MSF: Israeli aid distribution ‘engineering chaos and massacres’
Caroline Willemen, the Gaza project coordinator for MSF, says “Food remains critically scarce, and there is little indication that sufficient aid will arrive consistently.”
“As a result, every day, people risk their lives in a desperate search for food.”
Using an example from July 30, just days ago, she detailed what the experience of attempting to receive food from aid trucks guarded by Israeli soldiers in Gaza is like for starving Palestinians.
“As people approached trucks distributing aid near Zikim, in north Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire on them. People were wounded in the gunfire and in the crush as crowds panicked and ran”, she said.
“Medical staff at the MSF-supported Sheikh Radwan clinic in north Gaza treated 77 injured patients and received eight people dead on arrival. Across north Gaza, nearly 600 people were treated for similar injuries following violence and chaos near Zikim that night, according to the Ministry of Health, as food trucks were passing.”
Per our reporting, dozens of people trying to pick up life-saving aid in Gaza are killed every day, as Israel continues to deny that starvation in the Strip is at crisis levels.
Palestinian injured in aid chaos: ‘None of us will go back to Zikim’
A Palestinian whose leg was run over by an aid truck during a chaotic attempt to distribute aid has given testimony to MSF, which treated them in Gaza City.
The person said when they tried to go to Zikim in northern Gaza to get flour, they “saw many people dead from the shelling and shooting from tanks”.
“As the trucks entered, at first they drove very fast but then they slowed down for the big crowd. When the trucks turned, some of the 50kg [110-pound] bags of flour fell off, injuring people. The Israeli forces forced the driver to keep going, despite there being people all around him. The driver tried to reverse the truck to leave the area, but it was so crowded that people were hit”, they continued.
Seven young men behind the truck were instantly killed. Amid the chaos, the patient did not realise that their own leg had been run over by the truck. Now, they said that their family has one less person who can help try to find the food and supplies they need to survive Israel’s enforced deprivation policy.
“What I dream about is for all this to be over and to rebuild the house and the business of my father that has been destroyed,” they said.
Palestinian mother survives Israeli shooting to secure a bag of lentils
Israel is severely limiting the number of aid trucks into Gaza, which means many return home to their families from aid distribution points and warehouses with nothing to eat.
But some do not make it back alive – more than 1,300 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces while seeking aid across Gaza.
One woman in Gaza, who says she braved an Israeli attack to get a bag of lentils at a GHF site, recounted her experiences to Al Jazeera. “I stood behind a rock, and they started shooting. I kept crawling until I reached the trailer, and then I got down,” she said. “I managed to secure a bag of lentils. That was after several attempts.”
She said she went to the site by herself as her husband is sick and disabled, and she has six daughters. “That’s why I’m the one who goes to get the aid. I don’t have sons or boys who can bring the aid for me,” she said.
Israeli-imposed starvation claims more victims in Gaza
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip recorded three more deaths due to famine and malnutrition over the past day, including two children, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
This brings the total number of starvation victims to 162 Palestinians, including 92 children.
The ministry said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to worsen, and renewed its call on the international community to intervene.
Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza since dawn reaches 71
Sources in Gaza hospitals have told Al Jazeera that at least 71 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks across the Strip since dawn on Friday, including 38 people seeking aid.
