UN data on Gaza deaths ‘disinformation’, claims head of controversial aid group

Published

2 months ago

June 27, 2025

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The chief of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has called figures by the United Nations on people killed at aid hubs “disinformation”.

The UN said at least 410 Palestinians have been killed seeking food since Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade on 19 May, while the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said at least 549 people have been killed.

Johnnie Moore, executive director of GHF, told Sky News that there is a “disinformation campaign” that is “meant to shut down our efforts” in the Gaza Strip, fuelled by “some figures” coming out every day.

Mr Moore, an evangelical preacher who served as a White House adviser in the first Trump administration, said his aid group has delivered more than 44 million meals to Gazans since it began operations in May.

The controversial group, backed by Israel and the United States, has been rejected by the UN and other aid groups, which have refused to cooperate with the GHF.

The aid agencies claim Israel is weaponising food, and the new distribution system using the GHF will be ineffective and lead to further displacement of Palestinians.

They also argue the GHF will fail to meet local needs and violate humanitarian principles that prohibit a warring party from controlling humanitarian assistance.

The GHF is distributing food packages, which they say can feed 5.5 people for 3.5 days, in four locations, with the majority in the far south of Gaza.

GHF chief was ‘really political, really punchy’ in Sky News interview

Tom Cheshire

Data and forensics correspondent

@chesh

It was really political, really punchy, and I think the heart of the matter here is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is too political.

The principle of aid, when applied traditionally, is that it has to be applied neutrally and that is what used to happen.

Trucks would go into Gaza, and the UN would distribute that food. Israel, for a long time, said that’s not working and they blame Hamas for that.

At a briefing by the Israeli prime minister’s office yesterday, they were saying that Hamas was still looting those aid vehicles, and it was coming out with a plan to stop that. It didn’t provide evidence for that.

When we asked for evidence, they said we shouldn’t swallow Hamas disinformation. That’s a word that’s been used. That’s very, very political.

This is a different model of doing things. And that is the concern: that rather than just handing it over to a neutral body, this is too close to Israel, it’s too close to the US, and is backed financially by the US.

What does that actually imply? Well, if you’re choosing where those sites are, it means people are going to move down there if you’re not putting them in certain places.

The number of distribution sites has dwindled. It’s attenuated. And so, actually, if there are only a few and if there are any in the south of Gaza, that encourages people to move there, that might fit a political goal as well as a humanitarian one.

Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the aid hubs and have to move through Israeli military zones, where witnesses say the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.

Both figures from the UN and the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry say hundreds of people have been killed or wounded.

In response to Mr Moore’s comments, Rachael Cummings, Save the Children’s team leader in Gaza, told Sky News that people in Gaza “are being forced into the decision to go to retrieve food from the American- and Israeli-backed, militarised, food distribution point”.

“We’re not contesting at all that there have been casualties in the Gaza Strip. I mean, there’s no ceasefire. This is an active conflict,” Mr Moore said.

“I think people may not understand as clearly what it means to operate a humanitarian operation on this scale, in an environment this complex, in a piece of land as small as the Gaza Strip, and may not appreciate that almost anything that happens in the Gaza Strip is going to take place in proximity to something.”

Mr Moore said that the GHF was not denying that there had been “those incidents”, but said the GHF was able to talk to the IDF, which would conduct an investigation, while Hamas was “intentionally harming people for he purpose of defaming what we’re doing”.

He said the GHF, “an independent organisation operating with the blessing of the US government”, was “achieving its aims” by feeding Gazans.

It comes after the US State Department announced on Thursday that it had approved $30m in funding for the GHF as it called on other countries to also support the controversial group delivering aid in Gaza.

A spokesperson from the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs told Sky News that they are “open to any practical solutions that address the crisis on the ground” and are “happy” to talk to the GHF.

The spokeswoman added that the aid distribution in Gaza was not “currently a dignified process and that the format doesn’t follow humanitarian principles”.

She said that people have to walk for miles, and that there is no scalability, with aid not reaching everyone in need.

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

11 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

👉 Follow Trump100 on your podcast app 👈

What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

11 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

11 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.