Gaza aid distribution rush injures 47

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Around 47 people were injured, largely due to gunshots fired by the Israeli military, when thousands rushed into a new aid distribution center in Gaza, a senior United Nations (UN) official said on Wednesday.

“There are about 47 people who have been injured” in Tuesday’s incident, Ajith Sunghay, the head of UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories told reporters in Geneva, adding that “most of those injured are due to gunshots,” and that “it was shooting from the IDF.”

The scenes in the city of Rafah came days after the partial easing of a total aid blockade on the territory that Israel had imposed since 2 March, which led to severe shortages of food and medicine.

According to the United States-backed aid group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), normal operations had resumed following the incident.

“I was standing in the line at an aid distribution point in Rafah with hundreds of citizens, and suddenly a large number of people started pushing and entering randomly,” Ayman Abu Zaid, a displaced Gazan, told Agence France-Presse.

“It was because of the lack of aid and the delay in distribution, so they tried to get in to take whatever they could.”

At one point gunfire rang out “and the sound was very frightening, and people began to scatter, but some still kept trying to take the aid despite the danger,” he added.

The GHF said in a statement that there was a point at which the “volume of people at the SDS (distribution center) was such that the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate.”

“Normal operations have resumed,” it added.

It also blamed “blockades imposed by Hamas” for creating delays of several hours at one of its centers.

In a statement of its own, Hamas’ government media office said Israel’s new efforts to distribute aid in Gaza had “failed miserably.”

“This failure occurred after thousands of hungry people, who have been besieged by the occupation and deprived of food and medicine for about 90 days, rushed toward these areas in a tragic and painful scene,” the statement said.

Registered in Geneva in February, the GHF has no known offices or representatives in the unofficial capital of the humanitarian world.

Its former executive director, Jake Wood, announced his resignation on Sunday, saying it was impossible to do his job in line with humanitarian principles.

On Monday, the GHF said it had commenced operations, delivering truckloads of food to its Secure Distribution Sites, where distribution to the Gazan people began.

The UN has ruled out involvement in GHF’s plan, with spokesperson Farhan Haq saying that it “does not accord with our basic principles, including those of impartiality, neutrality, independence.”