Israeli forces opened fire Thursday as a crowd gathered near a convoy of aid trucks in Gaza City in a chaotic scene in which dozens were killed and injured, according to the official Palestinian Authority news agency and an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The details of what happened were unclear, with Palestinian and Israeli officials offering starkly different accounts.
Gaza health authorities said more than 100 people were killed and more than 700 injured in a “massacre.” The official Palestinian Authority news agency, Wafa, reported that “Israeli tanks had opened fire with machine guns at thousands” waiting for aid to arrive.
The Israeli military said in two statements that Palestinians had surrounded aid trucks and “looted the supplies.” As a result, dozens were “killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks,” the military said. It did not directly address the Palestinian claims of machine-gun fire. The military said it was investigating the incident.
An Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while the matter is still under investigation, said Israeli soldiers securing the passage of the aid convoy had opened fire after a crowd approached the forces in a manner that the military said posed a threat. The official did not indicate whether the military had fired at the crowd or in its vicinity.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have become increasingly desperate for food as the United Nations and other relief groups struggle to deliver supplies amid Israel’s nearly 5-month-old military offensive. Distribution has also been hampered by a breakdown in law and order, with Palestinians seizing food from trucks.
Such aid is absolutely critical for the more than 2 million residents of Gaza.
The territory has been under an almost complete siege since the war began Oct. 7 with an attack on Israel led by Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that had long controlled Gaza. The U.N. recently warned that at least one-quarter of Gaza’s population is “one step away from famine,” and the Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that at least six children had died in the territory from dehydration and malnutrition.
The ministry said the death toll from the incident Thursday was expected to rise as wounded Palestinians arrived at Shifa Hospital, where medical staff were “unable to deal with the volume and type of injuries” amid a lack of medical supplies and staff.
Wounded people were arriving at two other hospitals in the north as well, including Kamal Adwan Hospital, according to the hospital director.
Late last month, a strike hit a crowd of people waiting for aid trucks in Gaza City, killing multiple people and injuring scores of others, Gaza health authorities said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.