Gaza ceasefire hopes on hold after hungry civilians seeking aid killed
United States President Joe Biden has admitted that an imminent ceasefire in Gaza is now unlikely, after more than 100 people are believed to have been killed when Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd trying to secure food aid near Gaza City.
Israel has denied responsibility for the deaths yesterday but has admitted that its troops opened fire after they were threatened.
Kamel Abu Nahel, a Gazan witness, said he and others went to the distribution spot in the middle of the night to make sure they got food. “We’ve been eating animal feed for two months,” he told AFP from Al-Shifa Hospital, where he was being treated for a gunshot wound.
He said Israeli troops opened fire on the crowd, causing people to disperse and seek shelter. When the shooting stopped, some people tried to return to the aid trucks for food, but soldiers opened fire again. Nahel said he was shot in the leg and fell over, and then a truck ran over his leg as it sped off.
Alaa Abu Daiya, another witness, said Israeli troops were shooting, and a tank fired a shell.
One video shared on social media, which Reuters was able to verify as being at the scene, showed trucks loaded with many dead bodies as well as wounded people.
According to Fares Fana, the head of the ambulance service at Kamal Adwan Hospital, there were not enough ambulances to collect the dead and wounded. Some were transported in donkey- and horse-drawn carts. Medical teams said they were unable to cope with the volume and severity of the injuries, with dozens of wounded taken to the Al-Shifa hospital, which is only partially operational after being the target of Israeli raids.
The Hamas-run health authority said 112 Palestinians had been killed, but Israel challenged the death toll and said many of the victims had been run over by aid trucks.
An Israeli military official said two separate incidents had occurred as the convoy of trucks passed into northern Gaza from the south along the main coastal road.
In the first incident, he said, aid trucks were surrounded by hundreds of people, and in the confusion, dozens were injured or killed by being trampled or run over by the trucks. As the trucks left, he said, a second incident occurred in which some of the people who rushed the convoy approached Israeli forces including a tank, which then opened fire. “We’re continuing to review the circumstances.”
Biden said the US was checking “competing versions”, and had discussed the “tragic and alarming incident” with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar.
He said a ceasefire was unlikely to be in place by Monday, as he had previously suggested, but added: “Hope springs eternal.”
The White House later described the situation in Gaza as “incredibly desperate”, and called on Israel to allow “as many points of access as possible and to enable safe and secure distribution of that aid throughout Gaza”.
“People are swarming these trucks because they’re hungry, because they need food, because they need medicine and other assistance,” said Matthew Miller, the US State Department spokesman.
The deaths meant the Gaza health ministry’s official fatalities toll surpassed 30,000 yesterday, including 25,000 Palestinian women and children.
Aid supply deliveries into Gaza have become more difficult as the Israel-Hamas war nears its sixth month. In some instances, supplies have been airdropped in.
“The clock is ticking fast towards severe hunger, starvation and, in some, cases famine,” said Juliette Touma, director of communications at UNRWA, the main United Nations aid agency for Gaza.
She said there had been a drop of about 50% in the average daily number of trucks entering the territory. UN and other relief agencies have complained that Israel has restricted aid deliveries, which Israel denies.
As a mass humanitarian crisis unfolds, Palestinians have grown increasingly desperate as they try to find ways to survive, with looting of aid convoys becoming increasingly common.
Umm Hamdan Abu Sultan, a displaced woman who had been waiting for aid, said: “Our children are dying of hunger. We go to get a bag of flour to feed our children, and they fire at them.”
Hamas warned that the incident could lead to a breakdown in talks aimed at securing a truce and the release of remaining Israeli hostages. If that happened, the group said it would hold Israel responsible for failing to agree a deal.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Right-wing national security minister, said the incident showed that aid deliveries should be stopped completely, because they endangered IDF soldiers. – Telegraph Group