IDF Kills at Least 20 Palestinians Waiting for Aid, Says Gaza Health Ministry

The incident occurred just hours after eight people were killed in an airstrike on an aid distribution center at the al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, Palestinian health officials said. Israel’s military has denied responsibility for the attack.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 20 people were killed by Israeli forces while waiting to receive aid on Thursday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have called the reports “erroneous” and claimed that the Palestinians opened fire on their own people, adding that some civilians were run over by aid trucks. The attack left more than 150 people injured and came just hours after eight people were killed in an airstrike at the al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.

“An intensive preliminary review conducted overnight by the IDF found that the IDF did not open fire at the aid convoy,” the IDF said in a statement.

But the Ministry of Health wrote on social media that what happened at the “Kuwaiti roundabout points to hidden intentions of the occupation to commit a new, horrible massacre.”

Gaza officials said the attack occurred at the Kuwait roundabout where a crowd had gathered to receive aid. Three people who spoke to a Washington, DC journal said they saw an Israeli helicopter and drones randomly firing on Palestinians who had gathered to receive aid. The witnesses also said they saw armed Palestinian officers as well, but added that they were some distance away. They said the officers had fired their weapons into the air to control the crowds.

A journalist from Agence France-Presse also said they had been on the ground during the incident on Thursday and had seen several bodies and people who had been shot, according to a report.

Some aid agencies have tried to create less predictable paths for their routes to reduce the number of people who might gather for aid. But the quality of those roads creates a problem, says one individual who works for a nonprofit.

“The problem is there are very few routes to take and all are very difficult to travel on – there have been tanks driving up and down them for months and they are basically just strips of rubble now – so people can predict where the trucks are going to be,” said an NGO official in Gaza.

Land access to Gaza—which is now facing a famine—via Jordan, Israel, and Egypt remains limited. Countries sending emergency aid to Palestine have had to diversify their routes as a result. While Israel has denied limiting aid to Gaza, the United Nations (UN) and other relief officials have said that without a cease-fire, their ability to deliver humanitarian aid remains limited.

On Friday, Israel’s war cabinet met to evaluate a new cease-fire proposal by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Hamas’ demands were “unreasonable” but added that Israel would send a delegation to Qatar to discuss their position.

Qatar, Egypt, and the US are hoping to reach a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas before Ramadan, a Muslim holy month, which began on Monday. Netanyahu recently said that his war cabinet had approved a ground invasion plan for Gaza’s southern Rafah city.

Thus far, at least 31,490 Palestinians have been killed and 73,439 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since the war first began. The US has made nearly $600 million worth of arms sales to Israel with an additional amount of sales that went undisclosed. For weeks, humanitarian officials have been warning of an oncoming famine in Gaza as a result of the conflict, according to a report from the UN.