Global News Podcast - Gaza aid deaths: Why does this keep happening?

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 400 Palestinians have been killed near aid sites since late May. The Israeli military has repeatedly said it will investigate such reports. We ask why this keeps happening.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Saturday the 21st of June, these are our main stories. Dozens more people in Gaza are reported to have been killed by Israeli fire, many while seeking aid. We ask why this keeps happening. Talks between European nations and Iran on trying to end its conflict with Israel failed to make a breakthrough. Also in this podcast, tech giants are experimenting with AI-generated weather forecasts. But are they any good? And?

La bu la bu! La bu! China calls for stricter regulation of toys like the wildly popular Laboubou dolls. Israel's war on Iran has not surprisingly dominated the headlines since bombs and missiles started raining down more than a week ago, killing hundreds of people. But during that time, day after day, Gaza's civil defence agency says that while the eyes of the world are elsewhere, Israeli troops have continued to kill dozens of Palestinians trying to collect food from the few aid distribution points set up in the Strip by a new secretive US and Israeli backed group.

Here are three reports from the past week alone. 23 people are said to have died when Israeli tanks and drones opened fire on a crowd near an aid distribution centre. Israel is yet to comment. In Gaza, more than 50 Palestinians are killed as they wait outside an aid distribution centre. 21 of those are said to have died near an aid distribution site in the centre of the territory. Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry says that in all, more than 400 people have died while simply trying to get aid since late last month, when the US-Israeli BAT group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, opened up these new distribution sites,

bypassing traditional aid agencies like the UN. This after an 11-week long Israeli blockade of a territory that has mostly been reduced to rubble and as the UN Children's Agency is warning that Gaza is on the brink of a man-made drought as its water system is collapsing because of the war. Amjad Al-Shawa is based in Gaza City and is the director of the Palestinian network of non-governmental organizations, an umbrella group that represents more than 130 Palestinian NGOs. So most every day that we are receiving

tens of people who are killed, more than hundreds are injured. Every day we have these crimes committed against these people who are trying to get some aid to be back to their star children. And instead of getting back with some aid, they are getting back as bodies. Why this happened? After 105 days of starvation because of the Israeli denial of entry of all humanitarian needs, when people are in a famine situation, they witness their children in acute malnutrition and they have to do something. And the only way to get it, just to go by thousands from the early morning to stand in rows between defenses and then to be shot and killed and injured

away from any medical points though they are bleeding to death. I'm Judd Al-Shawa. The BBC requested an interview on this issue with the Israeli Embassy here in London, the Israeli Defence Forces and the Israeli government without success. Israel doesn't allow foreign journalists into Gaza so Sebastian Usher is monitoring events there from Jerusalem. He told me about the violence in Gaza on Friday when more than 40 people were killed around half of them while trying to get aid. The Israeli army actually acknowledged pretty much for the first time that I've seen. Normally they say that they find warning shots at people who are coming towards them in what they deem a

threatening way. This time they've actually said that they did open fire on people. Again these people as far as the Israelis are concerned, the Israeli troops are concerned, posing a threat but that is more of an acknowledgement than we have been hearing. Yes, but it keeps happening day after day. And a lot of people outside Gaza just can't understand why, when people are simply trying to get aid, so many of them are being killed in Israeli fire.

It is unbelievable. I mean, there's no way around it. It seems to be a combination of several very bad elements, which lead to this outcome. One is, as I was saying, the way that aid is now limited to a very small amount of distribution sites. The organization, such as it is, between particularly the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

and the Israeli military. It just doesn't seem to be connected in any way. I mean, I've covered this quite a lot and I've received emails late at night from the GHF essentially saying, you know, that our reporting, my reporting is inaccurate because it's suggesting that there is a correlation between their sites and what is happening. And every time that this happens, they essentially say that they have managed to distribute a relatively large amount of food. That's debatable as well. But without incident, and it just, as you say, it just seems utterly extraordinary. How can you say it's without incident when you are having these killings every day?

But as far as GHF is concerned, it's happening outside the perimeter of what they're doing. Now, what they're doing in itself doesn't seem to have any organization. They're essentially put out the food that they have on pallets and just allow Palestinians, as they finally get in to take it any way they can. No organization. And I think that's leading to the situation as well. The Israeli military has declared these zones as active combat zones between the hours of 6 in the evening and 6 in the morning. Now, these aid distribution sites, when they do open, usually open just after that.

But how do people get to them, except in those hours of darkness? And what seems to be happening is that thousands of people, and we've seen the images, they are extraordinary. Thousands of people in the darkness are trying to get themselves in a position where they can get one, one pallet of food which will feed them maybe for a day or two.

Sebastian Ascher. There are also grave concerns about Gaza's health system, with a UN warning that evacuation orders, overcrowded hospitals and blocked aid have pushed critical care to the edge. Last month, Al-Awdah Hospital was described by the World Health Organization as the last functioning hospital in North Gaza. A week later, amid Israel's escalating offensive, it was declared out of service. The Israeli defense forces accuse Hamas and other armed groups of operating in and around the facilities. The BBC has had access to the account of the last days of this hospital, told by one member of its medical staff to our reporter, Alice Cuddy.

Last night, it's a very difficult night. Mohammed Salha is the director of the NGO-run Al-Aouda Hospital in northern Gaza, one of several hospitals across the territory to have ceased or reduced operations since Israel expanded its offensive last month. The BBC has corroborated key details of Salha's testimony with those from other witnesses, as well as verifying video and photo evidence. We've also sent multiple inquiries to the Israeli military. Actually this night Israeli forces bombing surrounding the hospital

and the house is closed to the hospital. In a video shared on the 18th of May on social media and verified by the BBC, an explosion close to the hospital and verified by the BBC, an explosion close to the hospital fills the courtyard with smoke and sends people scrambling into Al-Alder. The IDF says it was fighting terrorist infrastructure sites in the area. They claim Hamas has a strategy of using hospitals for terror-related activities, including holding hostages, storing explosives and sheltering senior operatives. On the 21st of May, another disturbing message from Salha.

Yes, good morning. Actually now the hospital is totally under siege, so nobody can move out. Then the voice note cuts out. The conversation continues over message. Salha's texts have been voiced by a BBC producer. Are you OK? I asked. I'm OK, but the situation is very difficult. On the 22nd of May, Salha says by message

that the situation has escalated further. Now the tank has seized the hospital, shooting a lot. The messages again stop for several hours until two voice notes arrive with shooting in the background. Now they are shooting a lot. The tank has seized the hospital. It's loud voice of shooting. We later send the audio to multiple experts who say you can hear small arms fire. Several suggest it is indicative of mounted guns on Israeli tanks. They say it is not possible to determine definitively whether it indicates a gun battle or only one side firing.

Analysts at an open-source defence and security intelligence company say the pitch and echo of the fire indicates that it is happening in close terrain. On the 24th of May, we receive a reply to an unanswered message from the day before. Yesterday, the Israeli forces... He says Israeli forces hit the hospital again yesterday a reply to an unanswered message from the day before. He says Israeli forces hit the hospital again yesterday and that staff were injured, some with shrapnel in the chest, hand and leg.

Relief International also later refers to reports of staff being injured after the emergency room was hit. In response to questions about this incident, the IDF tells the BBC it is not aware of a strike on this date. But a few days later, a statement from the World Health Organization talks about an attack on this date, the 23rd of May. On the 29th, another voice note from Salha arrives. Last three days is very difficult days. We are really facing a lot of bombing and...

He then says he had refused to leave, but claims that the Israeli military threatened to enter the hospital and kill everyone inside if they did not evacuate. The IDF denies this. evacuate. The IDF denies this. Videos verified by the BBC show patients and staff being moved to Gaza City. In one, staff, including Salha, can be seen walking along a rubble stream road at sunset. The full evacuation of Al-Alda begins. The BBC asked the IDF what was happening. More than 40 hours later it said it had enabled the evacuation of medical staff and patients following the identification of terrorist activity

and terrorists who had planted explosives in the area of Al-Awda. In Salha's last voice note, a tone of defeat, but also a glimmer of hope. Everything is destroyed and damaged, which is the way it is. But also a glimmer of hope. And we hope it's finished soon to come back to our hospital. Mohammed Salha, the director of the Al-Awda Hospital, ending that report by Alice Qadi. Even as Iran and Israel continue to carry out airstrikes on each other, European foreign ministers have urged Tehran to resume negotiations with the US on its nuclear program. But at the talks in Geneva, the first face-to-face meeting between Western governments and Iran

since the current conflict began, Iran's foreign minister said negotiations could only resume if Israel stopped its attacks on his country. The US President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters at an airfield, dismissed the importance of the Geneva talks. We're ready, willing and able and we've been speaking to Iran and we'll see what happens. It's time to see whether or not people come to their senses. Did the Europeans help at all in talking with Iran? No, they didn't help. Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe.

They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this. Our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette, gave us her assessment of the talks in Geneva. Well, I think if you listen carefully to the EU foreign ministers here, the Europeans, they're essentially agreeing with President Trump because while they came out of their talks expressing they were satisfied by Iran's readiness to keep talking and they said that Iran was willing to put issues on the table which it hadn't wanted to before but they all

emphasized that Iran had to resume its negotiations with the United States in particular a very tough message from the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who flew directly from Washington where he met Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, and Steve Witkoff, the envoy. He brought their message to Geneva and said basically the military threat is real, there is a pathway for negotiations, but it's going to close so you have to return to the table. But Abbas Araqchi, while he's ready to talk, he says at least, contrary to what President Trump says, he's ready to talk to the Europeans, but not to the United States.

But we do hear, I myself spoke to the Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, Saeed Khatibzadeh, this week, and he talked about the back channels, that they were getting messages from the Americans. And I met someone here in Geneva who said that there are back channels, that the Iranians and the Americans are exchanging messages. But it felt a bit surreal. The attacks on Israel, on Iran, Iran and Israel are intensifying. The range of targets are intensifying. And yet they come to Geneva and all they can agree is that they're going to discuss again without even giving a date.

Please, Doucette. State media in China has called for stricter regulation on companies that make what are known as blind box toys over fears that young people are becoming addicted to them. These types of toys where the exact model, colour or style isn't known until the box is bought and opened have become hugely popular among children, especially in China. Harry Bly reports. Blind box toys rely on the element of surprise and collectability to appeal to their target market. There's an element of gambling to it. The idea is you won't really know what's inside until you buy it and open the packaging, so there's no guarantee should you be after a specific colour or character.

These kinds of products are not a new phenomenon. Over the years, collectible cards or blind card packs have also been popular, where one might have to purchase several packs to get the specific playing card they most desire. But the latest craze... This is the commercial for Le Boo Boo Dolls, fluffy plush teddy bear-like bodies with a large plastic face, with a signature look, pointy ears and a mischievous grin with nine sharp teeth. They range in price from $18 to $50 and have been around since 2019. There are 300 different variations and since you don't know what's inside the box,

collectors often buy multiple and even then there's a chance of getting a duplicate. And these dolls aren't just popular in China. Laboubous dolls have become an international fad, with sales being paused in several countries due to overwhelming demand. It's thought more than 60% of sales of Laboubos, though, are from mainland China. The parent company PopMart is now valued at $40 billion. But since this report in People's Daily, calling for stricter regulation to avoid what it called youth addiction, shares in the company have fallen. Already China has banned the sale of blind item toys to children under 8.

Now the restrictions could get even tighter. Harry Bligh Still to come? It lives to kill. A mindless eating machine. It will attack and devour anything. Fifty years after its release, we look at how the movie draws changed cinema. Here in Britain, we joke that the weather is a national obsession, so getting an accurate

forecast is a big deal. Until recently our traditional physics-based weather prediction models have been made using supercomputers that cost billions of dollars. But in the past few years there's been a big push towards using artificial intelligence for weather forecasting. AI can produce forecasts on a laptop in less than a minute by using decades of previous weather data. But how accurate are these forecasts? A question for BBC weather presenter, Chris Fawkes. If you look at the big scale stuff,

so big areas of high pressure, big areas of low pressure that stretch for thousands of miles, these AI models can actually outperform. So they're better in some cases than the traditional physics-based models. But these AI models also have their drawbacks. There are some things they simply can't do very well and it tends to be the smaller scale stuff. So things like showers, it wouldn't be very good at forecasting those. And the reason for that is the data that's been fed on comes from the traditional global scale models.

And these have a resolution of 28 square kilometers often. Showers are much smaller than that. So these AI models simply can't see that kind of detail. And one thing that you might have heard about just in the last 24 hours, we've had Hurricane Eric that hit the Pacific coastline in Mexico. AI models seem to be quite good about predicting the landfall but they're hopeless at predicting the wind strength. Now one of the very best AI models was suggesting just 24 hours before this made landfall that the winds would be around about 30 kilometers an hour. In reality the winds gusting

with Eric were actually closer to 220 kilometers an hour. That's a really big difference, isn't it? Yeah, you talk about the difference for a breezy day to a day that would rip the roof off your house. So it's a really big important difference. So there are some things that these AI models are good at, some things that they're hopeless at, but I think there's just a lot of excitement because they've not been around for very long, they're being developed very rapidly, and the hope is that people will be able to use their traditional models and then kind of train these AI models to make better predictions for things like showers. It might be possible in the future, but we're not there yet.

And the fact that these AI models are relying on decades of data means that they're not going to be that accurate as climate change continues to change the weather patterns of our planet? Climate change might well affect some of the weather patterns that we see around the world in future years. We would expect that. Things like heat waves become more common, the heat becomes more extreme. Well that's all based on physics that go into the traditional models. AI models don't know that. So the question is, is the past climate that we have had going to be representative of the future climate?

And also things that are rare. So when Mount Pinatubu erupted in the Philippines back in the 1990s, that was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions we've had over recent decades. It cooled the planet for about two years by half a degree Celsius. But again, those really rare events in these AI models that have been trained on that data, they simply won't have come across that kind of thing very often. And so it's more likely than not, they wouldn't have a clue about the impacts that a big volcanic eruption would have on the atmosphere. BBC weather presenter Chris

Fawkes and it doesn't look like AI is going to take his job anytime soon. Now after a highly emotional debate here in the UK, a law to allow assisted dying for terminally ill people in England and Wales has passed a key vote in the lower house of the British Parliament. One of the MPs, Diane Abbott, explained why she was against it. I came to this house to be a voice for the voiceless. And who could be more voiceless than somebody who is in their sickbed and believes they are dying. I ask members to speak up for the voiceless one more time. Hear, hear. But the MP who put forward the bill,

Kim Ledbeater, said there would be safeguards and it would help seriously ill people to die with more dignity at a time of their choosing. Giving dying people choice about how they die is about compassion, control, dignity and bodily autonomy. Surely we should all have the right, I'm going to finish shortly. Surely we should all have the right to decide what happens to our bodies and decide when enough is enough.

The bill now goes to the upper chamber, the House of Lords, for further scrutiny before it becomes law. It's already undergone a number of changes since it was first put forward. Perhaps most notably, high court judges are no longer required to approve assisted deaths. The bill foresees that task being done by a panel of medical and legal experts instead. Our UK Affairs correspondent, Rob Watson, watched the historic vote. An argument could be made that this was parliamentary democracy at its best, discussing issues of life and death, and in the end it was a close vote after all that passion. But in the end,

Britain is now headed towards joining the sort of small but growing number of countries worldwide that do allow some form of assisted dying and of course just here in the UK as well as being part of that wider international picture, it is of course a huge moment in sort of British social policy and it's being compared to the way in which in the 1960s abortion was legalised, homosexuality decriminalised and capital punishment ended of course before that. But it's not definitely going to become law and even if it is it would take some time. I think it's more likely than not, Jeanette, this was a huge hurdle that was passed in

the House of Commons. Yes, it's going to go through more stages, it's going to the upper chamber of the House of Lords but I think whatever reservations they have now that MPs have given it their approval it is going to become law. I think that's more likely than not. But absolutely, you raise this point, it's not going to be around the corner. And that's because the legislation itself builds in a four-year gap. So it says that if this law is passed, it'll give the legal profession, the medical profession in the UK, the state, if you like, more'll give it'll give the state four years to prepare for what is after all a truly radical change in UK social policy. How does what's happening in Britain compare to what other countries are doing on this very sensitive issue? So Britain will be at

absolutely the most restrictive of the international spectrum because there'll be strict limits, you have to be a diagnosis of six months to live and there's going to be strong safeguards in terms of a panel assessing whether you're doing this freely or whether you've been coerced. So very restrictive, lots of safeguards. Rob Watson, a federal judge in the US has ordered that the pro-Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil be released on bail after more than three months in detention. He became one of the most high profile symbols of Donald Trump's crackdown on foreign students. He was arrested in New York on March the 8th.

Nomiya Iqbal has more details. Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate, was a prominent voice during the anti-war protests on campuses. The Syrian-born Palestinian has an American wife and is a legal resident but was detained in Louisiana for more than three months. He wasn't charged with any crime. Instead, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio used a rare immigration law claiming his views were a threat to foreign policy.

Mr. Khalil's lawyers said it violated his freedom of speech rights. He has a separate case in the immigration court challenging his deportation. But a judge said Mr Khalil was not a flight risk nor a danger to the community, so it was highly unusual the government wanted to keep him detained. Mahmood Khalil will now fly back to New York to be reunited with his wife and son, who was born while he was in detention. Namiya Iqbal. It first hit the cinemas half a century ago and made a generation of moviegoers think twice about swimming in the ocean. It lives to kill.

A mindless eating machine. It will attack and devour anything. It is as if God created them. Jaws, the story of a hungry great white shark attacking people in a seaside town, became a classic and not just for the menacing soundtrack. It was the first summer blockbuster and brought in $260 million at the box office. And it continues to make money. The Jaws franchise has earned Universal around $800 million across four films. But the movie was influential in another way.

It led to a big increase in trophy hunting of great white sharks, much to the regret of director Steven Spielberg. That's one of the things I still fear, not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sport fishermen that happened after 1975, which I truly and to this day regret. The decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really, truly regret that. Richard Brody is a film critic at the New Yorker magazine. He watched Jaws when it came out in 1975 as a teenager. He told Celia Hatton what made this film stand out.

One of the things that was different about it was the intensity of its marketing campaign. There was an unprecedented television advertising campaign. They spent an enormous amount of money to get viewers ready for Jaws. It also was released in many, many theatres. It was unusual for movies to be released in 400 theatres as Jaws was. But the movie itself had something that really made it distinctive. And it isn't just the fact of the intensity of its scares. It was something about the tone of the film that's really distinctive to, in fact,

that I think is the essence of Steven Spielberg's art. Even though he's a really sophisticated filmmaker with a remarkable panoply of techniques, the tone of the film fundamentally resembles television. In other words, it felt very, very familiar to young viewers in a way that movies by older filmmakers, not even especially very much older filmmakers, felt a little bit more remote. LESLIE KENDRICK You mentioned that there was a huge marketing effort to accompany Jaws. Can you talk about that? I mean, was Jaws the first summer blockbuster?

GERRY FRIEDMAN Jaws was the first summer blockbuster. First of all, the campaign started long before the film was made because Peter Benchley's novel hadn't been published yet when the movie was planned. And so the studio worked with the publisher essentially to turn the book into a bestseller ahead of time. What makes it a blockbuster is the large expense, the large effort on marketing. Prior to Jaws, the summer was not actually an especially great time, according to the studios, to release movies. They felt that people tended not to go to the movies during the summer, that they tended to take part in outdoor activities rather than sit in movie theaters.

And Jaws stood that equation on its head. And did Jaws set the template that was copied over and over? Are studios still as dependent on summer blockbusters as they were back then? Studios are probably more dependent on summer blockbusters now than they were then because the movie business was far more robust in general. Essentially Jaws, although there's nothing of teen culture about it, Jaws set the template for a Hollywood that was teen-centric. So it started with Jaws and then it moved ahead to

Star Wars a couple of years later. Starting in the 1980s, Hollywood essentially rejuvenated itself, not exactly artistically, but in terms of the audience on which it was focusing. The kinds of movies that it made tended to be the kinds that young people were going to go see. Would you say that Jaws has withstood the test of time? To be perfectly honest, I did watch Jaws again not that long ago and found it to be not especially different now from how it struck me then, namely successful in a sensationalistic way and not especially satisfying. But what changed in between the release of Jaws and

now is home video. In 1975, if you wanted to see a movie again, you had to go back to the theater. And once it left the theater, you pretty much could count on not seeing it again for a very long time until maybe it was shown on television a couple of years later. Once VHS came in in the late 70s, early 80s the idea of re-watching movies became as ordinary as listening over and over again to your records and the result of this is that instantly movies people loved when they were you know teenagers became objects of nostalgia in the same way that their record collection did and that more than the artistic specifics of Jaws itself is part of why it has lived on.

Film critic Richard Brody. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Masoud Ibrahim Khayel and the producers were Shantel Hartle and Guy Pitt. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janak Jalil. Until next time, goodbye.