Witnesses to violence in aid convoys describe shooting, panic and despair
They went out in their thousands and camped overnight along a coastal road in the cold Gaza night, huddled around small fires, waiting for supplies so they could feed their families.
What they encountered were hundreds of dead and wounded, according to witnesses and a doctor who treated the wounded, when Israeli forces opened fire on desperate Palestinians who rushed forward as aid trucks finally arrived before dawn on Thursday.
“I saw things I never thought I would see,” said Mohammed Al-Sholi, who had camped overnight to get food for his family. “I saw people fall to the ground after being shot, and others just grabbed the food they had with them and kept running for their lives.”
Amid the chaos and bloodshed, some people were run over by the emergency trucks, he said.
On Friday, President Biden said the United States would start dropping aid to Gaza to help ease suffering there, as European leaders condemned Israel for the deaths of dozens of hungry Palestinians killed as they surrounded the aid convoy.
Gaza health authorities have said Israeli forces killed more than 100 people and injured 700 others in a “massacre” as the convoy rolled down a dark road, a version of events that Israel disputed.
An Israeli military spokesman, Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Thursday that Israeli soldiers had tried to secure the convoy and fired “when the crowd moved in a way that endangered them.” But he said the soldiers had not shot at people seeking help. The army has said most of the people were killed in a stampede and some were run over by the trucks in Gaza City.
About 150 injured and 12 of the dead were taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, Dr. Eid Sabbah, the head of nursing there. He said about 95 percent of the injuries resulted from gunshots to the chest and abdomen.
The deaths sparked global outrage and increased pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas that would allow more aid to Gaza.
French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné called for an independent investigation, saying the violence surrounding the convoy was the result of a humanitarian catastrophe that left people “fighting for food.”
“What is happening is indefensible and unjustifiable,” Mr Séjourné told radio station France Inter on Friday. “Israel must be able to hear it, and it must stop.”
Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, called on the Israeli army to “fully explain” the killings and joined calls for a ceasefire.
“People in Gaza are closer to death than to life,” Ms. Baerbock said in a statement. “More humanitarian aid needs to come in immediately.”
Mr. Biden said the United States would work with Jordan in the coming days to land aid to Gaza.
“Innocent people got caught up in a terrible war and couldn’t feed their families, and you saw the response when they tried to get help,” Biden said at the White House before meeting Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy. “But we must do more, and the United States will do more.”
Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that regardless of how people near the convoy died, it was clear they were trying to get food.
“That can’t happen,” she said. “Desperate civilians trying to feed their starving families should not be shot at.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Israel has a duty to ensure significantly more humanitarian aid reaches civilians in Gaza.
“A sustained pause in the fighting is the only way to receive life-saving aid on the scale needed and to free the hostages cruelly held by Hamas,” he said. a statement.
Palestinians, especially in the north, have suffered from famine and regularly gather in the relatively few aid trucks that have entered the area. Aid groups and the United Nations have accused Israel of blocking aid to northern Gaza, which Israel has denied. Aid groups have also reported widespread looting of aid trucks in the area.
A small number of police from the Hamas-led security forces have arrived in Gaza City in recent weeks but have largely failed to restore basic security, residents said. Last week, the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, joined UNRWA, the UN agency serving Palestinians in Gaza, in blocking aid shipments to the north, citing lawlessness in the area.
On Friday, the European Union said it plans to significantly increase funding for UNRWA this year, giving it 50 million euros, or about $54 million, next week.
The announcement was a lifeline for the agency, which has been fighting for its survival after some donor countries suspended their funding, citing Israeli accusations that a dozen of the agency’s 13,000 employees were involved in the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October.
The number of aid trucks entering Gaza fell significantly in February, data show, even as humanitarian leaders warned of famine and said some people had resorted to eating birdseed and leaves.
Through February 27, an average of 96 trucks entered Gaza per day, a 30 percent drop from the January average and the lowest monthly average since before the ceasefire in late November, according to UNRWA. Before the war, about 500 aid trucks entered Gaza every day.
The drop partly reflects Israel’s insistence on inspecting every truck at the Kerem Shalom intersection in southern Israel, which has served as the main entry point since reopening in December. Aid is also entering Gaza from Egypt through a border crossing near the city of Rafah, after Israeli officials inspected the cargo for weapons and other contraband.
Aid officials said the inspection system, while necessary, had caused significant delays, resulting in less overall aid.
On Thursday, Israeli soldiers provided security for the convoy entering Gaza City, with private vehicles distributing food from international donors, said an Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner. told Great Britain Channel 4.
Edited 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. The videos show hundreds of people surrounding and climbing on trucks, and people crawling and diving for cover.
Mr Al-Sholi, a 34-year-old taxi driver, said he went to meet the convoy because he and his family, including three young children, had been surviving on little more than the spices, chopped wheat and wild vegetables they could find.
On Wednesday he had heard that people had received bags of flour from relief trucks and there were rumors that another convoy was coming. So he went with friends to a roundabout to wait. He said he had never seen so many people gathered in one place.
“Just before the trucks arrived, a tank started coming towards us — it was around 3:30 a.m. — and fired a few shots in the air,” Mr. Al-Sholi said in a telephone interview, referring to Israeli tanks. ‘That tank fired at least one shell. It was dark and I ran back to a destroyed building and took refuge there.”
When the trucks arrived shortly afterwards, people ran to them to get food, drinks and whatever else they could get, said Mohammad Hamoudeh, a photographer in Gaza City. But when the people reached the trucks, he said, “the tanks started shooting directly at the people.”
He added: “I saw them firing direct machine gun fire.”
The witnesses said Israeli tanks shot at people even as they started to run away. Israeli forces continued to fire regularly at Gazans between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., when they first arrived, until about 7 a.m., the witnesses said.
On Thursday, Admiral Hagari, Israel’s military spokesman, said troops “did not fire on those seeking help despite the accusations.”
“We did not fire at the humanitarian convoy, either from the air or from land,” he said. “We secured it so it could reach northern Gaza.”
Mr Hamoudeh said despite the panic on the ground, many were still rushing to get supplies. “People were terrified, but not everyone,” he said. ‘There were people who risked death just to get food. They just want to live.”
Reporting was contributed by Victoria Kim, Shashank Bengali, Abu Bakr Bashir, Approach Ibrahim, Julian E Barnes, Lauren Leatherby, Gaya Gupta, Monika Pronczuk, Zolan Kanno-Youngs And Adam Sella.