"The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is like a tick to kill the largest number of Palestinians every day," former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf said on social media Thursday, quoting his cousin-in-law Sally in Gaza after one of his extended relatives was allegedly killed trying to get milk from a GHF distribution site.
The distant relative in question, identified as Ahmed, said that he had to go to the site despite the danger in order to get milk for his child.
"I'm only going to go this one time, and I'm not going to go again," Ahmed was quoted as saying.
"Sally goes on to say, 'What the world needs to know is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is like a trick to kill the largest number of Palestinians every day,'" Yousaf quoted his cousin-in-law as saying. "'Every day, around 100 Palestinians are killed there trying to get food. Our men, our women, our children. Why, why, why? Why is this trick designed just to kill us? We're trying to find food for our families. Not just food - water, milk, and medicine too. So we go to the Humanitarian Foundation, never to return to our families.'"
"This is Gaza. This is a genocide, and the world is backing these facilities," Yousaf's wife Nadia said. "Famine has been declared, yet aid is blocked while the Foundation profits from their hunger. Food, water, and medicine must be allowed in through real aid agencies, and the world must not look away.
Yousaf's story has not been verified, but it is known that he has extended family and in-laws in Gaza. In July 2024, it was reported that he was facing a probe by the Scottish government over donations he made using government funds while his Palestinian in-laws were seeking to escape a Gaza warzone.
GHF aid distribution sites face accusations of danger
This is not the first accusation made against the safety of GHF aid distribution sites.
On August 7, 2025, a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) analysis declared GHF locations as sites of "orchestrated killings," accusing both IDF soldiers and private US contractors of indiscriminate violence against Palestinians.
Numerous deaths have been documented as well, with even the GHF admitting to some of them. For example, in mid-July, at least 20 Palestinians were killed in a human crush incident at a GHF site in Khan Yunis.
However, other reports claim to witness IDF and US contractor violence and gunfire against Palestinians.
According to the United Nations, around 1,400 people have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded while trying to find food, with at least 859 people killed around GHF sites since late May, when GHF operations began.
On July 26, one former aid worker - retired US special forces officer Anthony Aguilar - told the BBC that he witnessed the IDF shooting into crowds of Palestinians, as well as witnessing a level of "brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population" unlike anything he had ever seen before.
The GHF denied his allegations, as well as many others. IDF spokesperson Effie Deffrin further defended the GHF, accusing Hamas and others of spreading rumors and trying to stop Gazans from getting aid.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee further criticized media reporting on the incidents at GHF sites, saying that the only sources for these claims come from Hamas.