As Hungry Gazans Crowd an Aid Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll

Israeli forces opened fire on Thursday as a crowd gathered near a convoy of aid trucks in Gaza City in a chaotic scene in which scores were killed and injured, according to Gazan officials and the Israeli military, which attributed most of the deaths to a stampede.

Although officials from both sides offered differing accounts, the deaths of so many people who were surrounding a convoy carrying food in a part of Gaza where starvation is rampant reflected the desperation and spiraling lawlessness in the territory following Israel’s ground invasion and threatened to derail ongoing cease-fire talks.

The Gazan health ministry said in a statement that Israeli forces had killed more than 100 people and had injured 700 others in a “massacre,” as they waited for food from the convoy.

The latest bloodshed came as Gaza’s health officials reported that the death toll from the war had risen above 30,000, a grim milestone that intensified pressure on Israel to end its military offensive.

An Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said that Israeli soldiers fired warning shots in the air before firing “only in face of danger when the mob moved in a manner which endangered them.”

“We did not fire on those seeking aid, despite the accusations,” he said in a televised briefing. “We did not fire on the humanitarian convoy, either from the air or the land. We secured it so it could reach northern Gaza.”

Gazans, especially in the north, have become increasingly desperate for food as the United Nations and other relief groups have struggled to deliver supplies amid ongoing hostilities and widespread destruction, the Israeli military’s refusal to facilitate aid deliveries and the breakdown of order inside Gaza. The health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that 700,000 people in the north were suffering from starvation.

Displaced Palestinians gather for food in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City received the bodies of 12 gunshot victims, and around 100 people with gunshot wounds were brought there for treatment, according to its director, Hussam Abu Safiya.

The Gazan health ministry said that the death toll was expected to rise as wounded Palestinians also arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital, where medical workers were “unable to deal with the volume and type of injuries” amid a lack of supplies and staff.

A doctor who went to the scene, Yehia Al Masri, said he saw dozens of people with gunshot wounds, including to the head, neck and groin, as well as sacks of flour soaked in blood. He said he also saw the bodies of people who appeared to have died in a stampede or to have been hit by aid trucks.

Dr. Al Masri said he used ropes, string, pieces of wood and shreds of clothing to bind people’s wounds. Others loaded injured victims into cars or carts and then tried to get flour off the trucks before heading to the hospital.

“The soul is exchanged for a flour sack,” Dr. Al Masri said, adding: “We have reached famine, and the situation is beyond description.”

According to one Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, about 30 trucks carrying humanitarian aid had traveled from the Kerem Shalom crossing between southern Israel and Gaza along a coastal road into northern Gaza.

A Palestinian man receiving medical care at Kamal Edwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on Thursday, after the incident at the aid convoy.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As the trucks neared Gaza City at around 4:45 a.m., thousands of people surrounded the vehicles in an attempt to seize supplies, leading to a stampede in which dozens were injured and killed, the official said. Some were run over by aid trucks as the drivers sought to extricate themselves, said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter under investigation.

The official said that several hundred yards south — at the tail end of the convoy — dozens of civilians who had rushed trucks in the area then approached Israeli troops and a tank securing the road, prompting them to open fire. He did not elaborate on whether any people were killed or injured in the shooting and declined to provide a precise timeline.

The Israeli military released a drone video, which it edited, that showed hundreds of people crowding around and climbing on top of aid trucks along Al-Rashid Road in southwestern Gaza City. At one point in the footage, people start running, with some crawling behind walls and appearing to take cover.

After a cut in the video, at least a dozen people can be seen on the ground; it is not clear whether they are injured or dead. During the panic, a few people appear to be struck by the aid trucks. Two Israeli military vehicles are also visible at the scene.

President Biden said on Thursday that while he was still learning the details of what had happened, he believed the bloodshed would complicate negotiations aimed at reaching a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

“I know it will,” he told reporters in Washington, as he backed away from his prediction earlier in the week that an agreement could be in place by Monday. “Probably not by Monday, but I’m hopeful,” he told reporters before departing for Brownsville, Texas.

Gaza has been under an almost complete siege since Hamas and its allies attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 others back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

It was unclear who was overseeing the convoy. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. aid group that serves Palestinians, said that no U.N. agency was involved and the Israeli military said the aid was to be distributed by “private contractors.”

Lawlessness is rampant in many parts of northern and southern Gaza, residents and aid officials say, with no authority emerging to take charge of public order after Israel’s ouster of Hamas forces in those areas.

The World Food Program said last week that it has paused food deliveries to northern Gaza because of the challenges of safely delivering aid there.

Mr. Lazzarini said on Sunday that UNRWA, whose funding has been suspended by several donor nations since the U.N. launched an investigation into about a dozen employees accused of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks, was last able to deliver aid to northern Gaza over a month ago.

In recent weeks, large crowds of Gazans have repeatedly rushed aid convoys, and seized supplies, occasionally while armed. Some Gazan police officers have refused to guard the convoys because they fear their affiliation with the Hamas-run government makes them targets of Israeli troops, Western officials say.

A Hamas official, Izzat Al-Rishq, blamed Israel for the deaths and said that Hamas would not allow negotiations aimed at stopping the war to be used as “a cover for the enemy’s continued crimes against our people in the Gaza Strip.”

The Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, called the deaths a “heinous act” by Israeli forces and demanded that the international community, especially Israel’s chief ally, the United States, intervene to stop Israel’s offensive.

Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said the United States was “urgently seeking additional information on exactly what took place” and had been in touch with the Israeli government since early Thursday about its investigation into the deaths.

“We will be monitoring that investigation closely and pressing for answers,” he said.

A woman sits among Palestinians at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after they were injured in an early morning incident when residents rushed toward aid trucks in Gaza City on Thursday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

International pressure has been mounting on Israel to stop its military invasion. Earlier on Thursday, Volker Türk, the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights, denounced the Israeli offensive in especially forceful remarks to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He said the United Nations estimates that 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured or are missing. He also described the unprecedented number of deaths of U.N. employees and journalists and said that some 17,000 Palestinian children had been orphaned or separated from their families.

“There appear to be no bounds to, no words to capture, the horrors that are unfolding before our eyes in Gaza,” Mr. Türk said. “This is carnage.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, called Mr. Türk’s remarks “an affront” to the victims of the Oct. 7 attack.

Ms. Eilon Shahar said that the United Nations had ignored Israel’s security concerns for years, and she noted that Mr. Türk’s statement did not mention the hundreds of Israelis killed in attacks before and after Oct. 7.

“Do they not matter?” she asked.

Ms. Eilon Shahar defended Israel’s campaign, saying its approach to dealing with terrorist groups that use civilians as human shields was consistent with international law.

Turning to acknowledge two former hostages behind her, Aviva Siegel and Raz Ben-Ami, whose husbands are still being held in Gaza, she said that Mr. Türk had reduced them to “a mere footnote” in the council’s discourse.

Former hostages Raz Ben Ami, above left in white top, and Aviva Siegel, in glasses, listen to the speech of Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, in red and black, at the Human Rights Council, on Thursday.Credit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images