Flour massacre: Allegedly, Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians waiting for food aid southwest of Gaza City, killing at least 112 and injuring more than 750.
Flour massacre: The incident happened at al-Rashid Street near the Nabulsi Roundabout in southwestern Gaza City
The incident occurred on Thursday at approximately 04:30 local time (02:30 GMT), when people gathered on Harun al-Rashid Street in Gaza, where aid trucks carrying flour were expected to arrive.
A convoy of aid trucks drove through the checkpoint, heading north, as people began to gather in large groups. According to the Israeli military, a convoy of 31 trucks entered Gaza, with nearly 20 entering the north on Monday and Tuesday.
People gathered in large groups waiting for much-needed aid were shot at by various types of military equipment, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from Rafah. According to the Associated Press, people removed boxes of flour and canned goods from the trucks.
After the first round of shooting ended, people returned to their trucks, only for the soldiers to open fire again.
“After opening fire, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies,” Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul said while reporting from the scene.
According to Palestinian authorities, the incident occurred on al-Rashid Street near the Nabulsi Roundabout in southwestern Gaza City.
This is in northern Gaza, where food supplies have been limited. The first deliveries in more than a month arrived this week.
Palestinians in Gaza claimed that Israeli forces committed a massacre by firing on a crowd of people waiting to receive desperately needed food aid
This occurred one day after Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), informed the United Nations Security Council that more than 500,000 people, or one in every four, were at risk of famine, with one out of every six children under the age of two classified as acutely malnourished.
Palestinians in Gaza claimed that Israeli forces committed a massacre by firing on a crowd of people waiting to receive desperately needed food aid.
According to Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud, the more he spoke with people, “the clearer it became they felt it was a trap, an ambush.”.
“We came here to get some aid. I have been waiting since noon yesterday. Around 4:30 a.m., trucks began to arrive. The Israelis simply opened random fire on us, as if it were a trap. “When we approached the aid trucks, Israeli tanks and warplanes began firing on us,” a witness at the scene told Al Jazeera.
Witnesses claimed that the stampede was caused by Israeli fire, and that the trucks rolled over injured people, adding to the death toll. Al Jazeera confirmed that donkey carts were used to transport people to the hospital because ambulances could not reach the area.
“We were going to bring flour… then Israeli snipers shot at us,” another person in the area told Al Jazeera. “They shot me in the leg. I’m unable to stand up,” he added.
The trucks were managed by private contractors: Israeli military
The Israeli military stated that the trucks were managed by private contractors as part of an aid operation overseen by them for the previous four nights.
But the Israeli version of events changed throughout the day.
Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith reported from occupied East Jerusalem that the Israeli military “initially tried to blame the crowd,” claiming that dozens were injured as a result of being crushed and trampled in a stampede when aid trucks arrived.
“And then, after some pushing, the Israelis went on to say that their troops felt threatened, that hundreds of troops approached their troops in a way they posed a threat to them so they responded by opening fire,” ” he said. However, they did not explain how those individuals posed a threat.
Witnesses insisted that the stampede occurred only after Israeli troops opened fire on people looking for food.
Aid agencies claim that Israel has been delaying deliveries since the beginning of the war. Israel denies the allegations.
“The risk of famine is being fuelled by the inability to bring critical food supplies into Gaza in sufficient quantities, and the almost impossible operating conditions faced by our staff on the ground,” he said.
A month ago, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled that Israel must do everything possible to prevent genocidal acts in the territory.
However, according to human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Israel “failed to take even the bare minimum steps to comply”.
The number of trucks has decreased by 40% since the ICJ ruling, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).