KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Shehada Hijazi woke at dawn. It was his best chance, he thought, to get his hands on a package of food at a new distribution site run by a U.S.- and Israeli-backed foundation in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of others, equally desperate to feed their hungry families, had the same idea.
By the time Hijazi walked the 7 kilometers (4 miles) to the southern tip of the territory, a militarized zone that has been evacuated of its residents, it was chaos. People pushed and shoved for hours as they restlessly waited outside the site, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, earth berms and checkpoints. When it opened, the crowd charged, rushing toward hundreds of boxes left stacked on the ground on wooden pallets.
Hijazi described what he called 15 minutes of terror Thursday at the center run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the private contractor that Israel says will replace the U.N. in feeding Gaza’s more than 2 million people.
Israeli soldiers opened fire in an attempt to control the crowd, he and other witnesses said. His 23-year-old cousin was shot in the foot. They quickly abandoned hope of getting any food and ran for their lives. The “gunfire was very intense…. The sand was jumping around us,” he told The Associated Press.
The military did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the situation at the center Hijazi visited Thursday. It acknowledged firing in the vicinity of another center in central Gaza that day.
On Friday, Hijazi said he would wait before returning, though he is desperate for anything to feed his extended family — now about 200 members living together in a displacement camp in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“Hunger has hit home. I can’t wait around to watch my family die of hunger,” the 41-year-old said.
Turmoil at food-distribution sites
It’s a reality faced by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, plagued by rising hunger and malnutrition after a nearly three-month Israeli blockade barring all food and supplies from Gaza. Israel has let in a trickle of aid this month for the United Nations to distribute through its networks — nearly 1,000 trucks the past 12 days, the military says, far below the rate even at the highest times during the war when several hundred trucks a day would enter.
Israel says GHF will eventually take over all food distribution, despite opposition from the U.N. and most humanitarian groups. Multiple witnesses have reported Israeli troops opening fire at GHF centers. At least six people have been killed and more than 50 wounded around the sites, according to Dr. Ahmmed al-Farrah at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital, where casualties were taken.
Giant crowds of tens of thousands of people have overwhelmed the facilities, sometimes breaking fences to reach food boxes that they say quickly ran out.
At a center in central Gaza on Thursday, Associated Press videos showed smoke bombs arching through the air and an Israeli tanks moving amid audible gunfire. The military said it fired artillery because of a threat to its troops in the area but that it was not in the direction of the GHF center or civilians. It also acknowledged firing warning shots Tuesday near another center to control a crowd.
GHF said in a statement Friday that “no civilians or individuals involved with the distribution of aid were injured, no lives were lost.” It has previously said that no shootings took place at its distribution sites.
Israel demanded the new system, saying it must prevent Hamas from siphoning off supplies, though it has provided no evidence of systematic diversion. U.N. agencies say their mechanisms already prevent significant diversion.
Witnesses reported that there were no ID checks at the new centers and that in the free-for-all, men muscled forward to take cartloads of multiple food boxes.
Hijazi and others said it appeared organized gangs were taking the food to sell and that already boxes are in the markets going for exorbitant prices.
