“The gunfire was indiscriminate,” said Mohamed Abed, who has two children and lives in the Bureij camp. On Sunday, August 24, he was in a crowd walking toward a food distribution point south of Gaza City when Israeli troops opened fire. Four people in that crowd were killed.
The account comes from Al-Awda Hospital and two eyewitnesses, who spoke to The Associated Press. They put the shooting in the Netzarim corridor area, inside a military zone that Palestinians regularly cross on the way to a distribution point operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, an American contractor backed by Israel. The witnesses said it happened hundreds of metres short of the site.
Two versions of the same morning
Abed and another aid seeker, Aymed Sayyad, told AP the troops fired after people at the head of the crowd surged forward ahead of the opening time. Sayyad said that he and others then helped two people who had been hit.
GHF rejected the description. “This incident didn’t occur near our site nor as described,” the foundation said by email. Israel’s military had not replied to requests for comment when the reports were filed. Nothing in the early accounts suggests foundation staff were themselves targeted.
A toll that keeps climbing
Gaza’s Health Ministry counts over 2,000 Palestinians killed and more than 13,500 injured while trying to get aid, whether at distribution points or on roads used by UN convoys and other relief groups. Its overall figure stood at 62,686 dead in the war, a number that includes missing people a ministry committee has since confirmed dead. On Sunday it added eight deaths from malnutrition, one of them a child, which lifted that tally to 289, with 115 children among them. The UN and independent experts regard the ministry as the most reliable source on casualties. Israel disputes its numbers but has published none of its own.
The shooting came two days after the global food-crisis authority declared that Gaza City is in famine. Its warning: the famine may reach Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis before the following month ends. Israel denies famine exists and has called the starvation reports “lies” promoted by Hamas.
An offensive waiting in the wings
Israel’s military was preparing to take Gaza City, possibly within days, and Israel’s defense minister cautioned that the city, with its hundreds of thousands of residents, may be destroyed. Hostage families fear that an assault will put their relatives in greater danger. Ceasefire efforts were stuck waiting on Israel once Hamas announced approval of a fresh proposal from Arab mediators. “We agreed to a partial deal, while we also expressed readiness for a comprehensive one, HOWEVER, (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu rejects all solutions,” the group said Sunday.
Sources
- Israeli troops kill four Palestinians seeking food as famine looms and Gaza City offensive nears (AP via New Indian Express)
- 4 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces while seeking aid near Gaza City, witnesses say (AP via ABC7)
- Israeli forces kill 4 Palestinians in Gaza amid ongoing humanitarian crisis (Scripps via Fox17)
