59 Palestinians in Gaza are killed by Israeli airstrikes or shot dead while seeking aid

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — At least 31 Palestinians were fatally shot on their way to an aid distribution site in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, while Israeli airstrikes killed at least 28 Palestinians including four children, Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses said.

There were no signs of a breakthrough in ceasefire talks following two days of meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump had said he was nearing an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would potentially wind down the war.

The 31 Palestinians shot dead were on their way to a distribution site run by the Israeli-backed American organization Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near Rafah in southern Gaza, hospital officials and witnesses said.

The Red Cross said its field hospital saw its largest influx of dead in more than a year of operation after the shootings, and that the overwhelming majority of the more than 100 people hurt had gunshot wounds.

Airstrikes in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah killed 13 including the four children, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said. Fifteen others were killed in Khan Younis in the south, according to Nasser Hospital. Israel's military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Intense airstrikes continued Saturday evening in the area of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza.

Israelis rallied yet again for a ceasefire deal. “Arrogance is what brought the disaster upon us,” former hostage Eli Sharabi said of Israeli leaders.

The 21-month war has left much of Gaza's population of over 2 million reliant on outside aid while food security experts warn of famine. Israel blocked and then restricted aid entry after ending the latest ceasefire in March.

“All responsive individuals reported they were attempting to access food distribution sites,” the Red Cross said after the shootings near Rafah, noting the “alarming frequency and scale” of such mass casualty incidents.

Israel’s military said it fired warning shots toward people it said were behaving suspiciously to prevent them from approaching. It said it was not aware of any casualties. The GHF said no incident occurred near its sites.

Abdullah al-Haddad said he was 200 meters (655 feet) from the aid distribution site run by the GHF close to the Shakoush area when an Israeli tank started firing at crowds of Palestinians.

“We were together, and they shot us at once,” he said, writhing in pain from a leg wound at Nasser Hospital.

Mohammed Jamal al-Sahloo, another witness, said Israel's military had ordered them to proceed to the site when the shooting started.

Sumaya al-Sha’er’s 17-year-old son, Nasir, was killed, hospital officials said.

“He said to me, ‘Mom, you don’t have flour and today I’ll go and bring you flour, even if I die, I’ll go and get it,’” she said. “But he never came back home.”

Until then, she said, she had prevented the teenager from going to GHF sites because she thought it was too dangerous.

Witnesses, health officials and U.N. officials say hundreds have been killed by Israeli fire while heading toward GHF distribution points through military zones off limits to independent media. The military has acknowledged firing warning shots at Palestinians who it says approached its forces in a suspicious manner.

The GHF denies there has been violence in or around its sites. But two of its contractors told The Associated Press that their colleagues have fired live ammunition and stun grenades as Palestinians scramble for food, allegations the foundation denied.

In a separate effort, the U.N. and aid groups say they struggle to distribute humanitarian aid because of Israeli military restrictions and a breakdown of law and order that has led to widespread looting.

The first fuel — 150,000 liters — entered Gaza this week after 130 days, a joint statement by U.N. aid bodies said, calling it a small amount for the “the backbone of survival in Gaza." Fuel runs hospitals, water systems, transport and more, the statement said.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people in their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war and abducted 251. Hamas still holds some 50 hostages, with at least 20 believed to remain alive.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 57,800 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, under Gaza’s Hamas-run government, doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. The U.N. and other international organizations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.

Friends and relatives paid their respects a day after Palestinian-American Seifeddin Musalat and local friend Mohammed al-Shalabi were killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Musalat was beaten to death by Israeli settlers on his family’s land, his cousin Diana Halum told reporters. The settlers then blocked paramedics from reaching him, she said.

Musalat, born in Florida, was visiting his family home. His family wants the U.S. State Department to investigate his death and hold the settlers accountable. The State Department said it was aware of the reports of his death but had no comment out of respect for the family.

A witness, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid Israeli retaliation, said the settlers descended on Palestinian lands and “started shooting at us, beating by sticks and throwing rocks."

Israel's military has said Palestinians hurled rocks at Israelis in the area earlier on Friday, lightly wounding two people and setting off a larger confrontation.

Palestinians and rights groups have long accused the military of ignoring settler violence, which has spiked — along with Palestinian attacks and Israeli military raids — since the war in Gaza began.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip attend a rally demanding their release from Hamas captivity and calling for an end to the war, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Palestinians react beside their wounded sister, injured in an Israeli airstrike, as she brought to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip attend a rally demanding their release from Hamas captivity and calling for an end to the war, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

A Palestinian man carries the body of his child, who was killed in an Israeli military airstrike on Gaza, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians carry bags of flour distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians carry bags of flour distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Mourners attend the funeral of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli bombardment, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Mourners attend the funeral of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli bombardment, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Mourners attend the funeral of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli bombardment, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinians inspect the wreckage of a gas station destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Mourners attend the funeral of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli bombardment, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — An Iranian Kurdish separatist group in Iraq said it has launched attacks on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days in retaliation for Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests.

Members of the National Army of Kurdistan, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, have “played a role in the protests through both financial support and armed operations to defend protesters when needed,” Jwansher Rafati, a PAK representative, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Iranian media has previously accused the group and other Kurdish factions of attacking security forces.

Iranian activists say more than 2,797 people were killed in the government’s crackdown on a recent wave of nationwide protests.

A handful of Iranian Kurdish dissident or separatist groups — some with armed wings — have long found a safe haven in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, where their presence has been a point of friction between the central government in Baghdad and Tehran.

Iran has occasionally launched strikes on the groups’ sites in Iraq but has not done so since the outbreak of the recent protests.

The PAK is the first of the groups to claim armed operations since the protests and crackdown began.

“When we found out that the IRGC was shooting protesters directly, our fighters in Ilam, Kermanshah, and Firuzkuh responded with armed operations and inflicted significant damage on the regime’s forces,” Rafati said in an interview in Irbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

The PAK has also claimed a number of attacks online and posted video of what it said were operations against IRGC targets, sometimes accompanied by grainy videos showing gunshots or explosions and buildings ablaze. The AP was not able to confirm the extent of the damages or the impact of the attacks.

Rafati said the attacks were launched by members of the group’s National Army of Kurdistan military wing based inside Iran. The group had not sent any forces from Iraq, but it anticipates that Iran may strike PAK bases in Iraq in retaliation for its operations, he added.

He said the PAK has been providing support to dozens of Iranians who fled to the Kurdish area in Iraq since the crackdown on protests began.

The PAK claims may put Iraqi authorities in a sensitive situation with Tehran — which wields significant influence over its neighbor — concerning the group's ongoing presence in northern Iraq.

Iraq in 2023 reached an agreement with Iran to disarm Kurdish Iranian dissident groups and move them from their bases near the border areas into camps designated by Baghdad. The bases were shut down and movement within Iraq was restricted, but the groups have remained active.

During the Israel-Iran war last year, the PAK and other Kurdish dissident groups began organizing politically in case the authorities in Tehran should lose their hold on power but did not launch armed operations.

A PAK spokesperson told the AP at the time that premature armed mobilization could endanger the Kurdish groups and the fragile security of Kurdish areas, both in Iraq and across the border in Iran.

A decade ago, PAK forces received training from the U.S. military when they were taking part in the fight against the Islamic State militant group after it swept across Iraq and Syria, seizing large swathes of territory.

Ironically, the PAK at the time found itself allied with Iran-backed Shiite Iraqi militias that were also fighting against IS.

At that time, the PAK received funding from Iraq's Kurdish regional government, but says now that most of its funding comes from its supporters in Iran and the diaspora.

During the recent protests, Iranian state media has repeatedly referred to the demonstrators as “terrorists” and alleged they received support from America and Israel, without offering evidence to support the claim.

Iranian state television aired what appeared to be surveillance video of a group of men wearing the baggy pants common among the Kurds, firing pistols, in Iran’s western Kurdish region. It has also published images of seized weapons in the area.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, which is close to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said Kurdish groups including the PAK “have played an active role in inciting these movements by issuing coordinated statements and messages.” It said that “groups based in northern Iraq have passed the stage of psychological warfare and media operations and have entered the field phase.”

The semiofficial Fars news agency, which is also close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported on Jan. 10 that another group — the Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK — had killed eight Guard members in Kermanshah and that a PJAK sniper killed a police officer in Ilam province. PJAK has not claimed any armed operations during the protests.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report. Sewell reported from Beirut.

This image made from video shows the representative of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, Jwansher Rafati, speaking during an interview with The Associated Press, in Irbil, Iraq, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Farid Abdulwahed)