For the past 20 days, Ahmed Rashad has been out of canned goods. The former private sector employee has struggled to buy enough food to ease the hunger pangs of his five children and family. Their home in Rafah was destroyed and now lies inside a zone made inaccessible by the Israeli military. All 15 of them are living in a tent in the so-called humanitarian area of Al-Mawasi, a patch of sand in southwestern Gaza that lacks everything. On Saturday night, Rashad followed a few neighbors toward Tell es-Sultan in Rafah, heading for a distribution point run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an NGO that Israel and the United States want to establish as the sole humanitarian operator in the enclave. There had been no official announcement, but everyone was hoping there would be a distribution.

Speaking to Le Monde by phone, the 40-year-old Palestinian father said the shooting began around 3:30 am. (Israel has banned international journalists from the Gaza Strip for over a year and a half.) Those who came via the beach found themselves under fire from "Israeli cruisers at sea," he said, and he saw "seven or eight martyrs lying on the ground." At 4:30 am, he claimed, Israeli quadcopter drones began firing into the crowd. "A woman and her daughter collapsed in front of me. I thought she was exhausted because we walk enormous distances on foot. In fact, she had been shot in the knee," he recounted.

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