The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said Wednesday that Hamas operatives attacked a bus transporting its local Gazan staffers, killing at least five, injuring others and potentially taking some hostage.
The bus was ferrying the staffers to one of GHF’s aid distribution sites near the southern Gaza Strip’s Khan Younis at around 10 p.m. on Wednesday when it came under attack, a GHF statement said.
The statement noted that GHF was still working to gather the facts on what unfolded and a spokesperson didn’t immediately provide any corroborating evidence.
“This attack did not happen in a vacuum. For days, Hamas has openly threatened our team, our aid workers, and the civilians who receive aid from us. These threats were met with silence,” GHF said, adding that the attack will not deter the organization’s efforts to provide aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Hamas has pushed for the resumption of aid distribution through UN-backed mechanisms, which Israel and the US say allowed the terror group to divert much of the aid. The UN has denied this, while arguing that the GHF model for aid distribution endangers Palestinians, by forcing them to walk long distances across IDF lines in order to pick up boxes of food.
Red Cross and Hamas-linked health officials have reported near-daily mass-casualty incidents involving Palestinians trekking to aid sites since GHF’s launch on May 26. The IDF has acknowledged on at least eight different occasions that it fired “warning shots” that struck those who strayed off the pre-approved access routes.
GHF said Wednesday it has distributed roughly 271,200 boxes of aid to date, but they are largely filled with dry food products that need to be prepared elsewhere.
An average of 65 aid trucks have entered Gaza each day since Israel partially lifted its blockade on May 19, but the World Food Program says roughly 300 trucks a day are needed to properly serve Gaza’s population, which IDF officials acknowledged was on the brink of starvation before it resumed allowing aid in last month after a 78-day blockade.
The UN and other humanitarian organizations have argued that neutralizing the threat of looting requires flooding Gaza with as much aid as possible so demand and costs go down, rather than rationing assistance as Israel has done over the past month.
Just before 3 a.m. Thursday local time, GHF issued an additional statement updating Gazans that it had just finished distributing boxes of food at its central Gaza site, even though the IDF has repeatedly warned Palestinians not to approach aid sites before 6 a.m.
The GHF announcement was made on its Arabic Facebook page, which it uses to communicate with Palestinians about operating hours at the distribution sites.
A GHF spokesperson did not explain why the Israeli- and US-backed organization appeared to be distributing aid overnight, when the IDF has cautioned Palestinians against walking to the sites. It has done so on several other occasions over the past two and a half weeks of operation.
Hours earlier, footage of a GHF aid site being completely overrun by Gazans upon opening on Tuesday had gone viral on social media. The scene highlighted the chaos that has plagued GHF aid distribution sites since their launch.