At least 29 Palestinians were killed Thursday afternoon in two separate Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip on humanitarian aid delivery points, the Hamas-ruled enclave’s Health Ministry said. In recent days, reports of Palestinians being killed during food distribution have increased with five attacks reported this week alone, but the most notable was the so-called “flour massacre”, in which a hundred Gazans died, the February 29.
In the first incident, Palestinian health authorities said eight people were killed in an airstrike against an aid distribution center in the al Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of the enclave.
Later the same day, at least 21 people were killed and more than 150 wounded by Israeli gunfire into a crowd waiting for aid trucks at a roundabout in Kuwait, northern Gaza, the Gaza Health Ministry said. “The number of dead from the massacre at the Kuwait roundabout arriving at the Al Shifa Medical Complex increased to 20 and 155 injured,” the ministry reported this Friday, after initially reporting 14 dead.
According to sources on the ground, “Israeli fighter jets and drones launched volleys of gunfire and missiles against a crowd of people waiting for the delivery of food and relief supplies,” details the Palestinian agency Wafa. The tasks of recovering the victims and evacuating the injured were still in progress on Friday morning, according to the official statement, which warns that the number of victims will increase in the coming hours, and that many injured are lying on the ground of the Al Shifa.
The Israeli army denied attacking aid distribution points and described the reports as “false”: “The army did not open fire on the aid convoy at the Kuwait roundabout,” it said. According to the preliminary military investigation, the military facilitated the passage of a convoy of 31 humanitarian aid trucks containing food and supplies intended for civilians in the north of the strip. An hour before the convoy was due to arrive at the humanitarian corridor, “armed Palestinians opened fire while Gazan civilians waited” for its arrival, the army said. Once the trucks entered, he added, the gunmen continued shooting as the crowd looted the vehicles, some of which ran over several civilians.
Hours before the attack on the Kuwait roundabout, one of the designated destinations for the delivery of UN humanitarian aid to the isolated north of Gaza, another attack occurred in the same place during the early hours of the morning, in which six people died and 83 They were injured. The delivery of aid is subject to approval by the Israeli authorities.
These attacks come after an Israeli bombing on Wednesday against an aid distribution center of the UN Refugee Agency (UNRWA) in Rafah, in the south of the territory, in which five people died.
With the war now in its sixth month, the UN has warned that at least 576,000 people in Gaza – a quarter of the population – are on the brink of famine. Faced with the growing humanitarian crisis, the international community has been pushing for more aid to the Strip, frustrated that Israel’s restrictions have prevented more aid from arriving by land. As an alternative, initiatives have been promoted to deliver food by air or sea, such as the Open Arms ship loaded with 200 tons of food that is already off the coast of the enclave.
