Shooting as Palestinians gather for aid leaves 19 dead, Hamas claims
An aid distribution point shooting in Gaza has left 19 dead, according to Hamas-run media, with a survivor saying: “We almost died to get our children a bite to eat.”
The 19 Palestinians were reportedly killed, and several others wounded, on Saturday at the Kuwait roundabout in Gaza City while they waited for aid trucks.
“We survived death, they shot at us, there are many martyrs, there are many injured, we almost died to get our children a bite to eat,” said Alaa al-Khoudary, a resident of Gaza City who had just returned from the roundabout carrying a bag of aid.
Elsewhere in Gaza on Saturday, fighting raged around Al Shifa, the city’s main hospital. Israel says it has so far killed more than 170 gunmen in an extensive raid, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has also resulted in the deaths of five patients.
The Israeli military said the incident at the Kuwait roundabout was being investigated, but “preliminary findings have determined that there was no aerial strike against the convoy, nor were there incidents found of IDF forces firing at the people at the aid convoy”.
“The IDF facilitated an aid convoy to deliver food to people in Northern Gaza. Upon its approach to the designated distribution point, the convoy was intercepted and looted by hundreds of Gazans,” it added.
The armed wing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters were engaged in battles with the Israeli forces outside and around the vicinity of Gaza city’s Al Shifa hospital. Hamas denies any presence inside the facility.
Israeli troops stormed Al Shifa in the early hours of Monday and have since been combing the sprawling complex, which the military says is connected to a tunnel network used as a base for Hamas and other Palestinian fighters.
The Gaza health ministry said five wounded Palestinians “besieged” inside Al Shifa died as a result of being denied proper care, water and food for the past six days and warned the condition of other patients was deteriorating.
Israel’s military, which has lost two soldiers in combat at the hospital, says it is preventing harm to civilians, patients and medical staff there and providing them with food, water and adequate access to healthcare.
Reuters has been unable to access the hospital or verify either account.
