Chaos erupted on the second day of aid operations by a new U.S.-backed group in Gaza as desperate Palestinians overwhelmed a centre distributing food on Tuesday, breaking through fences. Nearby Israeli troops fired warning shots, sending people fleeing in panic.
The Israeli military said its troops fired the warning shots in the area outside the centre and that “control over the situation was established.”
At least three injured Palestinians were seen by The Associated Press being brought from the scene, one of them bleeding from his leg.
“All the people who went did so to eat and feed their children,” Jihad Khader told CBC News freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife from the scene. “People went to risk their lives to feed their children.”
The turmoil came on the second day of operations by a U.S.-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which Israel has slated to take over food distribution in Gaza — despite opposition from the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations.
Muhammad Afana, 36, said he and hundreds of other Palestinians were made to stand in four rows, before being searched and marched in groups of 10 to a table to retrieve their box of aid.
He spread the contents of the box on the ground for El Saife to see: a few bags of flour, some sugar, tea, pasta, beans, canned tuna and a box of cookies.
“I would go to danger to feed my kids,” he said. “They will be happy when they see the cookies.”
‘It was chaos,’ man says
Palestinians have become desperate for food after nearly three months of an Israeli aid blockade, which has pushed Gaza to the brink of famine, according to the World Health Organization.
On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children walked for several kilometres, through Israeli military lines, to reach the GHF distribution hub set up on the outskirts of Rafah, in southern Gaza.
Hundreds could be seen carrying boxes of aid out of the scene on their backs, or on bikes or strollers, recounting the chaos they witnessed in order to get some food.
In the afternoon, the AP journalist, positioned some distance from the hub, heard tank and gunfire and saw a military helicopter firing flares. Smoke could be seen rising from where one round impacted. Afterwards, crowds were seen returning from the site, almost all of them without aid packages.
Ahmed Abu Taha, who was among those seeking aid, said crowds of people stormed into the distribution centre, breaking fences. He heard gunfire and saw Israeli military aircraft overhead. “It was chaos,” he said. “People were panicked.”
Another Palestinian, Saleh Abu Najjar, said he heard a tank firing from a distance, east of the centre. “The situation was very dangerous and people were frightened,” he said.
8,000 food boxes handed out so far: GHF
In a statement, the GHF said because of the large number of Palestinians seeking aid, staff at the hub followed the group’s safety protocols and “fell back” to allow them to dissipate, then later resumed operations.
“What happened today is conclusive evidence of the occupation’s failure to manage the humanitarian crisis it deliberately created through a policy of starvation, siege and bombing,” the Hamas-run government media office said in a statement.
Armed private contractors are used by the GHF to guard the hubs and the transportation of supplies. The hub is also close to Israeli military positions in the Morag Corridor, a band of territory across the breadth of Gaza that divides Rafah from the rest of the territory.
The GHF has set up four hubs around Gaza to distribute food, two of which began operating on Monday — both of them in the Rafah area.
United Nations officials and aid workers have warned of the risk of friction between Israeli troops and crowds of people seeking aid at the hubs.
By late afternoon on Tuesday, the GHF said it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes, equivalent to about 462,000 meals.
Father of 7 ‘afraid’ to go to distribution site
Although the aid was available on Monday, Palestinians appeared to have heeded warnings, including from Hamas, about biometric screening procedures employed at the foundation’s aid distribution sites.
“As much as I want to go because I am hungry and my children are hungry, I am afraid,” said Abu Ahmed, 55, a father of seven.
“I am so scared because they said the company belongs to Israel and is a mercenary, and also because the resistance [Hamas] said not to go,” he said in a message on the chat app WhatsApp.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday commented on the turmoil at the Rafah centre, saying, “There was some loss of control momentarily … happily we brought it under control.”
COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of co-ordinating aid, said on Tuesday that 400 trucks of supplies, mainly food, was waiting on the Gaza side of the main crossing from Israel but that the UN had not collected them. It said Israel has extended the times for collection and expanded the routes that the UN can use inside Gaza.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office OCHA, told reporters in Geneva that agencies struggle to pick up the supplies “because of the insecure routes that are being assigned to us by the Israeli authorities to use.”
He said the amount of aid allowed the past week was “vastly insufficient.”
