They left by the thousands, camped along a coastal road in the cold Gaza night, huddled by small fires, waiting for supplies to arrive so they could feed their families.
What they faced was death and injury by the hundreds, according to witnesses and a doctor who treated the wounded, as Israeli forces opened fire on desperate Palestinians who rushed forward when aid trucks finally arrived before dawn Thursday.
“I saw things I never, ever thought I would see,” said Mohamed Al-Soli, who had camped overnight to find food for his family. “I saw people fall to the ground after being shot and others just took the food they had with them and kept running for their lives.”
Amid the chaos and bloodshed, some people were swept away by aid trucks, he said.
On Friday, President Biden said the United States would begin airdropping aid to Gaza to help ease suffering there, as European leaders condemned Israel for the deaths of scores of starving Palestinians who were killed as they surrounded the aid convoy.
Gaza health authorities said Israeli troops killed more than 100 people and wounded 700 others in a “massacre” as the motorcade rolled down a dark road, a version of events disputed by Israel.
An Israeli military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Thursday that Israeli soldiers were trying to secure the convoy and fired “when the mob moved in a way that put them in danger.” But he said the soldiers had not fired on people calling for help. The army said most of the people died in the stampede and that some fell on top of the trucks in Gaza City.
About 150 wounded and 12 of those killed were taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said Dr. Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing service there. He said about 95 percent of the injuries were from gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen.
The deaths sparked global outrage and increased pressure on Israel to agree a ceasefire with Hamas that would allow more aid to Gaza.
France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, called for an independent investigation and said the violence surrounding the convoy was the result of a humanitarian disaster that left people “fighting for food”.
“What is happening is unjustified and unjustified,” Mr Cezournet told France Inter radio on Friday. “Israel must be able to hear this and must stop.”
Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, called on the Israeli military to “fully explain” the killings and joined calls for a ceasefire.
“People in Gaza are closer to death than to life,” Ms Baerbock said in a statement. “More humanitarian aid must come. Immediately”.
Mr. Biden said the United States would work with Jordan to drop air aid into Gaza in the coming days.
“Innocent people were caught up in a terrible war, unable to feed their families and you saw the response when they tried to get help,” Mr Biden said at the White House, before meeting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. “But we must do more, and the United States will do more.”
Samantha Power, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said that regardless of how the people near the convoy died, it was clear they were trying to find food.
“This can’t happen,” he said. “Desperate citizens trying to feed their starving families should not be shot.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Israel has an obligation to ensure that significantly more humanitarian aid reaches civilians in Gaza.
“A prolonged pause in the fighting is the only way to get life-saving aid on the scale needed and free the hostages being held tightly by Hamas,” he said in a statement.
Palestinians, particularly in the north, are battling starvation and regularly converge on the relatively few aid trucks that have entered the territory. Aid groups and the United Nations have accused Israel of blocking aid to northern Gaza, which Israel has denied. Aid groups also reported rampant looting of aid trucks in the area.
A small number of police officers from the Hamas-run security forces have shown up to work in Gaza City in recent weeks, but have largely failed to restore basic security, residents said. Last week, the World Food Programme, a United Nations agency, joined UNRWA, the UN agency serving Palestinians in Gaza, in halting aid shipments to the north, citing lawlessness in the region.
On Friday, the European Union said it plans to significantly increase funding this year for UNRWA and will give it 50 million euros, or about $54 million, next week.
The announcement was a lifeline for the agency, which is fighting for its survival after some donor nations suspended their funding, citing Israeli allegations that 12 of the agency’s 13,000 employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks.
The number of aid trucks entering Gaza dropped significantly in February, according to figures, even as aid leaders warned of famine and said some people had resorted to eating birdseed and leaves.
An average of 96 trucks per day were entering Gaza through February 27, a 30 percent drop from the January average and the lowest monthly average since before the ceasefire in late November, according to UNRWA. Before the war, about 500 aid trucks entered Gaza every day.
The drop reflects, in part, Israel’s insistence on inspecting every truck at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, which has served as the main gate since it reopened in December. Aid also passes into Gaza from Egypt through a crossing in the town of Rafah, after Israeli officials inspect the cargo for weapons and other contraband.
Aid officials said that, although necessary, the inspection system had caused significant delays resulting in less overall aid.
On Thursday, Israeli soldiers provided security for the convoy entering Gaza City in private vehicles distributing food from international donors, Israeli army spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told Britain’s Channel 4.
Edited drone footage released by the Israeli military, along with social media footage of the scene analyzed by The New York Times, does not fully explain the sequence of events. Videos show hundreds of people milling around and climbing into trucks and people crawling and ducking for cover.
Mr Al-Sholi, a 34-year-old taxi driver, said he went to meet the convoy because he and his family, including three young children, were surviving on little more than the spices, minced meat and wild herbs they could find. find
On Wednesday, he had heard that people had received bags of flour from aid trucks and there were rumors that another convoy was coming. So he went to a traffic circle with friends to wait. He said he had never seen so many people gathered in one place.
“Just before the trucks arrived, a tank started moving towards us – it was around 3.30am. – and fired a few shots into the air,” Mr. Al-Soli said in a telephone interview, referring to the Israeli tanks. “That tank fired at least one shell. It was dark, and I ran back to a ruined building and took shelter there.”
When the trucks arrived soon after, “people ran towards them to get food and drink and whatever else they could,” said Mohammad Hamoudeh, a photographer in Gaza City. But when the people reached the trucks, he said, “the tanks started shooting directly at the people.”
He added, “I saw them firing machine guns directly.”
Witnesses said Israeli tanks fired at the people even as they started to run away. Israeli forces continued to fire regularly at Gazans from 3 a.m. to 4 a.m., when they first arrived, until 7 a.m., witnesses said.
On Thursday, Admiral Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said troops “did not fire on those asking for help, despite the accusations”.
“We did not fire at the humanitarian convoy, neither from the air nor from the ground,” he said. “We secured it to reach northern Gaza.”
Mr Hamoudeh said that despite the panic at the scene, many still rushed for supplies. “People were terrified, but not everyone,” he said. “There were those who risked death just to get food. They just want to live.”
The report was made by Victoria Kim, Shashank Bengali, Abu Bakr Bashir, Nader Ibrahim, Julian E. Barnes, Lauren Leatherby, Gaya Gupta, Monica Prodchuk, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Adam Sella.
