RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Many of the Palestinians killed or wounded in the chaos as they tried to get bags of flour from an aid convoy were hit by Israeli army fire, the European Union’s diplomatic service said Saturday, urging an international investigation.
Outrage is rising over the desperation of hundreds of thousands struggling to survive in northern Gaza after nearly five months of fighting between Israel and Hamas. United States military planes began the first airdrops of thousands of meals into Gaza, and the militaries of Jordan and Egypt said they also conducted airdrops.
The European External Action Service said responsibility for the crisis lay with “restrictions imposed by the Israeli army and obstructions by violent extremist(s) to the supply of humanitarian aid.”
Residents in northern Gaza 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.
At least 10 children have starved to death, according to hospital records in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.
Northern Gaza has borne the brunt of the conflict that began when the Hamas terrorist group launched an attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing around 250 hostages.
Gaza’s 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.
In Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of the territory’s people now seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike on Saturday struck tents outside the Emirati hospital, killing 11 people and wounding about 50, including health workers, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
Israel’s air, sea and ground offensive has reduced much of densely populated northern Gaza to rubble. The military told Palestinians to move south, but as many as 300,000 people are believed to have remained.
Roughly one in six children under the age of 2 in the north suffer 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.”
People have overwhelmed trucks delivering food aid to the region and grabbed what they can, Skau said, forcing the WFP to suspend aid deliveries to the north.
In the violence Thursday, hundreds of people rushed about 30 trucks bringing a predawn 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.
Doctors at hospitals in Gaza and a U.N. team that visited a hospital there said large numbers of the wounded had been shot.
As people reached the trucks, “tanks started firing at us,” said Radwan Abdel-Hai, a father of four young children.
Abdel-Hai took shelter in a nearby building. When the shooting stopped, many dead people were on the ground with shots in their back, he said.
Acknowledging the difficulty of getting aid in and the extreme need for food, U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.S. would look for other ways to get shipments in, “including possibly a marine corridor.”
Jordan’s military said its own airdrops targeted sites in northern Gaza and the drops it coordinated with the U.S. occurred in the south.
But the EU statement said airdrops “should be the solution of last resort as their impact is minimal and not devoid of risks to civilians.” It called for the opening of further ground crossings into Gaza and the removal of obstacles from the rare ones open.
Aid workers hoped a possible cease-fire would help. A senior Egyptian official said cease-fire talks would resume Sunday in Cairo.
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.
