Crush at Gaza aid site kills at least 20 Palestinians as Israeli strikes kill 41 more

At least 20 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday at an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), in what the US-backed group claimed was a crowd surge instigated by armed agitators.

Witnesses said GHF guards threw stun grenades and used pepper spray on people pressing to get into the site before it opened, causing a panic in the narrow, fenced-in entrance.

The GHF, which is supported by Israel, said 19 people were trampled and one fatally stabbed during the crush at one of its centres between Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza.

“We have credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas – deliberately fomented the unrest," GHF said in a statement.

Hamas rejected the GHF allegation as "false and misleading", blaming the incident on the GHF and Israel's military.

Witnesses told Reuters that guards at the site targeted them with pepper spray after they had locked the gates to the centre, trapping them between the gates and the outer wire-fence.

“People kept gathering and pressuring each other; when people pushed each other ... those who couldn’t stand fell under the people and were crushed," said eyewitness Mahmoud Fojo, 21, who was hurt in the stampede.

"Some people started jumping over the netted fence and got wounded. We were injured, and God saved us. We were under the people and we said the Shahada (Editor's note: the Muslim testimony of faith, often recited by dying believers). We thought we were dying, finished," he added.

There has been no immediate comment by the GHF or Israeli army on eyewitness accounts.

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Palestinian health officials told Reuters that 21 people had died of suffocation at the site. One medic said lots of people had been crammed into a small space and had been crushed.

The deaths came as Israeli strikes killed 41 others, including 11 children, in Gaza City and Khan Younis, according to hospital officials. The Israeli military said it has struck more than 120 targets in the past 24 hours across the Gaza Strip, including Hamas military infrastructure of tunnels and weapons storage facilities.

On Tuesday, the UN rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in Gaza – the majority of them close to GHF distribution points.

Most of those deaths were caused by gunfire that locals have blamed on the Israeli military. The military has acknowledged that Palestinian civilians were harmed near aid distribution centres, saying that Israeli forces had been issued new instructions with "lessons learned".

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The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the accusation, and the UN has rejected claims that significant amounts of aid has been diverted by the militant group.

The UN has called the GHF’s model unsafe and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards – an allegation GHF has denied.

Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, accused the GHF on Wednesday of gross mismanagement.

"People who flock in their thousands (to GHF sites) are hungry and exhausted, and they get squeezed into narrow places, amid shortages of aid and the absence of organization and discipline by the GHF," he told Reuters.

The war in Gaza, triggered in October 2023 by a deadly Hamas attack on Israel, has displaced almost all of the territory's population and led to widespread hunger and privation.

Israeli army road

Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had finished paving a new road in southern Gaza separating several towns east of Khan Younis from the rest of the territory in an effort to disrupt Hamas operations.

Palestinians see the road, which extends Israeli control, as a way to put pressure on Hamas in ongoing ceasefire talks, which started on July 6 and are being brokered by Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar with the backing of the United States.

Palestinian sources close to the negotiations said a breakthrough had not yet been reached on any of the main issues.

Hamas said it rejected an Israeli demand to keep at least 40 percent of Gaza under its control as part of any deal. Hamas also demanded the dismantlement of the GHF and the reinstatement of a UN-led aid delivery mechanism.

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Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said in a post on his Facebook page that the road showed Israel was not serious about reaching a ceasefire deal and confirms "the occupation’s long-term intentions and plans to remain inside the Strip".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will end once Hamas is disarmed and removed from Gaza.

Gaza local health authorities said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 87 people across the enclave in the past 24 hours.

Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.

Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, by Israeli tallies.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters, AP)