It was 8 p.m., just after sunset, when Reem Zeidan, 42, set off for an aid distribution site with two of her eight children, Mervat, 20, and Ahmad, 12. Zeidan wanted to get a bag of flour to make bread. Her 5-year-old daughter, Razan, was hoping for biscuits. Zeidan brought a blue backpack to carry whatever she might be able to bring home.
Distribution wouldn’t open until the next morning, June 3, but the walk along a sea route, from Khan Younis, where they were sheltering in a tent, to Rafah, where the aid site was, would take hours. On the first day the distribution site opened, Zeidan had arrived at 9 a.m., too late to collect any food. Another day, she turned back when she heard there was gunfire near the site.
By then, there had already been multiple incidents in which Palestinians were reported to have been killed while seeking aid in Gaza after a new distribution program was launched just over a week before, led by a recently founded U.S.- and Israel-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
The United Nations, which had previously run a network of hundreds of aid distribution points across Gaza but has since been sidelined by Israel, warned that reducing aid distribution to GHF’s four sites would be chaotic, insufficient and dangerous. Since GHF began operations on May 26, scores of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to reach its aid distribution sites, according to the local health ministry and witnesses.
The United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday that more than 400 Palestinians are believed to have been killed while trying to collect humanitarian aid in just under a month.
The Israeli military acknowledges involvement in many of these incidents, often saying that soldiers fire warning shots or at individuals who appear to pose a threat or are in unauthorized areas. GHF says the attacks happen outside their distribution sites.
Most of the deadly incidents unfolded as Palestinians traveled to the GHF distribution sites, according to Palestinian health authorities and witnesses. At least one incident unfolded as Palestinians waited to collect food from United Nations convoys, the organization has said.
Zeidan would soon join the dozens killed as they struggled to secure food, underscoring the pitfalls of a new aid system in which tens of thousands of Palestinians must walk long distances — often through areas controlled by the Israeli military — to have a chance of getting a fraction of the limited aid being handed out.
After walking for about five hours, Zeidan, Mervat and Ahmad had reached a seaside area north of Rafah known as “Fish Fresh.”
A thriving fish farm before the war, Fish Fresh had become an informal gathering place for thousands waiting to be allowed to enter the aid distribution site during tightly controlled opening hours.
Outside of those hours, much of the areas surrounding GHF’s aid sites are considered combat zones, according to the Israel Defense Forces. GHF has repeatedly warned Palestinians to stay away from the sites before food distribution starts, a near-impossible directive for many traveling long distances to reach the areas before food runs out.
They were resting at Fish Fresh, Ahmad and Mervat later told NBC News, when they came under fire.
“Suddenly, the snipers started shooting. The artillery began shelling. The tanks were firing too,” Ahmad said. He heard drones and quadcopters hovering overhead. “There was nothing left untouched, not even the sea. They were bombing there too.”
NBC News was not able to independently verify his account, though the IDF acknowledged that an incident had occurred that day in which forces fired shots “near” suspects they said were moving toward them and deviating from “designated access routes” to aid sites.
The three took cover. When the shooting subsided, they began walking. Mervat grasped Ahmad’s hand, and Ahmad held Zeidan’s.
At around 4 a.m., they were about half a mile from the aid site, walking among a crowd in the darkness, wary of more gunfire. They were crouched low and turning a street corner, when Mervat said she heard a girl scream behind her. She turned around and saw her mother falling to the ground. Mervat thought she had fainted, but when she turned her over, Zeidan’s face was covered in blood.
“I was in shock, unable to say or do anything, just watching my mother lying in a pool of blood,” she said.
Still in shock and struggling to absorb what was happening, Mervat kept trying to wake her mother. “Mom, get up, the tanks are coming. I’ll help you. Mom, Mom...”
Mervat pressed herself against her mother’s chest, to see if her heart was still beating, and asked her to say the shahada prayer, but Zeidan didn’t respond. Gunfire started to break out wildly, Mervat said, and the crowd became more frantic. Mervat and Ahmad ran for safety.
Zeidan was one of the nearly 30 people the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza alleged were killed on June 3 after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of people trying to reach the GHF distribution site.
In a statement shared on Telegram that same day, the IDF said troops had identified “several suspects” moving toward them and deviating from “designated access routes” to the aid distribution site in Rafah. They began to shoot “warning fire,” the IDF said, but after the people “failed to retreat,” additional shots were fired “near a few individual suspects.”
The IDF said it was looking into details of the incident and reports of casualties. Asked for an update on that probe, the IDF said it had no further comment.
In a separate statement the day of the incident, GHF said that while aid distribution had been “conducted safely and without incident” at the site in Rafah, it was aware that the IDF was investigating “whether a number of civilians were injured after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone,” adding: “This was an area well beyond our secure distribution site and operations area.”
Zeidan’s children did not see her again until hours later, when her body was brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis to be counted among the dead.
Humanitarian groups have railed against the new aid system in Gaza, saying it has put civilian lives at risk.
"The Israeli military must stop shooting at people trying to get food," the United Nations human rights office, or OHCHR, said in a statement Tuesday as it called on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza.
Humanitarian groups have noted that only a limited amount of aid is actually reaching Palestinians under the new system, which was implemented to bring some aid back into the enclave after Israel imposed a total blockade on the entry of food, medicine and other vital supplies into Gaza for nearly three months.
In an update on Wednesday, GHF said that in the three and a half weeks since it launched in Gaza, more than 30 million meals had been distributed. Aid groups have noted that among a population of 2.1 million, that number is far from sufficient, with the World Food Programme on Wednesday calling it a “tiny fraction” of what’s needed. Israeli authorities have also begun to allow some U.N. agencies and other organizations to bring in limited quantities of aid.
In video captured by NBC News’ crew on June 3, Ahmad could be seen wailing over his mother’s body, crying out, “Talk to me, Mother, talk to me — talk.”
“We went, we trusted them,” he said, adding, “Our bread is soaked in blood.”
Her husband, Mohammed Zeidan, 46, remembered his wife of more than 20 years. “She was from God’s paradise. She was my soul,” he said, adding that he felt certain now that the new humanitarian system in Gaza was “a trap, not aid.”
Standing in the family’s makeshift tent, Ahmad delicately unpacked a headscarf and a single shoe from a blue backpack. This was all they had left of her, he said.
“This blood is hers,” he said, pointing to a stain on the backpack.
“We were going to collect the aid with this bag. But my mother was returned to us covered in her own blood.”
CLARIFICATION (June 26, 2025, 12:53 p.m. ET): This article has been updated to replace quotes from Ahmad Zeidan, as captured in a video by an NBC News crew on June 3. An earlier version conflated what he said.
