According to the UN human rights office, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food aid since late May.
In an update on social media, the UN's Palestinian human rights office (OHCHR) says that at least 1,373 people have been killed in Gaza while seeking aid.
Of those, 859 were near sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and 514 were near routes travelled by aid convoys.
OHCHR says that "shooting and shelling of Palestinians by the Israeli military has continued along the routes of food convoys and in the vicinity" of GHF sites. Those incidents have continued since Israel announced humanitarian pauses in fighting last week.
The majority of victims appear to be young men and boys, OHCHR adds. "The UN Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory has no information that these Palestinians were directly participating in hostilities or posed any threat to Israeli security forces or other individuals.
"Each person killed or injured had been desperately struggling for survival, not only for themselves, but also for their families and dependents," the office says.
It's significant that Steve Witkoff has travelled to the region because there has been growing pressure on the Trump administration over the conditions in Gaza and the fact that starvation is gripping the territory.
President Donald Trump said earlier this week there is "real starvation" in Gaza and clearly it is something he has been pressed on.
So part of this visit will be around that issue. Witkoff will visit a site of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the organisation established by the US and Israel which operates inside Israeli military zones.
It has seen disastrous impact on the ground where aid seekers have been shot dead by the Israeli military, according to eyewitnesses.
The UN says more than 1,000 people have been killed seeking aid. At the same time, we've seen rampant malnutrition in Gaza in that time and a lot of pressure on Israel.
Israel and the US blame Hamas for the crisis.
So what Witkoff reports back will be important, because he is a trusted voice as far as Trump is concerned.
As we just reported, US envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff is understood to be in Rafah, southern Gaza, where he will be inspecting food distribution sites.
His visit comes a day after his arrival in Israel. He met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday - the pair are said to have had "productive" talks
The aid sites Witkoff is visiting are those run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which replaced the UN distribution mechanism in May.
Since then, aid groups have expressed alarm at the near daily reports of Palestinians being killed near the GHF's sites, which are inside Israeli military zones.
Eyewitnesses and medics have on several occasions described Israeli forces opening fire on crowds near aid points.
The IDF has previously said it "did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centres".
Two months ago, Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Golan, sparked outrage at home by saying his country was on the way to becoming an international pariah.
This week, that process appears to have accelerated. Fuelled by outrage over the scenes emerging from Gaza, some of Israel’s allies have channelled their anger into diplomatic action: pledges, albeit conditional, to recognise the state of Palestine within a matter of weeks.
France, Britain and Canada have already committed. Germany, Portugal and Australia are all discussing it. In diplomatic terms, these are seismic shifts, even if, as the former US negotiator Dennis Ross points out, they’re driven as much by emotion and domestic politics as strategy.
It’s not just Israel that’s looking increasingly isolated. It’s also Washington. By the end of the UN’s annual gathering in September, the US is likely to find itself in a minority of one among the five permanent members of the Security Council.
So far, the Trump administration is sticking by its ally, Israel. Imposing sanctions on members of the Palestinian Authority to go alongside those slapped on the International Criminal Court earlier this year.
The US and Israel both argue that recognising a Palestinian state is tantamount to rewarding Hamas for its brutal attacks in 2023. But at this week’s UN conference in New York, participants, including key Arab governments, all condemned Hamas, called on it to disarm and end its rule in Gaza
Far from being rewarded, Hamas is being told to get out of the way.
