Gaza/Tel Aviv, Mar. 1, (dpa/GNA) – The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza accused Israeli soldiers of shooting dead 104 people and injuring 760 on Thursday as aid was being handed out to Palestinians, on the day the overall death toll from the war was seen topping 30,000.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari said soldiers didn’t attack anyone deliberately.
When the aid convoy of 30 lorries facilitated by the IDF arrived, “thousands of Gazans descended upon the trucks,” Hagari said late on Thursday.
“Some began violently pushing and even trampling other Gazans to death, looting the humanitarian supplies,” he said.
“The unfortunate incident resulted in dozens of Gazans killed and injured.”
IDF soldiers had merely fired warning shots into the air to disperse the crowds, Hagari said, adding that troops had retreated afterwards. “No IDF strike was conducted towards the aid convoy.”
It was not initially possible to independently verify the claims.
The Israeli military had earlier said it would investigate the events. The Times of Israel reported that according to the result of that investigation, around 10 people were hit by shots fired by Israeli soldiers.
But the Palestinian representative to the United Nations, the Palestinian militant movement Hamas and Egypt held the Israeli army responsible, accusing soldiers of deliberately attacking the crowd and opening fire on the people waiting for aid.
Thousands of people had gathered in the north of Gaza to wait for an aid delivery, Palestinian diplomat Riyad Mansour said in New York, “and then all of a sudden the Israeli army started firing at them and shooting and, according to the information that we have, dozens of them have bullets in their heads.”
“It’s not like firing in the sky to restrain people if there was confusions and chaos. It was intentionally targeting and killing,” the diplomat said.
The claims could initially not be independently verified.
The government in Cairo strongly condemned “the inhumane Israeli attack on a crowd of defenceless Palestinian civilians awaiting the arrival of aid trucks,” according to a statement from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry on Thursday. Saudi Arabia and Jordan also criticized Israel for the incident.
US President Joe Biden held separate phone calls with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
All leaders regretted the loss of life among the civilian population, according to the White House, calling Thursday’s events a “tragic and alarming incident.”
The White House said Qatar, Egypt and the US, who are currently involved in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, also agree that the incident “underscored the urgency of bringing negotiations to a close as soon as possible and expanding the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.”
A local resident named Mahmud Ahmed told dpa it was still dark in the morning when the incident happened and shots were fired.
How to deliver much-needed aid to the more than 2 million Palestinians in the sealed-off Gaza Strip has been vexing the international community for weeks.
Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian militants from Hamas and other Islamist militant groups killing more than 1,200 people inside the Jewish state on October 7 last year.
One way of distributing aid and avoiding throngs of people descending upon lorries to loot them is dropping packages by parachute.
Jordan and Bahrain asked Britain to supply parachutes and the British Foreign Office said on Thursday it had agreed.
“Together with our international partners we will continue to get humanitarian aid to those most in need,” the ministry wrote on X, formerly Twitter. It also posted pictures showing parcels being loaded onto a plane.
Israel’s army announced on Wednesday that aid supplies for the residents of the southern Gaza Strip had been dropped from the air in cooperation with the US, France and several Arab countries over the past few days.
Aid packages attached to parachutes were also dropped from aeroplanes in the north of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, according to Palestinian security sources.
Eyewitnesses reported that the boxes contained rice, pasta and beans.
UN figures showed that the amount of aid deliveries halved in February compared to the previous month. UN officials warn that thousands of civilians could die of starvation.
Two separate high-profile UN figures also said on Thursday that Palestinian deaths due to Israeli bombardment in the coastal strip had topped 30,000.
Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, quoted the number during a meeting of the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The head of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also used the figure in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 30,000 – a large majority women and children. Over 70,000 Palestinians have been injured,” he wrote.
Neither Türk nor Tedros quoted a source. An official confirmation from the health authorities in Gaza is expected later.
GNA