Dozens of Palestinians were killed on Thursday during a chaotic attempt to get humanitarian aid into northern Gaza, during which Israeli forces opened fire on civilians.
The circumstances of the killings were unclear as Israeli and Palestinian officials gave conflicting accounts. Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces fired on crowds rushing to secure food, killing 104 and injuring dozens.
But the Israel Defense Forces said dozens of people were killed in a “stampede” as they rushed towards aid trucks at around 4am, at a location that Palestinian health officials described as just past an Israeli checkpoint on Al Rashid Street, a north-south road along the Mediterranean.
An Israeli official acknowledged that IDF troops fired at crowds, but said that took place in a separate incident several hundred metres away, after a group from the crowds surrounding the 30-truck convoy “approached the [Israeli] forces in a manner that posed a threat to the troops”.
Videos on social media showed the dead and wounded being brought into barely functioning hospitals on donkey carts in northern Gaza, where tens of thousands of people remain despite Israel’s offensive and are on the verge of famine.
The deaths came as the UN stepped up warnings about the desperation of Gazans enduring food shortages and the difficulties of bringing aid to the besieged population amid Israeli attacks and a surge in looting.
The IDF also released a grainy video, shot from a drone, that showed hundreds of people surrounding trucks carrying supplies, and said that “dozens were killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks”.
Later, a second Israeli official, who declined to be identified, said an initial investigation had identified two separate incidents, describing the first as “a stampede”. The second, in which Israeli forces opened fire, he said, took place near a crossing point at the Wadi Gaza, a rivulet separating the north and south of the besieged enclave, where troops were securing the convoy.
“Dozens of civilians who rushed a truck in the convoy as [it] was moving forward, approached the tank and the forces nearby,” he said. “The soldiers fired warning shots in the air and then fired towards those that posed a threat and did not move away.”
He declined to say whether the civilians were armed, how many the Israeli military had shot, how much time separated the incidents or whether the shots preceded any stampede. He told reporters to disregard death tolls provided by Gazan health officials, without providing alternative numbers.
US President Joe Biden said he did not yet have full information about the incident, but asked whether it would complicate a deal to pause the fighting and secure the release of hostages held by Hamas, he said: “I know it will.”
A spokesman for the US National Security Council said: “This is a serious incident and we are looking into the reports. We mourn the loss of innocent life and recognise the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, where innocent Palestinians are just trying to feed their families.”
Israel’s offensive on Gaza has killed more than 30,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, displaced most of the 2.3mn population and devastated huge areas of the strip.
Dr Eid Sabbah, head of nursing at Kamal Adwan hospital in north Gaza, told Al Jazeera satellite network that people had arrived at the hospital on Thursday with injuries to their limbs, heads, chests and abdomens.
“The injured are lying on the floors of the reception area and we are [using] the minimal materials we have,” said Sabbah. “We have no fuel, medical supplies or medicines. We don’t have enough anaesthesia for everyone. Doctors are performing triage to decide which cases can be saved.”
The chaos underscored how precarious food deliveries within Gaza have become, especially after Israeli warplanes struck a local police car guarding a shipment in early February.
Since then, Palestinian police have refused to guard the convoys, though Egypt has sought to broker an agreement from Israel that its forces will not target police. Israel has also opened fire on three separate UN convoys, the UN said.
The acute aid shortages have resulted in desperately hungry Gazans looting shipments, and a flourishing black market for stolen food. Before October 7, when Hamas’s attack on Israel killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and triggered the war, Gaza needed at least 500 trucks of aid a day.
Now, with most of its population displaced, the need is far greater, while fewer trucks can enter safely.
“If you look at the average number of trucks entering, clearly in February they have halved,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the primary relief agency for Palestinians, said in Jerusalem on Thursday. “And the more you decrease the supply into Gaza, the more you will fuel the distress, the despair and the chaos.”
The situation in northern Gaza, which has been devastated by the Israeli military, is particularly dire, said Lazzarini, describing children with visible signs of malnourishment and families forced to eat animal feed.
The UN has been denied permission to take food to that part of the strip multiple times, said Lazzarini, who added that the UN was not involved in Thursday’s delivery attempt. The World Food Programme suspended deliveries last month after its trucks were looted, putting drivers’ safety at risk.
As food and medical deliveries dropped precipitously in the past weeks, the US, Egypt, Jordan and other countries have airdropped supplies into Gaza. “The airdrop is a last resource, an extraordinary, expensive, way of providing assistance,” said Lazzarini.
Israel could instead simply open more crossings to help flood the enclave with humanitarian aid, he said, but only “if you have a political will”.
Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington
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