Israeli forces killed at least 23 Palestinians seeking food on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, according to hospital officials and witnesses, who described facing gunfire as hungry crowds surged around aid sites as the malnutrition-related death toll surged.

Southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital said they had received bodies from near multiple distribution sites, including eight from Teina, about three km away from a distribution site in Khan Younis, which is operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private US and Israeli-backed contractor that took over aid distribution more than two months ago.

The hospital also received one body from Shakoush, an area hundreds of metres north of a different GHF site in Rafah. Another nine were also killed by troops near the Morag corridor, who were awaiting trucks entering Gaza through an Israeli border crossing, it said.