A file photo of a Palestinian refugee in Gaza
At least a 107 people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on a huge crowd of desperate refugees scrambling to get food from an aid convoy in Gaza City on Thursday, according to Palestinian health officials and eyewitnesses .
Israeli military sources said the troops opened fire when the crowd approached them in a “threatening manner” and “dozens were killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks.” Drone videos released by the Israel Defense Forces showed thousands of people swarming around the aid trucks in northern Gaza.
Describing it as a massacre, Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said around 760 people were wounded, many grievously, in the firing and stampede. Officials said the incident took the death toll since Israeli forces launched their operations to over 30,000.
Gaza City and its neighbourhood were the first targets of Israel’s massive, multi-pronged military offensive in response to Hamas’ October 7 attack. in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were slaughtered and over 250 taken hostage. While around half of them were freed during a November ceasefire, over 100 hostages and the remains of 30 are still held by Hamas and other militant groups.
The aid convoy was the first major consignment to reach northern Gaza this month. The UN says a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians face starvation; and warned that an Israeli offensive in Rafah at the southern tip of the Gaza strip, where more than half of the population has sought refuge, could lead to a total suspension of aid and mass casualties.
The U.S., Egypt and Qatar are trying negotiate another pause in the fighting and the release of some of the hostages before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts around March 10.
Separately, Palestinian factions met in Moscow Thursday to try and forge a new government after the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority cabinet resigned on Monday.
In his opening remarks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for solving the problem of creating a Palestinian state in accordance with the resolutions of the Security Council and the United Nations General Assembly, and advocated resuming direct dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
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