Demand for a ceasefire is growing amid questions about the deaths of aid convoys in Gaza
World leaders on Friday intensified their demands for Israel to get more aid to Gaza and provide more answers over the deaths of dozens of Palestinians in a scene of chaos surrounding a humanitarian convoy its forces secured.
Many questions remained unanswered as Israeli military and Gazan officials offered differing accounts of one of the deadliest known disasters involving civilians in the nearly five-month war. Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, called on the Israeli army on Thursday to “fully explain” the killings in northern Gaza and joined calls for a ceasefire that would see the release of Israeli hostages possible and for more assistance to enter the area. .
“People in Gaza are closer to death than to life,” she said on social media. “More humanitarian aid needs to come in immediately.”
French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné called for an independent investigation, saying the deadly chaos surrounding the convoy was the result of a humanitarian catastrophe that has left Gazans “fighting for food.”
“What is happening is indefensible and unjustifiable,” Mr Séjourné told France Inter on Friday. “Israel must be able to hear it and it must stop.”
The disaster unfolded Thursday morning when thousands of hungry people gathered at a food convoy in Gaza City, with Israeli troops and tanks nearby. It was a scene increasingly common in Gaza, where Palestinians battling hunger during Israel’s war against Hamas regularly gather around the relatively small number of aid trucks entering the area.
What happened next is still unclear. Health officials in Gaza say Israeli forces fired into the crowd, killing more than 100 people and wounding 700 others in what they called “a massacre.” An Israeli military spokesman said soldiers opened fire “when the crowd moved in a way that endangered them.” The army said most of the deaths were caused by trampling and that people had also been run over by the emergency trucks.
Neither story could be independently verified, and partial drone video footage released by the Israeli military, along with social media videos of the scene analyzed by The New York Times, do not fully explain the sequence of events. Videos show people crawling and diving for cover. A hospital in Gaza City said it had received the bodies of at least a dozen people who had been shot and treated more than 100 people with gunshot wounds.
An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, told Britain’s Channel 4 reported that soldiers provided security for the convoy, which involved private vehicles distributing food supplies from international donors. Israel has come under increasing international pressure to allow more aid deliveries, as groups including the UN Aid Agency for Palestinians – the main group distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza – say it has become too lawless and chaotic to to operate in a large part of the territory, especially in the Gaza Strip. north.
Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that regardless of how they died, it was clear that people were killed or injured while trying to get food for their families.
“That can’t happen,” she said. “Desperate civilians trying to feed their starving families should not be shot at.”
She urged Israel to open more crossings to facilitate aid to northern Gaza and to ease customs restrictions that she said are leaving flour at ports while people are near starvation.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on world leaders to impose sanctions on Israel to force the country to protect civilians and meet their humanitarian needs, arguing that the country was obliged to do so under international law as an occupying power.
“They completely denied the truth of the massacre they committed against unarmed civilians exhausted by hunger and thirst as a result of racist policies,” the ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Refugees International, an advocacy group, demanded an immediate independent investigation into the disaster and called on the United States to suspend military aid to Israel until those responsible are held accountable.
“There is nothing that can justify the killing of civilians desperate for life-saving help for their families,” the group said said in a statement.