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Dozens more Palestinians were killed or injured in Gaza as they sought desperately needed aid on Thursday, with reports that Israeli forces close to one distribution point had opened fire, the third such incident in as many days.
More than a hundred people have been reported killed since Monday while either trying to reach aid points or waiting to stop and offload the limited number of UN and commercial trucks entering the devastated territory. There have been about 20 such incidents in the last four weeks.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed 15 people and wounded 60 between the town of Nuseirat and in the centre of Gaza early on Thursday morning after thousands had gathered in the hope of receiving rations.
Such reports are difficult to confirm independently but interviews conducted by the Guardian with witnesses appeared to corroborate many of the details.
Abdullah Ahmed, 31, said he had been about a kilometre from an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US and Israeli-backed private organisation, when there were a series of explosions and shootings at around 2am local time.
“I heard that the GHF site would open in the morning and set out early from my home [in the nearby town of al-Bureij] to get food,” he said. “Because there are always many people, we try to be the first to increase our chances of getting aid.
“When I was heading to the aid distribution point, there was heavy but intermittent gunfire from tanks, artillery and quadcopters.“As we got closer to the site, gunfire resumed and shells were launched. A shell fell just a few metres away from me and shrapnel hit me in my chest, neck and leg.”
Abdel Fattah Younis, 20, from Nuseirat, said the shooting or shelling occurred when crowds had surged towards the GHF site in the belief that it had opened to distribute aid.
“We moved toward it and we became fully exposed … Suddenly, intense gunfire was directed at us … I was shot once in the chest and another bullet lodged in my lower back,” he said.
Dr Nasser Abu Samra, the head of the emergency reception department at al-Awda hospital, said it received nine dead and 120 injured from the incident.
The Israeli army told Agence France-Presse that troops fired “warning shots” at “suspects” approaching them in the Netzarim area, but that it was “not aware of any injured individuals”.
The reported incident came on a particularly bloody day in Gaza, with about 60 people reported killed in a wave of airstrikes.
Food has become extremely scarce in Gaza since Israel’s imposition of a tight blockade on all supplies throughout March and April, leaving many of the territory’s inhabitants facing a “critical risk of famine”.
Since the blockade was partially lifted last month, the UN has tried to bring in aid but has faced major obstacles including rubble-choked roads, Israeli military restrictions, continuing airstrikes and growing anarchy.
Aid officials said an average of 23 UN trucks a day had entered Gaza through the main checkpoint of Kerem Shalom in recent days, but most have been “self-distributed” by hungry Palestinians who stopped them, or looted by organised gangs.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday it has been able to dispatch just 9,000 tonnes of food aid into Gaza over the last four weeks, “a tiny fraction of what a population of 2.1 million hungry people needs”.
Israel hopes the GHF will replace the previous comprehensive system of aid distribution run by the UN, which Israeli officials claim allowed Hamas to steal and sell supplies.
UN agencies and major aid groups, which have delivered humanitarian aid across Gaza since the start of 20-month-long war, have rejected the new system, saying it is impractical, inadequate and unethical. They deny there is widespread theft of aid by Hamas.
GHF said in an email on Wednesday that it had provided more than 30m meals “safely and without incident” since it began operating last month.
Israel launched its campaign intended to destroy Hamas after the group’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostage. Hamas still holds 53 hostages, fewer than half of them alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Tuesday that 5,194 people had been killed since Israel resumed major operations in the territory on 18 March, ending a two-month truce.
The death toll in Gaza since the war broke out has reached 55,600, according to the health ministry.
