Gazan authorities said that more than 100 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a chaotic scene early Thursday morning in Gaza City, where a crowd gathered around a convoy of trucks carrying desperately needed aid and the Israeli military opened fire.
Drone footage released by the Israeli military shows hundreds of people circling around the trucks along the Al-Rashid coast road, and a video posted on social media includes audio of shots fired near civilians.
The New York Times; Satellite image by Planet Labs, captured Feb. 14.
Gazan and Israeli authorities have offered differing accounts of the event: Gazan health officials said in a statement that scores of people were brought to hospitals with gunshot wounds and were killed or injured in a “massacre,” while Israeli officials said most were killed or injured in a stampede or after getting run over by trucks.
A Gazan doctor said he saw dozens of dead and injured with gunshot wounds lying in the street, as well as bodies of people who appeared to have been trampled or hit by aid trucks.
The Israeli military claimed that the drone video they released shows a mass stampede where Gazans are trampled, but the quality and length of the clips makes it difficult to confirm these claims, adding confusion to the sequence of events that led to the many deaths.
The video, which does not include audio, was edited by the Israeli military with multiple clips spliced together, leaving out a key moment before many in the crowd start running away from the trucks, with some people crawling behind walls, appearing to take cover.
The New York Times; Composite image from drone footage released by the Israeli military
After a cut in the drone video, at least a dozen bodies are visible on the ground at the scene; it is not clear whether the people are injured or dead. A small number of people may have been struck by aid trucks during the panic, and two Israeli military vehicles are also visible at the scene.
The New York Times; Still image from Israeli military drone footage
A separate video released by Al Jazeera of the crowd near the aid convoy captures the sound of gunfire and shows multiple tracer rounds, originating from the southwest where an Israeli military base is located. The two tanks visible in the drone video were stationed on Al-Rashid around 250 meters from the base.
The Israeli military has acknowledged that soldiers opened fire, saying that it was “only in face of danger when the mob moved in a manner which endangered them.”
Another video, taken several hours later and posted on Instagram, shows at least a dozen injured people atop a truck.
Wounded and killed Palestinians have been transported to multiple hospitals in northern Gaza, including Al-Shifa Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, according to officials. Gaza’s health ministry has said Al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza have sustained extensive damage since the start of the war and are now barely functioning due to shortage of fuel and supplies.
Injured people were brought to multiple hospitals in Gaza City
Buildings in Gaza have been extensively damaged since the start of the war and many hospitals are no longer functioning.
Sources: Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University; satellite image from Copernicus
Note: Data is of Gaza through Feb. 26 at 5:49 p.m. in Gaza and Israel.
The New York Times
The United Nations recently warned that famine is imminent for over half a million of Gaza’s residents, and that one in six children under the age of 2 in northern Gaza was suffering from acute malnutrition. The Gazan health ministry said on Wednesday that at least six children in the territory had died from dehydration and malnutrition.
Humanitarian aid delivery to Gaza has dwindled as the United Nations and other relief agencies have struggled to deliver even small amounts of food and supplies amid Israeli entry restrictions, airstrikes and its ground invasion. Aid delivery has also been hampered by the breakdown of civil order as increasingly desperate civilians converge on aid convoys before the trucks can get to distribution centers.
President Biden said the loss of life in the aid convoy episode could jeopardize efforts to negotiate a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, after saying earlier this week that he hoped a cease-fire deal could be reached by next Monday.
