In Gaza City, a hunger riot caused the deaths of 70 to more than 100 people and left several hundred injured during the night from Wednesday to Thursday.
It took place to the south of the city, on the coastal road, near the “Al Nabulsi” roundabout
.
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In a moment of total chaos, starving Palestinians were hit by Israeli army fire.
Others were victims of the crowd movement, some were reportedly crushed by humanitarian aid trucks.
A resident of Gaza City, displaced six times since the start of the war, Maher Habboush was there.
This 34-year-old man, father of two daughters, is like the nearly 300,000 Palestinians still surviving in the ruined city: he is hungry.
“When I learned that a humanitarian convoy was going to arrive during the night, I went to Al Rashid Street.
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It is through this boulevard along the coast that aid trucks enter Gaza City.
Mahed Habboush knows that these loads are generally robbed by the crowd before they can even reach their destination.
This is why he goes, in the middle of the night, near an Israeli army checkpoint, which the trucks must cross during the night.
Israeli army fire
“When I arrived, I was surprised by the number of people: there were thousands of them, women, children, who were sleeping there to be sure of getting something back.”
Around one o'clock in the morning, he said, the crowd saw the headlights of the convoy breaking through the night.
“People started running towards the checkpoint and towards the trucks.
They had barely passed the checkpoint before they were already robbed.”
Filmed by an Israeli army drone, a video shows hundreds of people crowded around moving trucks.
“Generally
,” continues Maher Habboush, “
the Israeli army fires in the air when a humanitarian convoy arrives.
But then people came very close and the soldiers started shooting at us.”
On Thursday morning, the Israeli army issued a statement saying that
“dozens of Gaza residents surrounded and looted the trucks.
During this incident, dozens of Gaza residents were injured.”
The army also acknowledges that
“several people who surrounded the humanitarian aid trucks approached the IDF troops securing the trucks’ passage.”
She claims that
“the crowd approached the forces in such a way as to pose a threat to the troops, who responded with live fire.”
A little later, an Israeli government spokesperson, Avi Hyman, reported that
"the trucks were overwhelmed and the drivers [...], who were civilian drivers from Gaza, drove into the crowd, ultimately killing [...] dozens of people
.
A
“tragedy”
, according to the representative of the Hebrew State.
Hamas said the
“massacre”
jeopardizes negotiations for the release of 134 Israeli hostages kidnapped since the October 7 terrorist attack, which sparked a war in which 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza died.