GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories - Health authorities in Gaza said on Feb 29 Israeli fire on people waiting for aid near Gaza City had killed 104 Palestinians and wounded 280, with one hospital saying it had received 10 bodies and dozens of injured patients.

A spokesperson for Israel’s military said there was no knowledge of shelling at that location.

The military later said dozens of people were hurt as a result of pushing and trampling when aid trucks arrived in northern Gaza.

An Israeli source said troops opened fire at “several people” in the crowd who posed a threat to them.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office said he “condemned the ugly massacre conducted by the Israeli occupation army this morning against the people who waited for the aid trucks at the Nabulsi roundabout”.

A witness told AFP the violence unfolded at the Nabulsi roundabout in the western part of Gaza City, when thousands of people rushed towards the trucks.

“Trucks full of aid came too close to some army tanks that were in the area and the crowd, thousands of people, just stormed the trucks,” the witness said, declining to be named for safety reasons.

“The soldiers fired at the crowd as people came too close to the tanks.”

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza put the death toll at 70 and said 280 people were injured, their conditions ranging “from critical to serious”.

The death toll could eventually top 100, said ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra.

“Medical teams are unable to deal with the volume and type of injuries arriving at Al-Shifa Medical Complex as a result of weak medical and human capabilities,” he said in a statement.

Aid shortage

Gaza is facing an increasingly desperate humanitarian situation nearly five months into the war that kicked off with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on Oct 7. That assault resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed more than 30,000 people, according to the health ministry.

The UN estimates that 2.2 million people – the vast majority of Gaza’s population – are threatened with famine, particularly in the north where destruction, fighting and looting make the delivery of food almost impossible.

According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, just over 2,300 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip in February, down by around 50 per cent compared to January.

The incident on Feb 29 in Gaza City spurred a heated exchange at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, where Palestinian ambassador Ibrahim Mohammad Khraishi confronted his Israeli counterpart on the reported casualties.

“Are these human shields? Are these Hamas combatants?“ Mr Khraishi said. REUTERS, AFP