2024-03-01 02:01:14
This content was published on March 1, 2024 – 03:01
(Keystone-ATS) Israeli soldiers opened fire Thursday in Gaza on a hungry crowd during an aid distribution that turned into chaos with the deaths of 104 people, according to Hamas. That same day, the death toll from the war exceeded 30,000 deaths in the territory.
While acknowledging “limited shooting” by Israeli soldiers feeling “threatened,” an army official reported “a stampede during which dozens of residents were killed and injured, some run over by trucks help”.
“Life is leaving Gaza at a terrifying speed,” said the head of UN humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, reacting to this tragedy, almost five months after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil by the Palestinian Islamist movement.
US President Joe Biden indicated that his country was examining “conflicting versions” of the killing in Gaza City, in the north of the territory.
The UN estimates that 2.2 million people, the vast majority of the population, are at risk of starvation in the Gaza Strip besieged by Israel, particularly in the north, where Palestinians have reported being forced to eat animal fodder or slaughtering draft animals for food.
“This suffering must end”
A doctor at Gaza’s al-Chifa hospital claimed Israeli soldiers shot at “thousands of citizens” rushing toward aid trucks in Gaza, with Hamas’ health ministry announcing 104 deaths and 760 injured in this “carnage”.
According to witnesses and the Gaza health service, soldiers stationed nearby to protect the aid convoy opened fire on the crowd who rushed towards the trucks as they arrived at a roundabout in the city.
The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas based in the occupied West Bank, separated from the Gaza Strip by Israeli territory, “condemned a heinous massacre committed by the occupying forces”, accusing Israel of seeking to “empty northern Gaza of its inhabitants”.
The same day, the Hamas Ministry of Health announced a new toll of 30,035 dead and 70,457 wounded, most of them civilians, in the large-scale Israeli offensive since the start of the war on October 7, in the Palestinian territory where Hamas took power in 2007.
“The death toll in Gaza has exceeded 30,000 (…) This suffering must end,” wrote the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on X.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, whose country is a close ally of Israel, told a parliamentary committee in Washington that “more than 25,000” Palestinian women and children had been killed since October 7.
“Probably” no truce
Meanwhile, hopes of a truce before the start of Ramadan, a holy month of fasting for Muslims which begins on the evening of March 10 or 11 this year, have been dashed.
There will “probably” be no truce in Gaza by Monday, Joe Biden said after saying at the start of the week that he hoped for a ceasefire by March 4. The mediators – Qatar, United States, Egypt – have been trying for weeks to reach an agreement which would allow a pause in the fighting accompanied by the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
In the West Bank, two Israelis were shot and killed in an attack near the settlement of Ely, according to emergency services. A “terrorist who arrived at the Ely gas station opened fire” before being “neutralized,” the army said. The war in Gaza is exacerbating tensions in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
During the attack, some 250 people were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. According to Israel, 130 hostages are still being held there, 31 of whom are believed to have died, after the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel during a truce at the end of November.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, considered by the United States and the European Union, to be a terrorist organization.
His army relentlessly shelled the Gaza Strip and launched a ground offensive on October 27 in the north of the territory, which gradually extended to the south.
Across the Gaza Strip, civilians are caught daily in fighting and bombardments, which have spared no area, devastated entire neighborhoods and forced 1.7 million people to flee their homes.
The fighting, according to the army, continues to rage in several sectors of the Palestinian territory, notably in Khan Younes, in the south, near Rafah.
La famine se profile
According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), “famine is looming (…) A million children face daily trauma.”
Pushed ever further south as the fighting spread, nearly 1.5 million displaced people according to the UN reached Rafah, a town of some 270,000 inhabitants before the war, stuck against the closed border with the ‘Egypt.
Civilians are massed with no escape in this city bombarded daily by Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to launch a ground offensive there to, according to him, defeat Hamas in its “last bastion”.
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