The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza has passed 60,000, the enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday.
The announcement came as Israel struck dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip, but also maintained its new system of 10-hour-long “humanitarian pauses” in large swaths of the territory, instituted after global outcry amid reports there of famine-level hunger.
The Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper reported that a majority of the aid that entered Gaza on Sunday was looted, though it did not say by whom. The Israel Defense Forces also published a video of people it said were Hamas operatives hijacking an aid truck last week.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, 60,034 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive against Hamas, which began when the terrorist organization attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251, on October 7, 2023.
The ministry also reported at least 145,870 people injured in the war, and said thousands of people remain missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings and areas.
The Hamas figures cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Hamas has claimed women and children make up about half the dead. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 gunmen in Gaza as of January, and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023.
Israel also says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Palestinians carry personal belongings in the Mawasi area of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on July 28, 2025. (AFP)
Local hospitals reported Tuesday that 77 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire over the previous 24 hours, a majority of whom were killed while trying to access aid.
Incidents with multiple fatalities have reportedly become a daily occurrence in the Strip as huge crowds of Palestinians have rushed to aid sites, with some deviating from IDF-approved routes and accidentally coming into the proximity of IDF forces.
Thirty-three people were reportedly killed on Monday while attempting to access an aid convoy in southern Gaza. Local hospitals reported that a further 14 were killed while attempting to access aid in central Gaza, at a site run by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Neither GHF nor the IDF commented on either of the incidents.
A Palestinian youth who was injured while seeking humanitarian aid is carried into the Red Cross field hospital in the Mawasi area of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on July 28, 2025. (AFP)
IDF strikes dozens of targets, including weapons depot
Israeli troops continued to operate against Hamas in Gaza, with the IDF saying Tuesday it had struck dozens of “terror targets” over the past 24 hours.
According to the IDF, the targets included operatives, buildings used by terror groups, tunnels, and caches of weapons.
The military released footage showing a strike on a Hamas weapons depot in the Khan Younis area. The strike was directed by troops of the 36th Division during operations in the area.
In Gaza City, the IDF said the 98th Division was expanding its operations in the Shejaiya and Zeitoun neighborhoods, in an effort to destroy Hamas infrastructure and prevent rocket fire on Israel.
כוחות צה”ל השמידו מחסן אמצעי לחימה בדרום הרצועה: זוהו פיצוצי משנה המעידים על הימצאות תחמושת
כוחות צה״ל בפיקוד הדרום, בהכוונת אמ״ן ושב”כ, ממשיכים לפעול נגד ארגוני הטרור ברחבי רצועת עזה.
במרחב חאן יונס, כוחות אוגדה 36 חיסלו במהלך היממה האחרונה מספר מחבלים, והכווינו תקיפות… pic.twitter.com/GJHF9CNh4Z
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) July 29, 2025
Further airstrikes were reported in the central city of Nuseirat and were said to hit an area of tents hosting displaced people.
The local Al-Awda hospital said it had received “the bodies of 30 martyrs, including 14 women and 12 children” after the strike.
An Israeli military spokesman told AFP that he would need more information to enable him to look into the strikes.
Most Egyptian aid trucks said looted
Meanwhile, the UK-based, Qatari-owned newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported that more than half the Egyptian aid trucks that entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday were looted by unknown actors and their contents later sold in local markets.
Out of 130 trucks, 73 of them were looted near the Morag Corridor, which separates Rafah from Khan Younis and is controlled by the IDF, the report said.
Just 37 trucks arrived at the warehouses of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Egyptian Committee aid group, according to the report.
Another 20 trucks were said to have been returned by Israel to the Rafah border crossing for reasons that were not clear.
There was no immediate comment from the IDF about the report.
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid wait to be allowed to cross from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip on July 28, 2025. (AFP)
Sunday marked the first time Egypt sent aid into Gaza via the Rafah crossing since Israel took control of it in May 2024.
It was the first day of Israel’s new aid policy, under which 10-hour “humanitarian pauses” are held in the fighting to let in more aid. The policy was adopted amid mounting international pressure over the hunger crisis in Gaza.
In an interview with The Times of Israel earlier this week, former US humanitarian envoy David Satterfield said that unlike UN aid which is largely accounted for, assistance from the Red Crescent societies is more susceptible to theft by Hamas and criminal gangs.
On Tuesday, the IDF published footage that it said showed armed Hamas operatives looting a truck of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip last week.
The clip, which the IDF said was recorded on Friday, shows gunmen on top of a truck carrying aid, while a crowd of Palestinians surround it.
The military claimed the video shows “armed Hamas terrorists… violently looting humanitarian aid that had been transferred into the Gaza Strip, preventing it from reaching the civilian population of Gaza.”
צה״ל חושף תיעוד של מחבלי חמאס חמושים בוזזים את הסיוע ההומניטרי
בשבועות האחרונים, ארגון הטרור חמאס פרסם טענות כוזבות על הרעבה מכוונת בעזה.
בתיעוד שצולם ב-25.7.25, נראים מחבלי חמאס חמושים כשהם בוזזים באלימות את הסיוע ההומניטרי שהוכנס לרצועת עזה ומונעים את הגעתו לאוכלוסייה… pic.twitter.com/DQABHd9aFB
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) July 29, 2025
“Contrary to Hamas’s false claims that the individuals in the video are security personnel, they are in fact Hamas terrorists who arrived to seize the aid from Gaza’s residents,” it said, without clarifying how it determined the gunmen were terror operatives.
“Even when aid is delivered into Gaza, Hamas loots it for its own use, blatantly disregarding the needs of the population,” the IDF said, adding that “this footage is further evidence that Hamas is the primary obstacle to the delivery of humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip.”
The military said it was publishing the video after Hamas in recent weeks “spread false claims about a deliberate starvation campaign in Gaza.”
Last week, a senior Israeli defense official said that nearly all of the trucks heading to the warehouses of aid organizations and the UN were looted by Gazan mobs, not Hamas.
UAE, Jordan, Egypt airdrop aid; France says it will too
Also Tuesday, aircraft from the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and, for the first time, Egypt, airdropped 52 pallets of humanitarian aid in the northern and southern Gaza Strip.
The IDF said the airdrops were carried out “in accordance with the directives from the political leadership and as part of the cooperation between Israel, the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt.”
The airdrops were part of a “series of actions aimed at improving the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip,” the military said.
Each pallet carried about a ton of aid, according to the military.
Humanitarian aid is airdropped to Palestinians over the central Gaza Strip, as seen from Khan Younis on July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
“The IDF will continue to work in order to improve the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, along with the international community, while refuting the false claims of deliberate starvation in Gaza,” it added.
AFP reported Tuesday, citing a diplomatic source, that France, too, will airdrop aid into Gaza “in coming days.”
“France will carry out airdrops in the coming days to meet the most essential and urgent needs of the civilian population in Gaza,” the source said, also urging “an immediate opening by Israel of the land crossing points.”
Spain and the UK have also announced plans to airdrop aid into Gaza.
The leading international authority on food crises said Tuesday that the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” saying immediate action is needed to avert “widespread death.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF have strenuously rejected allegations of intentional starvation in the Strip, as well as the claim of widespread, famine-level hunger, as it has instituted new measures — including 10-hour pauses in fighting throughout large swaths of the Strip — to boost aid into the territory.
The Prime Minister’s Office said late Monday that while the “situation in Gaza is difficult,” Israel is working to ensure that large quantities of aid enter the Strip.
Israel blocked the entry of all aid into the Strip between March and May of this year. At the time, the government estimated that enough aid had already accumulated to meet the population’s needs for months, and asserted that allowing more in would strengthen the hand of Hamas, which still holds 50 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 459. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)