‘Large number of Gazans shot in aid chaos’
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: A United Nations team has reported seeing “a large number” of gunshot wounds among Gazans after israeli troops opened fire near an aid convoy, an incident which highlighted near-famine conditions after nearly five months of war.
This comes as United States President Joe Biden said his military would start air-dropping relief supplies into the Palestinian territory, where Israel is battling fighters from the Iran-backed Hamas movement.
The Health Ministry in the Hamasrun territory said thousands of people in northern Gaza “are at risk of dying from dehydration and malnutrition,” and the World Health Organization said it had delivered treatment for 50 acutely malnourished children there.
Ten children had died of “malnutrition and dehydration,” the ministry said.
Israeli troops opened fire as Palestinian civilians scrambled for food supplies during a chaotic incident in Gaza City on Thursday that the ministry said killed 115 people and wounded more than 750 others.
The Israeli military said a “stampede” occurred when thousands of Gazans surrounded the aid convoy, leading to dozens of deaths and injuries, including some who were run over.
An Israeli source acknowledged that troops had opened fire on the crowd, believing it “posed a threat.”
‘Bullets and shrapnel’
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said troops had fired “a few warning shots” to try to disperse a “mob” that had “ambushed” the aid trucks.
The aid convoy deaths helped push the number of Palestinian war dead in Gaza to 30,320, mostly women and children, the Health Ministry said.
On Friday, a UN team visited some of the wounded from the aid incident, in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, and saw a “large number of gunshot wounds,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The hospital received 70 of the dead, and about 200 wounded were still there during the team’s visit, Dujarric added.
He was not aware of the team examining those killed, but said, “from what they saw in terms of the patients who were alive getting treatments is that there was a large number of gunshot wounds.”
Hossam Abu Safiya, director of
Gaza City’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, said all the casualties it admitted were hit by “bullets and shrapnel from occupation forces,” a reference to Israel.
The United Kingdom joined international calls for an investigation, with Foreign Secretary David Cameron saying Israel had “an obligation to ensure that significantly more humanitarian aid reaches” Gazans.
In an interview published in Le Monde newspaper on Saturday, his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne said “responsibilities for the blockage of aid are clearly Israeli.”
The “catastrophic” humanitarian conditions “created indefensible and unjustifiable situations for which the Israelis are accountable for,” he added.
‘Trickle of trucks’
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said on Friday that “a famine is almost inevitable” in Gaza unless things change.
He cited the near-total closure of commercial food imports, the “trickle of trucks” coming in with food aid and the “massive access constraints” to moving around inside Gaza.
The UN has particularly cited restrictions on access to northern Gaza, where residents have been reduced to eating animal fodder and even leaves.
Hisham Abu Eid, 28, of Zeitun in the Gaza City area, said he got two bags of flour from an aid distribution and gave one to his neighbors.
“Everyone is suffering from famine. Aid that is getting into Gaza is rare and not enough for even a small number of people. Famine is killing people,” Abu Eid said.
In Washington, Biden said the US would begin deliveries from the sky “in the coming days.”
“We need to do more, and the United States will do more,” he said, adding he would also “insist” Israel let in more aid trucks.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said the very fact that air drops were “being considered is testament to the serious access challenges in Gaza.”
But the group said parachuting aid was not the solution and distracted “time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale.”
The IRC called for a “sustained ceasefire” and for land crossings into Gaza to be reopened to aid shipments.