Thousands of Palestinians stormed into sites where aid was being distributed yesterday by a foundation backed by the US and Israel, with desperation for food overcoming concern about biometric and other checks Israel said it would employ.
By late afternoon yesterday, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes, equivalent to about 462,000 meals, after an almost three-month-old Israeli blockade of the war-devastated enclave,
A renewed Israeli military offensive has forcibly displaced almost 180,000 people in just 10 days through to May 25, the International Organisation for Migration said yesterday.
In the southern city of Rafah, which is under full Israeli army control, thousands of people including women and children, some on foot or in donkey carts, flocked towards one of the distribution sites to receive food packages.
Videos, some of which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed lines of people walking through a wired-off corridor and into a large open field where aid was stacked. Later, images shared on social media showed large parts of the fence torn down as people jostled their way onto the site.
Israel and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said, without providing evidence, that Hamas had tried to block civilians from reaching the aid distribution centre.
Hamas denied the accusation.
“The real cause of the delay and collapse in the aid distribution process is the tragic chaos caused by the mismanagement of the same company operating under the Israeli occupation’s administration in those buffer zones,” Ismail Al Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, told Reuters.
“This has led to thousands of starving people, under the pressure of siege and hunger, storming distribution centres and seizing food, during which Israeli forces opened fire,” he added.
The Israel military said its troops fired warning shots in the area outside the compound and that control was re-established.
A UN spokesperson called images of the incident ‘heartbreaking’.
Some of the recipients showed the content of the packages, which included some rice, flour, canned beans, pasta, olive oil, biscuits and sugar.
Although the aid was available on Monday, Palestinians appeared to have heeded warnings, including from Hamas, about biometric screening procedures employed at the foundation’s aid distribution sites.
The GHF said the number of people seeking aid at one distribution site was so great at one point yesterday that its team had to pull back to allow people to “take aid safely and dissipate” and to avoid casualties.
It said normal operations later resumed. However, the United Nations and other international aid groups have boycotted the foundation.
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