For his part, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, expressed doubt that the attack was not deliberate.

Bodies were brought to a hospital in Gaza City after the latest Israeli strikes on the area killed 22 people, including 11 children and three women, according to health officials.

After a few minutes the guards tried to let a group of women join the front of the queue. The crowd surged forward and broke into the compound. When tear-gas grenades failed to stop the surge of desperate people, the guards stopped handing out boxes and closed the centre.

A planned “humanitarian city” inside Gaza intended to hold hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be a “concentration camp,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned.

There were conflicting accounts from Palestinian and aid officials over what happened at the food distribution hub run by the Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

As many as 19 people were trampled on Wednesday with another fatally stabbed in violence at the site, according to the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Several children were killed in an Israeli airstrike at a water distribution point in central Gaza Sunday, health officials said, one of several deadly incidents in the territory that come as ceasefire talks in Doha falter.

At least 20 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday at an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in what the U.S.-backed group said was a crowd surge instigated by armed agitators.