Strikes kill 94 Palestinians in Gaza, including 45 people waiting for aid, authorities say

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli airstrikes and shootings killed 94 Palestinians in Gaza late Wednesday and Thursday, including 45 who were attempting to get much-needed humanitarian aid, hospitals and the Health Ministry said Thursday.

Families wept over the bodies from a strike that hit a tent camp during the night as displaced people slept in southern Gaza. At least 13 members of a single family were killed, including at least six children under 12.

“My children, my children … my beloved,” wailed Intisar Abu Assi, sobbing over the bodies of her son and daughters and their young children. Another woman kissed the forehead of a dead little girl wrapped in a blanket on the floor of the morgue at Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis.

In central Gaza, a boy stroked the face of his dead sister, 6-year-old Heba Abu Etiwi, in a morgue at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital. The girl and another of her brothers were among eight people killed when a strike Wednesday evening hit near a stand selling falafel.

A separate strike on a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced people also killed 15 people.

The toll from strikes emerged as more Palestinians were killed in near-daily shootings while trying to obtain aid.

Five were killed on the roads leading to food-distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the newly created, secretive American organization backed by Israel to feed the Gaza Strip’s population. Another 40 were killed while waiting for trucks carrying U.N. aid in several locations around Gaza, according to hospital officials.

Witnesses have said Israeli troops regularly unleash barrages on crowds of Palestinians trying to reach the GHF sites. Witnesses have also reported troops opening fire when crowds of people mass near military-run zones of Gaza, waiting for U.N. trucks to enter.

More than 500 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded since the food-distribution sites opened in May.

The Israeli military, whose forces are deployed on the roads leading to the sites, says it fires warning shots to control crowds or at Palestinians who approach its troops. Armed U.S. contractors guard the sites.

Amnesty International on Thursday issued a report saying Israel was continuing to “use starvation of civilians as a weapon of war … as part of its ongoing genocide.”

It said the GHF distribution system appeared intended only to “placate international concerns” even as Israel allows in only a small amount of food for the U.N. to distribute separately.

“By maintaining a deadly, dehumanizing and ineffective militarized ‘aid’ scheme, Israeli authorities have turned aid-seeking into a booby trap for desperate starved Palestinians,” it said.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry denounced the Amnesty report, saying the organization has “joined forces with Hamas and fully adopted all of its propaganda lies.”

Israel has rejected allegations it is committing genocide in Gaza in the war with Hamas, and it is challenging the accusation filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.

Amnesty accused Israel last year of committing genocide, saying it has sought to deliberately destroy Palestinians by mounting deadly attacks, demolishing vital infrastructure and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid.

Israel intends for GHF to replace the U.N. humanitarian network, which has delivered massive amounts of aid to Palestinians throughout the war. Israel contends that Hamas siphons off large amounts of aid from that system, a claim that the U.N. and aid groups deny. They have rejected GHF, saying it cannot deliver enough aid, endangers Palestinians and is being used by Israel to carry out its war goals.

Israel cut off all food and other supplies to Gaza for more 2 ½ months this year, driving its population toward famine, in what it said was a move to push Hamas to make concessions in negotiations and release hostages.

It eased the blockade in March. The Foreign Ministry and COGAT, the Israeli defense body in charge of coordinating aid to Gaza, said Wednesday that Israel has facilitated the entry of over 3,000 aid trucks into the Gaza Strip since May 19.

That amounts to around 28 trucks a day, a fraction of the hundreds of trucks a day aid workers say are needed.

In a statement Tuesday, GHF rejected criticism of its operations and said it has delivered the equivalent of more than 52 million meals. GHF distributes boxes of food staples such as lentils and rice, saying one box holds the equivalent of more than 50 meals.

Witnesses have reported scenes of chaos at GHF sites as desperate crowds race to pick up food boxes, with some taking more than one while many others go empty-handed. Much of the food is sold in markets at astronomical prices.

The Gaza Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has passed 57,000 since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its death count but says more than half of the dead are women and children.

The deaths come as Israel and Hamas inch closer to a possible ceasefire that would end the 21-month war.

Trump said Tuesday that Israel had agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. Hamas’ response emphasized its demand that the truce lead to an end to the war.

The Israeli military blames Hamas for the civilian casualties because it operates from populated areas. The military said it targeted Hamas militants and rocket launchers in northern Gaza that fired toward Israel on Wednesday.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.

The war has left the coastal Palestinian territory in ruins, with much of the urban landscape flattened in the fighting. More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, often multiple times.

Chehayeb reported from Beirut.

Palestinians survey the destruction at a school used as a shelter after it was struck by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, on Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Lian Al-Za'anin, center, is comforted by relatives as she mourns the loss of her father, Rami Al-Za'anin, who was killed while heading to an aid distribution hub, at the morgue of the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, on Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Wounded Palestinians are brought to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after being injured while on their way to an aid distribution center, Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Mourners pray beside the bodies of Palestinians that were killed by an Israeli airstrike that struck a school used as a shelter, in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, on Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

The mother of Anas Al-Basyouni mourns his loss shortly after he was killed while on his way to an aid distribution center, during his funeral at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Mahmoud Al-Hosary is brought to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after being injured on his way to an aid distribution center, Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Israeli soldiers drive near the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Smoke from an Israeli bombardment rises over the Gaza Strip, seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)