The Israeli army revealed this Friday the conclusions of its investigation into the massacre of Gazan civilians during the food distribution in Gaza City on February 29. The findings confirm the version he shared on the same day of the massacre: that his troops “did not shoot at the humanitarian convoy,” but rather at a group of people who approached their position. Hospitals, health authorities and NGOs on the ground affirm the opposite.
“The command review found that troops did not fire on the humanitarian convoy, but did fire on several suspects who approached nearby forces and posed a threat to them,” their investigation states.
That day, 118 Gazans were killed and more than 700 injured as some 12,000 people waited for an aid convoy to arrive. According to the army, the hungry crowd rushed at the trucks in a stampede, which caused many to die of suffocation; although Palestinian sources assert that the victims had gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
The commander-in-chief of the Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces, Major General Yaron Finkelman presented on Tuesday to the Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, the conclusions of the command’s review of the sequence of events during the humanitarian operation to carry aid convoys to northern Gaza on February 29; that were published this Friday.
“As the trucks traveled towards the distribution centers, a crowd of some 12,000 Gazans gathered around them and looted them. Incidents of significant damage to civilians occurred due to the stampede and running over of people by the trucks.” , ensures the investigation into what happened.
During the agglomeration, dozens of residents “advanced toward the nearby troops and came within a few meters of them, representing a real threat,” to which the forces responded with “precautionary fire to distance the suspects,” indicates the military version. “As the suspects continued to advance towards them, the troops fired at several of them to eliminate the threat,” they added.
The army maintained from the beginning that two separate incidents occurred: the stampede where most of the victims died, and the shooting, which they said did not occur right where the aid convoy was and which was “precision fire” toward a few dozen people.
However, medical sources from the Shifa hospital, where almost all the victims were treated, assured that they arrived with shrapnel and bullet wounds, something that was corroborated by a UN team that had managed to arrive in Gaza City at that time to deliver equipment. doctor and fuel to the center.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza government has always maintained that it was a “deliberate and premeditated massacre” and accused Israel of wanting to starve the population in the north of the enclave, where some 700,000 people are at risk of famine.
In the last two weeks, around twenty people have died from malnutrition and dehydration in the strip, most of them babies, but also an elderly man and a 15-year-old teenager, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which brings the total to more than 30,800. of deaths in five months of Israeli offensive.
The army reported that the incident will continue to be studied by the Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism (FFAM), an independent review body responsible for analyzing exceptional incidents that occurred during combat, which will draw up its own conclusions.
The international community in recent weeks has insisted to Israel on the need to increase humanitarian aid to the strip, especially the US, which last Saturday began airdrops of food and plans to install a dock off the coast of enclave to deliver aid by sea from Cyprus.
