20 crushed to death at Gaza aid site

• UN criticises GHF's aid distribution model as unsafe 
• Israel completes road to disrupt Hamas operations

At least 20 Palestinians were killed yesterday at an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), in what the US-backed group said was a crowd surge instigated by "armed agitators".

The GHF, which is supported by Israel, said 19 people were trampled and one fatally stabbed during the crush at one of its centres in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

"We have credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas – deliberately fomented the unrest," GHF said in a statement. There has been no immediate comment from Hamas.

Palestinian heath officials told Reuters 21 people had died of suffocation at the site. One medic said lots of people had been crammed into a small space and had been crushed.

Gaza local health authorities said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 17 people across the enclave yesterday.

On Tuesday, the UN rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in Gaza - the majority of them close to GHF distribution points.

Most of those deaths were caused by gunfire that locals have blamed on the Israeli military. The UN has called the GHF's model unsafe and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards - an allegation GHF has denied.

"People who flock in their thousands (to GHF sites) are hungry and exhausted, and they get squeezed into narrow places, amid shortages of aid and the absence of organization and discipline by the GHF," Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, told Reuters.

Earlier yesterday, the Israeli military said it had finished paving a new road in southern Gaza separating several towns east of Khan Younis from the rest of the territory in an effort to disrupt Hamas operations.

Palestinians see the road, which extends Israeli control, as a way to pressure on Hamas in ongoing ceasefire talks, which started on July 6 and are being brokered by Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar with the backing of the United States.

Palestinian sources close to the negotiations said a breakthrough had not yet been reached on any of the main issues under discussion.

Hamas said Israel wanted to keep at least 40 percent of the Gaza Strip under its control as part of any deal, which the group rejected. Hamas has also demanded the dismantlement of the GHF and the reinstatement of a UN-led aid delivery mechanism.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said the road showed Israel was not serious about reaching a ceasefire deal.

"It confirms the occupation's long-term intentions and plans to remain inside the Strip, not to withdraw, and not to end the war. This contradicts everything it claims at the negotiating table or communicates to mediators," Naim said in a post on his Facebook page.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will end once Hamas is disarmed and removed from Gaza.