Many of the 100 Palestinians killed or wounded when they crowded around a Gaza aid convoy in desperate bid to get flour were hit by Israeli army fire, the EU has said.
At least 112 Palestinians were believed to have been killed and 760 injured when soldiers opened fire after feeling threatened by the crowds.
The situation in Gaza has been continuously deteriorating since war broke out between Israel and Hamas more than five months ago, with many citizens forced to searching through piles of rubble and garbage for food.
An Israeli government spokesperson initially said that the deaths were caused by the delivery drivers ploughing into the surging crowd, but Hamas rejected this account, saying there was ‘undeniable’ evidence of ‘direct firing at citizens’.
The European External Action Service said responsibility for the crisis lay with ‘restrictions imposed by the Israeli army and obstructions by violent extremist(s) to the supply of humanitarian aid.’
United States military planes began the first airdrops of thousands of meals into Gaza, and Egypt’s military said it also conducted airdrops.
Many families have also begun mixing animal and bird food with grain to bake bread. International aid officials say they have encountered catastrophic hunger.
Soad Abu Hussein, a widow and mother of five children who has taken shelter in a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp said: ‘We’re dying from starvation.’
At least 10 children have starved to death, according to hospital records in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.
Northern Gaza has borne the brunt of the conflict that began when the Hamas militant group launched an attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing around 250 hostages.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,320. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures, but says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.
In Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of the territory’s people now seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike on Saturday struck tents outside the Emirati hospital, killing 11 people and wounding about 50, including health workers, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
Israel’s air, sea and ground offensive, reduced much of densely populated northern Gaza to rubble. The military told Palestinians to move south, but as many as 300,000 people are believed to have remained.
Roughly one in six children under the age of 2 in the north suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting, ‘the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,’ Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said this week. ‘If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza.’
That has caused such desperation that people have overwhelmed trucks delivering food aid to the region and grabbed what they can, Skau said, forcing the WFP to suspend aid deliveries to the north.
‘The breakdown in civil order, driven by sheer desperation, is preventing the safe distribution of aid – and we have a duty to protect our staff,’ he said.
In the violence Thursday, hundreds of people rushed about 30 trucks bringing a predawn delivery of aid to the north. Palestinians said nearby Israeli troops shot into the crowds. Israel said they fired warning shots toward the crowd and insisted many of the dead were trampled.
Doctors at hospitals in Gaza and a U.N. team that visited a hospital there said large numbers of the wounded had been shot.
Ahmed Abdel Karim, who was being treated at Kamal Adwan Hospital for gunshot wounds in his feet, said he had spent two days waiting for aid trucks to arrive before Thursday’s convoy came.
‘Everyone attacked and advanced on these trucks. Because of the large number, I could not get flour,’ he said. He was shot by Israeli troops, he said.
Radwan Abdel-Hai, a father of four young children, heard a rumor late Wednesday that an aid convoy was on its way. He and five others took a donkey cart to meet it and found a ‘sea of people’ waiting for the aid.
As people reached the trucks, ‘tanks started firing at us,’ he said. ‘As I ran back, I heard tank shells and gunfire. I heard people screaming. I saw people falling to the ground, some motionless.’
Abdel-Hai took shelter in a nearby building. When the shooting stopped, many dead people were on the ground, he said. ‘Many were shot in their back,’ he said.
Abu Hussein, the widow, said more than 5,000 people – mostly women and children – living with her in the Jabaliya school have not received any aid for more than four weeks. Adults eat one meal or less to save food for the children, she said.
A group of people went to the shore to try to fish, but three were killed and two were wounded by gunfire from Israeli ships, she said. ‘They just wanted to get something for their children.’
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mansour Hamed, a 32-year-old former aid worker living with more than 50 relatives in a Gaza City house, said some are eating tree leaves and animal food. It has become normal to find a child coming out of the rubble with a rotten piece of bread, he said.
‘They are desperate. They want anything to stay alive.’
Acknowledging the difficulty of getting aid in and the extreme need for food, U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.S. would look for other ways to get shipments in, ‘including possibly a marine corridor.’ When asked if he thought Israel would fully investigate Thursday’s incident, he answered simply, ‘Yes.’
The pallets dropped Saturday over Gaza contained about 38,000 meals, U.S. officials said, and were expected to be the first of many. It was not immediately clear where the airdrops occurred.
But the EU statement, echoing humanitarian groups including the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians, said airdrops ‘should be the solution of last resort as their impact is minimal and not devoid of risks to civilians.’ It called for the opening of further ground crossings into Gaza and the removal of obstacles from the rare ones open.
Aid workers hoped a possible cease-fire would help. A senior Egyptian official said cease-fire talks would resume Sunday in Cairo. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
International mediators hope to reach agreement on a six-week pause in fighting, and an exchange of some Israeli hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10.
