Israeli soldiers opened fire on a starving crowd during an aid distribution in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, which Hamas said ended in chaos and killed more than 110 people, on the day the war death toll in Palestinian territory topped 30,000.
• Also read: According to Hamas, nearly 30,000 people have died in Gaza in five months
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While an army official acknowledged that Israeli soldiers had “fired on a limited scale” because they felt “threatened,” he reported “a stampede in which dozens of residents were killed and injured, some run over by aid trucks.”
“Life is leaving Gaza at a frightening rate,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said, nearly five months after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, which was sparked by an unprecedented attack on Gaza, the Israeli soil of the Palestinian Islamist movement. was triggered.
The UN Security Council must urgently meet behind closed doors at 21:15 GMT to discuss the tragedy in Gaza.
The United Nations estimates that 2.2 million people, the vast majority of the population, are at risk of starvation in Israel-besieged Gaza, particularly in the north, where Palestinians are reported to be eating fodder or slaughtering draft animals for food.
A doctor at Al-Chifa Hospital in Gaza City said Israeli soldiers fired on “thousands of citizens” rushing toward aid trucks, with Hamas' health ministry announcing 112 dead and 760 injured in the “carnage.”
“This suffering must end”
According to witnesses and the Gaza Health Service, soldiers stationed nearby to protect the convoy opened fire on the crowd that rushed toward the trucks as they arrived at a roundabout in the city.
The Palestinian Authority, based in the occupied West Bank, which is separated from the Gaza Strip by Israeli territory, “condemned a heinous massacre by the occupying forces.”
US President Joe Biden said his country was examining “conflicting versions” of the tragedy.
On the same day, Hamas' health ministry announced a new toll of 30,035 dead and 70,457 wounded, most of them civilians, since the war began on October 7 in the Palestinian territories where Hamas seized power in 2007.
“The death toll in Gaza has exceeded 30,000 (…) This suffering must end,” World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.
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“Probably” no ceasefire
Meanwhile, hopes for a ceasefire before the start of Ramadan, a holy month of fasting for Muslims that begins on the evening of March 10 or 11, have been dashed.
There will “probably” not be a ceasefire in Gaza by Monday, Joe Biden said, after saying earlier this week he hoped for a ceasefire by March 4.
The mediators – Qatar, the United States, Egypt – have been trying for weeks to reach an agreement that would allow a pause in fighting and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
In the West Bank, the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, two Israelis were shot dead in an attack near the settlement of Ely. A “terrorist who arrived at the Ely gas station opened fire” before being “neutralized,” the Army said.
The war was sparked on October 7 by an attack by Hamas commandos infiltrating from the neighboring Gaza Strip in southern Israel that killed at least 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Around 250 people were kidnapped in the attack and taken to the Gaza Strip. Israel says 130 hostages are still being held there, 31 of whom are believed to have died after Israel released 105 hostages and 240 Palestinian prisoners during a ceasefire in late November.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
His army relentlessly shelled the Gaza Strip and launched a ground offensive in the territory's north on October 27, gradually expanding south.
Fighting continues in several parts of the Palestinian territory, particularly in Khan Younes in the south, near Rafah.
“The world should be ashamed”
Across the Gaza Strip, civilians are caught up in daily fighting and bombardments that have spared no area, devastated entire neighborhoods and forced 1.7 million people to flee their homes.
According to the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), “Famine is looming in Gaza (…) One million children suffer trauma every day.”
As fighting expanded, nearly 1.5 million displaced people were pushed further south, reaching Rafah, a city of about 270,000 people before the war, according to the United Nations.
In this city, which lies on the closed border with Egypt and is bombed daily by Israel, they are gathered with no escape.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was determined to launch a ground offensive there to, in his view, defeat Hamas in its “last bastion.”
“I am afraid that they will launch an attack on Rafah. Where will you go? says Abdallah al-Masry, 19, expelled from Beit Hanoun (north). Our families in the north have nothing, neither food nor water. They tell us that they eat dead pigeons and donkey meat. The world should be ashamed!”