Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, desperate families pushed and shoved at food distribution sites to reach steaming vats of soup.

“We are eight people. I need to provide them with a bite of food,” said Faten Al-Sabbagh. “I wish I can find even bread, but there is nothing and we are unable to. The prices are high and there are no salaries.”

The top United Nations court on Friday wrapped up a week of hearings on what Israel must do to ensure desperately needed humanitarian aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Israeli strikes on Gaza continued overnight Friday, leaving at least 17 people dead, including children, in the southern city of Khan Yunis, according to hospital records.

Among the dead were 11 people from the same family, according to Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies. Another strike killed two newly married couples, one of their families said.

Israel strikes Syria

Also Saturday, the United Nations special envoy for Syria condemned an intense wave of Israeli airstrikes. Israel said its forces were on the ground in Syria to protect the Druze minority sect following days of clashes with Syrian pro-government gunmen.

The late Friday airstrikes were reported in different parts of the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs, as well as southern and central Syria, local Syrian news reports said. They came hours after Israel’s air force struck near Syria’s presidential palace after warning Syrian authorities not to march toward villages inhabited by Syrian Druze.

Israel’s military spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, wrote on X that the strikes targeted a military post and antiaircraft units. He also said that the Israeli troops in southern Syria were “to prevent any hostile force from entering the area or Druze villages” and that five Syrian Druze wounded in the fighting were transported for treatment in Israel.

The Israeli military issued another statement later Saturday saying that 12 warplanes carried out dozens of airstrikes targeting infrastructure components and weapons across Syria, including antiaircraft cannons and surface-to-air missile launchers.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported Saturday that four people were wounded in central Syria and that the airstrikes hit the eastern Damascus suburb of Harasta as well as the southern province of Dara and the central province of Hama.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Geir O. Pedersen, denounced the strikes on X.

“I strongly condemn Israel’s continued and escalating violations of Syria’s sovereignty, including multiple airstrikes in Damascus and other cities,” Pedersen wrote Saturday, calling for an immediate halt of attacks and for Israel to stop “endangering Syrian civilians and to respect international law and Syria’s sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and independence.”

Four days of clashes between pro-government gunmen and Druze fighters have left nearly 100 people dead and raised fears of deadly sectarian violence.

The clashes are the worst between forces loyal to the government and Druze fighters since the early December fall of President Bashar Assad, whose family ruled Syria with an iron grip for more than five decades.

Israel has its own Druze community and officials have said they will protect the Druze of Syria and warned Islamic militant groups against entering predominantly Druze areas. Israeli forces have carried out hundreds of airstrikes since Assad’s fall and captured a buffer zone along the disputed Golan Heights.

The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria.

Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. In Syria, they largely live in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus, mainly in Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya to the south.

Mednick and Magdy write for the Associated Press and reported from Tel Aviv and Cairo, respectively. AP writers Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Omar Sanadiki and Ghaith Alsayid in Harasta, Syria, and Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.