A UN team has reported seeing “a large number” of gunshot wounds among Gazans after Israeli troops opened fire near an aid convoy, an incident which highlighted near-famine conditions after nearly five months of war.
U.S. President Joe Biden said his military would start air-dropping relief supplies into the Palestinian territory where Israel is battling fighters of the Iran-backed Hamas movement.
On Saturday, the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory said thousands of people in north Gaza “are at risk of dying from dehydration and malnutrition”, and the World Health Organization said it had delivered treatment for 50 acutely malnourished children in the north.
The Ministry on Friday reported a total of 10 children had died of “malnutrition and dehydration”.
Israeli troops opened fire as Palestinian civilians scrambled for food supplies during a chaotic incident in Gaza City on Thursday that the ministry said killed 115 people and wounded more than 750.
The Israeli military said a “stampede” occurred when thousands of Gazans surrounded the aid convoy, leading to dozens of deaths and injuries, including some who were run over.
An Israeli source acknowledged troops had opened fire on the crowd, believing it “posed a threat”.
‘Bullets and shrapnel’
The Israeli armed forces spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said troops had fired “a few warning shots” to try to disperse a “mob” that had “ambushed” the aid trucks.
The aid convoy deaths helped push the number of Palestinian war dead in Gaza to 30,320, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The war began on October 7 with an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, Israeli figures show.
On Friday, a UN team visited some of the wounded from the aid incident, in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, and saw a “large number of gunshot wounds”, UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said.
The hospital received 70 of the dead, and around 200 wounded were still there during the team’s visit, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
He was not aware of the team examining those killed, but said “from what they saw in terms of the patients who were alive getting treatments is that there was a large number of gunshot wounds”.
Hossam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza City’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, said all the casualties it admitted were hit by “bullets and shrapnel from occupation forces”, a reference to Israel.
Britain joined international calls for an investigation, with Foreign Minister David Cameron saying Israel had “an obligation to ensure that significantly more humanitarian aid reaches” Gazans.
In an interview published Saturday in Le Monde newspaper, his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne said “responsibilities for the blockage of aid are clearly Israeli”.
Mr. Sejourne said the “catastrophic” humanitarian conditions “created indefensible and unjustifiable situations for which the Israelis are accountable for.”
‘Trickle of trucks’
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, on Friday said that “a famine is almost inevitable” in Gaza unless things change.
Mr. Laerke cited the near-total closure of commercial food imports, the “trickle of trucks” coming in with food aid, and the “massive access constraints” to moving around inside Gaza.
The United Nations has particularly cited restrictions on access to northern Gaza, where residents have been reduced to eating animal fodder and even leaves.
Hisham Abu Eid, 28, of Zeitun in the Gaza City area, said he got two bags of flour from an aid distribution and gave one to his neighbours.
“Everyone is suffering from famine. Aid that is getting into Gaza is rare and not enough for even a small number of people. Famine is killing people,” Abu Eid said.
Witnesses on Saturday told AFP that gun battles had taken place in Zeitun.
Mr. Biden said Washington would begin deliveries from the sky “in the coming days”.
“We need to do more, and the United States will do more,” he said, adding he would also “insist” Israel let in more aid trucks.
The International Rescue Committee said the very fact airdrops were “being considered is testament to the serious access challenges in Gaza”.
But the group said parachuting aid is not the solution and distracts “time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale”.
The IRC called for a “sustained ceasefire” and for land crossings into Gaza to be reopened to aid shipments.
Running to reach aid
Jordan first announced an aid airdrop in November and has carried out multiple missions since then, including with France and the Netherlands. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have also begun working together on airdrops.
AFPTV images showed people running and pedalling fast on bicycles past bomb-damaged buildings on a rutted dirt road to reach aid floating down to Gaza City.
Samantha Power, who heads the US Agency for International Development, said an average of 96 aid trucks were entering Gaza each day — “a fraction of what is needed”.
An AFP journalist reported several air strikes as well as tank shelling during the night on Rafah in southern Gaza as well as Khan Yunis city a few kilometres (miles) north, the focus of fighting where Israel’s military said operations continue.
Mediators have been trying to secure a ceasefire and Biden on Friday said he was “hoping” it could still be reached by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is due to start on March 10 or 11.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under domestic pressure to bring home the 130 hostages who Israel says remain in Gaza after their capture on October 7, a figure including 31 presumed dead.
Hamas’s military wing said Friday that seven more hostages had died because of Israeli military operations, an announcement AFP could not independently confirm.
