At Least 20 Killed in Stampede Outside a Gaza Aid Site

There were conflicting accounts from Palestinian and aid officials over what happened at the food distribution hub run by the Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

A stampede outside an aid distribution center in Gaza killed at least 20 people waiting for food on Wednesday, according to Palestinian and aid officials, the latest in a string of deadly episodes around sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

The deaths bring the number of people killed while trying to get food from the foundation, which is backed by Israel and the United States, to about 700 since late May, according to data provided this week by the United Nations.

There were conflicting reports about the stampede, which started about 6 a.m. Wednesday on the outskirts of Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.

The Gazan health ministry said that tear gas had been fired into a crowd gathered at the distribution site, causing the stampede. It said 21 people were killed, 15 of whom suffocated.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said that 20 people were killed after armed agitators among a gathering crowd site created a “chaotic and dangerous surge.” Nineteen of the victims were trampled and one was stabbed, the aid organization said in a statement, adding that it was “heartbroken.”

It was not immediately possible to explain the discrepancy in the death toll.

The aid organization asserted that there was “credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd — armed and affiliated with Hamas — deliberately fomented the unrest.” Those claims could not be independently verified.

Later, in response to the Gazan health ministry’s comments, the aid group’s spokesman, Chapin Fay, said that no tear gas had been shot into the crowd although a “limited” amount of pepper spray had been used to “protect against additional loss of life.”

In a video call with reporters, Mr. Fay said that one American worker had fired shots into the air to disperse the crowd and to rescue a boy from being trampled. Another worker was stabbed by a person in the crowd while trying to tackle someone Mr. Fay described as a Hamas affiliate, who had targeted the worker with a gun.

Mr. Fay said that Israel’s military had warned the aid group early Wednesday that Hamas loyalists were among the crowd, which he said included for the first time since May large numbers of armed people among those seeking food.

Mr. Fay’s account could not be independently verified. The Israeli military declined to comment on the episode and referred questions to the aid organization.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was created to distribute food in Gaza as Israel faced widespread international condemnation for a two-month aid blockade that brought the enclave to the brink of famine. Israeli officials said the blockade was an attempt to force Hamas to surrender and release the remaining hostages held in Gaza.

Since the organization started operations in late May, thousands of desperate and hungry Palestinians have come to its four aid sites early each morning hoping to obtain food. Hundreds have since been killed by gunfire that witnesses and Gaza health officials have blamed on Israeli forces shooting into the crowds.

On Wednesday, the Gazan health ministry described the distribution sites as “death traps” in a statement that blamed Israel and the United States for “deliberately committing massacres in a systematic manner and using various methods against the starving people.”

Dr. Ahmed Hajjaj, an emergency physician at Nasser Hospital, said that all the victims who had arrived at the hospital were aged 14 to 25. Some showed signs of suffocation from a crush, he added.

“The overcrowded conditions, lack of immediate care and delayed transportation made resuscitation nearly impossible” in many cases, he told The New York Times.

Video footage posted by local journalists on social media and verified by The Times showed people rushing several men in the back of a vehicle, some appearing lifeless, to the emergency entrance at the Nasser Hospital, the main medical facility in Khan Younis.

“Let the world see!” one man shouted in the video as the vehicle sped toward the hospital.

In another video, also verified by The Times, a man, who could not be independently identified, said aid workers at the Khan Younis site had refused to open the gates for the people who had gathered at the distribution center and were overcrowded as they waited. Some people then climbed over the gate to get to the aid, according to the man, who was covered in dust and helping carry a man to the hospital who he said had suffocated to death.

Mr. Fay said the gates at the distribution site were open at the time.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said this week that it had distributed more than 76 million meals since May. But the group said false information circulating online about access to some of its sites had driven large crowds to closed centers, fueling confusion and disorder.

Many Gazans have had to walk for miles and cross Israeli military cordons to obtain aid from the group’s distribution sites, most of which have not been operational on most days. The sites are in southern and central Gaza, which critics said would help Israel’s attempts to displace residents from the northern part of the territory.

The United Nations has said the group’s supplies constitute a mere trickle of assistance compared with the needs of a population of about two million people at risk of famine.

Some U.N. aid trucks are still making their way through a single border crossing into southern Gaza. But U.N. officials say that distribution to warehouses and bakeries inside Gaza has been hampered by the lack of secure routes and that negligible quantities of food are reaching the people who need it.

The Gaza health ministry said that U.N. trucks carrying medical supplies were expected to enter the territory on Thursday. The ministry called on the public to protect them from attacks and to ensure their safe passage to hospitals.

Not far from the site of the stampede, the Israeli military said it had opened a new security corridor to divide the city of Khan Younis into eastern and western sectors to isolate Hamas units. Some areas of the city have been evacuated several times, displacing thousands of people and pushing them into crowded zones near the border with Egypt.

At a United Nations Security Council meeting on Wednesday about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, called by Britain, Denmark, France, Greece and Slovenia, representatives from those countries and others expressed alarm over Israel’s restrictions on aid entering the enclave and condemned the foundation’s approach to food distribution. U.N. officials and aid groups have boycotted the foundation and been critical since its inception, saying the system violates humanitarian principles.

The group’s system politicizes and militarizes basic assistance contrary to the principles of neutrality and independence underlying international humanitarian law, leading to hundreds of civilian deaths, they said. “We deplore the killing of starving civilians trying to get food,” said Christina Markus Lassen, Denmark’s representative. “The alarming frequency and scale of these incidents are wholly unacceptable,” she added.

The United States, which has supported the aid effort run by American contractors, both financially and diplomatically, defended the endeavor. Dorothy Shea, the acting U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that the focus on and criticism of the foundation was “unconscionable.” She said that aid groups’ refusal to work with the group was “dereliction of duty in the humanitarian space.”

Abu Bakr Bashir, Ephrat Livni and Bilal Shbair contributed reporting.

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