RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces fired on people as they headed toward an aid distribution site in Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least 27, Palestinian health officials and witnesses said, in the third such shooting in three days. The army said it fired “near a few individual suspects” who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots.
The near-daily shootings have occurred after an Israeli and U.S.-backed foundation established aid distribution points inside Israeli military zones, a system it says is designed to circumvent Hamas. The United Nations has rejected the new system, saying it doesn’t address Gaza’s mounting hunger crisis and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon.
The Israeli military said it “fired to drive away suspects.” In a statement, army spokesperson Effie Defrin said “the numbers of casualties published by Hamas were exaggerated” but that the incident was being investigated. He said the army is not preventing Palestinians in Gaza from reaching aid in the distribution areas, but rather allowing it.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates the sites, says there has been no violence in or around them. On Tuesday, it acknowledged that the Israeli military was investigating whether civilians were wounded “after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone,” in an area that was “well beyond our secure distribution site.”
A spokesperson for the group said it was “saddened to learn that a number of civilians were injured and killed after moving beyond the designated safe corridor.”
Gaza’s roughly 2 million people are almost completely reliant on international aid because Israel’s offensive has destroyed nearly all of Gaza’s food production capabilities. Israel imposed a blockade on supplies into Gaza in March, and limited aid began to enter again late last month after pressure from allies and warnings of famine.
‘Either way we will die’
The shootings all occurred at the Flag Roundabout, around a kilometer (half-mile) from one of the GHF’s distribution sites in the now mostly uninhabited southern city of Rafah. The entire area is an Israeli military zone where journalists have no access outside of army-approved embeds.
Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old displaced person from Rafah, said the shooting started around 4 a.m. Tuesday and he saw several people killed or wounded.
Neima al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, said the Israeli fire was “indiscriminate.” She added that when she managed to reach the distribution site, there was no aid left.
“After the martyrs and wounded, I won’t return,” she said. “Either way we will die.”
Rasha al-Nahal, another witness, said that “there was gunfire from all directions.” She said she counted more than a dozen dead and several wounded along the road.
When she reached the distribution site, she found there was no aid left, she said. She gathered pasta from the ground and salvaged rice from a bag that had been dropped and trampled upon.
“We’d rather die than deal with this,” she said. “Death is more dignified than what’s happening to us.”
UN human rights official condemns shootings
At least 27 people were killed early Tuesday, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, confirmed the toll, saying its field hospital in Rafah received 184 wounded people, 19 of them declared dead on arrival, with eight others later dying of their wounds.
The dead were transferred to Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis. Three children and two women were among the dead, according to Mohammed Saqr, head of nursing at the hospital.
