#Dozens #casualties #reported #Israeli #shelling #Gaza #residents
“The death toll rose to at least 50, with more than 120 injured, including women and children,” the statement quoted Amjad Aliwa, director of the emergency department at Al Shifa Hospital, as saying.
The Israeli military said it was investigating reports of the incident, and the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said it was aware of the information.
At the time, the Gaza Health Ministry claimed that at least 104 people were killed and 750 others were injured in the same incident.
A witness told AFP that the incident took place in the western part of Gaza City. Residents gathered on al-Rashid Street, where aid trucks with flour arrived, and thousands of people hurriedly tried to reach them.
In gruesome footage confirmed by Al Jazeera, the bodies of dozens of dead and wounded Palestinians are being carried into trucks as ambulances were unable to reach the scene.
“We went to get flour. The Israeli army fired at us. There were many dead and wounded on the ground. There is no first aid,” one witness told Al Jazeera.
“The aid trucks got too close to some of the army tanks in the area, and a crowd of thousands of people just stormed the trucks,” said another witness. “When people got too close to the tanks, the soldiers opened fire on the crowd.”
Meanwhile, Israeli sources confirmed on Thursday that the country’s troops fired on Palestinians rushing towards aid trucks in Gaza, with one of them saying that IDF troops thought they were “a threat.”
“The crowd approached the forces in a way that threatened the soldiers, who responded with live fire,” an Israeli source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the incident.
The UN estimates that the vast majority of the population of the Gaza Strip is at risk of starvation, especially in the northern part of the territory, where destruction, fighting and looting have made it virtually impossible to deliver food.
According to UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, just over 2,300 aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip in February, about 50 percent. less than in January.
