Humanitarian organizations had been warning since January of the chaos that the Israeli army was allowing to spread in the besieged Gaza Strip. A hunger riot and hundreds of deaths and injuries following a distribution of humanitarian aid by the Israeli army on Thursday, February 29, have confirmed their predictions.
The convoy was chartered without any communication with the United Nations agencies that are responsible for most of the aid to Gaza or with the civil administration, which Israel equates with Hamas. There was no force present for crowd control. Before dawn on Thursday, rumors of an imminent distribution had spread through Gaza City. When the first of 38 trucks crossed the Israeli checkpoint south of the city, hundreds of men and teenagers were waiting for them.
Soon after, thousands of people were rushing toward the loads, trying to grab a bag of flour or a box of aid. An amateur video, filmed at night and posted by the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera, shows a crowd retreating, while the sharp clatter of bursts of gunfire echoes intermittently. The Israeli army had positioned soldiers on the edge of the road, in order to "secure a corridor." The local Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas, said that these soldiers opened fire on the crowd and gave a colossal death toll: 112 Palestinians dead and 760 wounded.
The Israeli army denies firing in the direction of the convoy. It said there were "dozens of dead and wounded (...) in a stampede." It also claims that truck drivers forced their way through, running over civilians. It acknowledged, however, that soldiers fired on Gazans approaching their positions.
Gaza City's Al-Awda Hospital received 176 wounded, according to its acting director, Dr. Mohamed Salha. "We observed gunshot wounds in all areas of the body: hands, legs, abdomen and chest," he told Le Monde by telephone. He added, however, that he had not seen any injuries suggesting a stampede.
At mid-afternoon, Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defence, one of Gaza's rescue organizations, told Le Monde that his teams were still unable to reach some of the bodies abandoned on the spot, "because the [Israeli] occupation forces are shooting at anyone who steps forward. There are also wounded, and we are trying to organize coordination [with the army] to go and look for them," he added.
Gazans had already reported on several occasions that they had come under Israeli fire while waiting for humanitarian aid. On February 25 on the same coastal road, in the hope of picking up some food, at least 10 Palestinians were killed in two incidents of shooting and shelling, reported the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in one of its daily reports.
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