At least 20 people have been killed in a crush at an aid distribution centre in southern Gaza run by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the organisation and a local hospital say.
The GHF said 19 were trampled to death and one was stabbed “amid a chaotic and dangerous surge” at its site in the Khan Younis area. It added that it believed people “armed and affiliated with Hamas” fomented unrest.
But Gaza’s Hamas-run Government Media Office denied the claim and accused the GHF of trying to “cover up” a crime.
Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said it had received the bodies of 21 people who died from suffocation as a result of tear gas inhalation and a crush at the aid site.
It is the first time the GHF has confirmed deaths at one of its aid sites.
In a graphic video shared on social media and verified by the BBC, a witness standing on a cart filled with the bodies of six boys and men at Nasser hospital said they had been crushed between fences set up at the GHF site while waiting for food handouts on Wednesday.
“They are children. What is it their fault dying for aid?” the man shouts as he holds up the body of one of the boys.
“What happened is [that] at the door of the aid [site], the foreigners made a fence here and a fence here,” he gestured. “The boys went to the front and the people came and stepped on them.”
One injured man being treated at the hospital, Mahmoud Fojo, 21, said that when he reached the GHF site he found that contractors were “closing the gates”.
“People kept gathering and pressuring each other. When people pushed each other, those who couldn’t bear it fell down under the people and got run over,” he told Reuters news agency.
“Those who couldn’t stand fell under the people and were crushed. Some people started jumping over the wire fence and got wounded.”
Another man, Ahmed Abu Omra, said armed contractors standing near the narrow passageways into which the crowds were funnelled had fired “pepper bombs”.
The Government Media Office accused the security contractors of causing the crush by closing the gates of the site after thousands of people had gathered in narrow channels, and then firing canisters of tear gas and live rounds towards them.
A GHF spokesperson said the claim was “completely false”.
“At no point was tear gas deployed, nor were shots fired into the crowd. Limited use of pepper spray was deployed, only to safeguard additional loss of life.
“In at least one instance, an American worker physically entered the violent crowd to rescue a child who was being trampled,” they added.
Credit: BBC
