Israel kills another 18 in Gaza, 8 of them searching for food: hospitals
Efforts to deliver aid to the starving enclave are still being marred by violence and controversy
Hospitals in Gaza reported the killing of more than a dozen people, eight of them food-seekers, by Israeli fire on Saturday as Palestinians endured severe risks in their search for food amid airdrops and restrictions on overland aid delivery.
Near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution site, Yahia Youssef, who had come to seek aid on Saturday morning, described a panicked scene now grimly familiar. After helping carry out three people wounded by gunshots, he said he looked around and saw many others lying on the ground bleeding.
“It’s the same daily episode,” Youssef said.
In response to questions about several eyewitness accounts of violence at the northernmost of the Israeli-backed American contractor’s four sites, the GHF media office said “nothing [happened] at or near our sites”.
The episode came a day after US officials visited one site, with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee calling GHF’s distribution “an incredible feat”.
International outrage has mounted as the group’s efforts to deliver aid to hunger-stricken Gaza have been marred by violence and controversy.
“We weren’t close to them [the troops] and there was no threat,” said Abed Salah, a man in his 30s who was among the crowd close to the GHF site near Netzarim corridor. “I escaped death miraculously.”