They are new, but old, episodes of despair, shots and malnutrition
It was at least the 23 Palestinians who were killed this Sunday by shots fired by Israeli forces in various parts of the Gaza Strip when they tried to access humanitarian aid distribution sites. The numbers are advanced by local hospitals and confirmed by testimonies collected by the Associated Press.
“I couldn’t stop to help them because of the bullets,” says Yousef Abed, who was on his way to a distribution center in Teina, about three kilometers from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid post near Khan Youis. “I looked around and saw at least three people on the floor, bleeding.”
The report is repeated. The shots, say several witnesses, were fired while hungry crowds approached the delivery posts – many of them located in military areas controlled by Israeli troops. “We were moving forward. They fired. We ran away. Some people were hit,” says Hamza Matter, another survivor, in the Netzarim area, in the center of the Gaza Strip.
At that northern point, Al-Awda Hospital received five dead and at least 27 injured. At the south of Rafah, the Nasser Hospital also confirmed the reception of bodies from Shakoush, zone to scarce hundreds of meters from another point of GHF. More west, near the Morag corridor, nine other Palestinians died while waiting for trucks of help they should enter through an Israeli border passage.
GHF-a private foundation with American and Israelite financing-has been operating for over two months as the main responsible for the logistics of international aid. Access to its distribution points has been marked by successive episodes of violence, many of which with lethal implications. Hospital authorities claim that the attacks were on the way to the centers, not the direct immediate vicinity of the structures.
The Israeli Army (IDF) has not confirmed this Sunday’s specific events, but has admitted on previous occasions that its military shoot to wage “chaotic multitudes movements” that approach strategic positions. It claims, however, the army, that advanced numbers from local sources are often “inflated” – by Hamas – although it does not provide its own counts.
Beside the bullet deaths, the silent deaths of hunger are added. According to the Ministry of Health of Gaza, this Hamas controlled, six more people have died in the last 24 hours due to severe malnutrition. The total number of deadly victims of hunger and malnutrition now rises to 175 since the beginning of the war, including 93 children.
The United Nations and various international humanitarian agencies classify the food situation in Gaza as “criticism” and warn of the risk of a large -scale hunger. The World Health Organization describes a “total collapse” of health and supply systems, while UNICEF stresses that children face “extreme levels of food deprivation”, especially in northern enclave.
According to the world food program, more than half a million people currently live in severe hunger conditions in the Gaza Strip, without regular access to drinking water or basic foods. The number of malnutrition deaths has increased, especially between children and the elderly, and the points of distribution-few and overcrowded-have become at risk places, with frequent registration of violent incidents during help deliveries.
Even in the face of images of fallen bodies next to the trucks of aid – some covered with makeshift sheets, some simply left on the dirt floor – thousands continue to risk the route. The risk of being affected no longer weighs than the certainty of not eating.
In lines that start at dawn, there are those who bring children by the hand, who advances with trembling steps that barely obey the body – is not a narrative, it is the cross of the images that the world sees – who repeats the attempt for the fourth or fifth time (almost all without goring eating) in the same week. Hunger seems more resistant than fear.
