The chaos punctuated by heavy Israeli fire that killed 115 people trying to get bags of flour from an aid convoy is a sign of the desperation of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians struggling to survive in northern Gaza
Residents say they have taken to searching piles of rubble and garbage for anything to feed their children, who barely eat one meal a day. Many families have begun mixing animal and bird food with grain to bake bread. International aid officials say they have encountered catastrophic hunger.
“We’re dying from starvation,” Soad Abu Hussein, a widow and mother of five children who has taken shelter in a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, said Saturday.
Roughly one child in six children under the age of 2 in the north suffers from acute malnutrition and wasting, “the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said this week. “If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza.”
“The breakdown in civil order, driven by sheer desperation, is preventing the safe distribution of aid — and we have a duty to protect our staff,” he said.
In the violence Thursday, hundreds of people rushed a group of about 30 trucks bringing a pre-dawn delivery of aid to the north. Palestinians said nearby Israeli troops shot into the crowds. Israel said they fired warning shots toward the crowd and insisted many of the dead were trampled in the stampede. Doctors at hospitals in Gaza and a U.N. team that visited a hospital there said large numbers of the wounded had been shot.
Ahmed Abdel Karim, who was being treated at Kamal Adwan Hospital for gunshot wounds in his feet, said he had spent two days waiting in the area for aid trucks to arrive before Thursday’s convoy came.
“Everyone attacked and advanced on these trucks. Because of the large number, I could not get flour,” he said. He was then shot by Israeli troops, he said.
Radwan Abdel-Hai, a father of four young children, heard a rumor late Wednesday that an aid convoy was on its way. He and five others took a donkey cart to meet it and found a “sea of people” waiting for the aid.
When the convoy arrived, people spread toward the trucks to grab whatever food and water they could get, he said. As they reached the trucks, “tanks started firing at us,” he said. “As I ran back, I heard tank shells and gunfire. I heard people screaming. I saw people falling to the ground, some motionless.” Abdel-Hai fled and took shelter in a nearby building along with others. When the shooting stopped, many dead people were lying on the ground, he said. “We rushed to help evacuate the wounded. Many were shot in their back,” he said.
Abu Hussein, the widow, said that more than 5,000 people — mostly women and children — living with her in the Jabaliya school have not received any aid for more than four weeks. Adults eat one meal or less to save food for the children, she said.
A group of people went to the shore to try to fish, but three were killed and two were wounded by gunfire from Israeli ships, she said. “They just wanted to get something for their children.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mansour Hamed, a 32-year-old former aid worker living with more than 50 relatives in a Gaza City house, said people are resorting to desperate measures to find something to eat. Some are eating tree leaves and animal food. Some sift through the rubble and abandoned houses for old food. It has become normal to find a child coming out of the rubble with a rotten piece of bread, he said.
“They are desperate. They want anything to stay alive.”
International mediators hope to reach agreement on a six-week pause in fighting, and an exchange of some Israeli hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10.
Meanwhile, the fighting continued. The Gaza Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,320. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures, but says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.
Magdy reported from Cairo.