By
The Associated Press
and
NBC News
More than 30,000 Palestinians have died in the Gaza Strip since the start of Israel and Hamas' war nearly five months ago, according to the Hamas-held Palestinian Health Ministry.
This Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces reported that they had fired on a group of Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid on a coastal road in northern Gaza, claiming that they "posed a threat" to their soldiers but without clarifying why.
They indicated that some victims may have been crushed to death by the crowd trying to escape.
At least 100 people were killed and nearly 800 wounded, according to Ashraf al Qidra, spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health, but NBC News, sister network of Noticias Telemundo, has not been able to independently verify the figure.
The Gaza Health Ministry declared Thursday that the Palestinian death toll in the war has risen to 30,035, with 70,457 injured;
Palestinian authorities did not distinguish between civilians and their fighters in the war against Israel, which claims to have killed 10,000 Hamas militants, but without providing evidence.
The war has forced 80% of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza from their homes and, according to United Nations officials, a quarter of the population suffers from hunger.
The Israeli air, sea and land offensive launched in response to the October 7 Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, has caused widespread devastation in Gaza City, largely isolating it from the rest of the territory for months and preventing the entry of international aid.
The war has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and has raised global concern about the situation in Rafah, the territory's southernmost city, located next to the border with Egypt, where 1.4 million Palestinians have tried to find safe refuge from Israel's daily bombings.
A "massacre", according to the Ministry of Health
Kamel Abu Nahel, who is being treated for a gunshot wound at Shifa Hospital, told The Associated Press news agency that he and others went to a distribution point last night because they had heard there would be a food delivery. .
“We have been feeding ourselves with animal food for two months,” he lamented.
Nahel said Israeli troops opened fire on the crowd, causing them to disperse, and that some people hid under nearby cars.
When the shooting stopped, they returned to the trucks and the soldiers opened fire again.
That's when he was hit in the leg and fell to the ground, before a truck ran over his leg as he tried to get away as quickly as possible, he said.
According to Fares Afana, head of the ambulance service at Kamal Adwan Hospital, doctors who arrived at the scene found “dozens or hundreds” of people lying on the ground.
He claimed there were not enough ambulances to pick up all the dead and injured and that some were being taken on donkey carts to hospitals.
The Gaza Health Ministry described it as a “massacre.”