People mourn at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, over the body of a Palestinian killed in an early morning incident when residents rushed toward aid trucks, on February 29, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
RAFAH, Gaza Strip: The head of a Gaza City hospital that treated some of those wounded in the bloodshed surrounding an aid convoy said on Friday that more than 80% had been struck by gunfire, suggesting there had been heavy shooting by Israeli troops.
At least 115 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 others were injured on Thursday, according to health officials, when witnesses said nearby Israeli troops opened fire as huge crowds raced to pull goods off an aid convoy. Israel said many of the dead were trampled in a stampede linked to the chaos and that its troops fired at some in the crowd who they believed moved toward them in a threatening way.
Dr. Mohammed Salha, the acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, told The Associated Press that 176 wounded were brought to the facility, of whom 142 had suffered gunshot wounds. The other 34 showed injuries from a stampede.
He couldn’t address the cause of death of those killed, because the bodies were taken to government-run hospitals to be counted. Officials at the other hospitals couldn’t immediately be reached concerning the dead and other wounded.
The bloodshed underscored how chaos amid Israel’s almost 5-month-old offensive has crippled the effort to bring aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, a quarter of whom the U.N. says face starvation.
The U.N. and other aid groups have been pleading for safe corridors for aid convoys, saying it has become nearly impossible to deliver supplies in most of Gaza because of the difficulty of coordinating with the Israeli military, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of public order, including crowds of desperate people who overwhelm aid convoys.
U.N. officials say hunger is even worse in the north, where several hundred thousand Palestinians remain even though the area has been isolated and mostly leveled since Israeli troops launched their ground offensive there in late October. U.N. agencies haven’t delivered aid to the north in more than a month because of military restrictions and lack of security, but several deliveries by other groups reached the area earlier this week.
In a sign of the difficulty in getting aid in, a Jordanian plane airdropped packages including rice, flour and baby formula into northern Gaza on Friday.
