MOHAMMED ABED / AFP
According to the Hamas health ministry, there are also around a hundred injured.
The Hamas health ministry reported early Friday that 14 people had died and more than a hundred were injured in “Israeli fire” on a crowd waiting for humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip.
“Israeli occupying forces targeted a gathering of citizens waiting for humanitarian aid (at a roundabout in Gaza City, editor’s note). So far 11 dead and 100 injured have been transported to al-Chifa hospital.the ministry initially declared, before revising the toll upwards to 14 dead and 150 injured.
Numerous remains
“There was direct fire from the occupying forces on people who were gathering at the Kuwait roundabout to wait for trucks with food to arrive”, told AFP Doctor Mohammed Ghurab, director of emergency services at this hospital, the largest in the north of the Gaza Strip. On site, an AFP collaborator saw numerous remains and gunshot wounds. Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on this information. The UN fears widespread famine in the territory besieged by Israel, particularly in the difficult-to-access North, where around 300,000 people currently live.
Faced with the humanitarian emergency, several countries have decided to diversify the delivery routes of aid to the population, via airdrops or a maritime corridor from Cyprus with a first ship, from the NGO Open Arms, expected in the next few hours. In the north of the Gaza Strip, residents scan the sky daily waiting for an airdrop, but the quantities dropped are limited. At the end of February, more than a hundred Palestinians lost their lives, according to Hamas, in a food aid distribution which turned into a nightmare in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The war was started on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza in southern Israel, which resulted in the death of at least 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count established from sources Israeli officials. According to Israel, around 250 people were kidnapped that day and 130 of them are still hostages in Gaza, 32 of whom are believed to have died.
In retaliation, Israel promised to annihilate the Islamist movement, in power in Gaza since 2007, which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union.