March 5, 2024
In the early hours of Feb. 29, more
than 110 Palestinians were killed and several hundred wounded in northern Gaza
when a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid reached Gaza City, where a
starving crowd had amassed near the coast. Israel immediately denied
responsibility for the casualties, releasing edited drone footage purporting to
show that its forces “didn’t open fire on those seeking aid” and shot only at
“several individuals” who “posed a threat”; instead, Israel accused the
Palestinians of “trampling other Gazans to death.” However, testimonies
gathered by +972 Magazine from Palestinians who survived what they are calling
the “starvation massacre” describe Israeli forces opening fire indiscriminately
on the crowd.
On the evening of Feb. 28, tens of
thousands of the Palestinians who remain in northern Gaza — who number
approximately 300,000 and are beginning to starve to death as a result of
Israel’s intensified siege since October 7 and the severe lack of aid reaching
the north — started amassing along Al-Rashid Street, west of Gaza City. At
around 9 p.m., according to eyewitnesses, Israeli forces conducted a sweep of
high-rise blocks still standing in the area. Tanks fired shells at some of the
buildings, while soldiers fired their guns into the air to frighten the crowd.
“At that point, my uncle wanted to go
home, saying it was too dangerous,” Abdel Jalil Al-Fayoumi, 22, who was waiting
on Al-Rashid Street with his uncle Abbas and 15-year-old cousin Moatasem told
+972. “But people reassured us that the army conducts these sweeps just to
intimidate us, and they won’t directly harm us. There was a sense of hope and
even joy that we would get flour to take back to our families.”
The convoy of aid trucks eventually
arrived at around 4.45 a.m., before sunrise, and was immediately swarmed by the
crowd. “I couldn’t see the truck; I just saw its lights, and people rushing
toward it,” Al-Fayoumi continued. “Suddenly, intense gunfire erupted from the
Israeli tanks. I got separated from my uncle and cousin. I didn’t know what was
happening; I just wanted to survive and escape. Everyone was screaming and
fleeing. There were bodies on the ground, and wounded people crying for help.”
Al-Fayoumi looked around desperately
until 9 a.m., but couldn’t find Abbas or Moatasem. He returned to where his
family was staying to check if the pair had made it back, but they hadn’t. He
decided to go to Al-Shifa Hospital with his uncle’s wife, where many of the
dead and wounded had been brought by donkey cart. “The hospital was full of
dead and injured people, and mothers looking for their missing children,” he
recalled.
After hours of searching, they found
Abbas standing in front of a body covered with a bloodied white blanket.
Moatasem, his son, was lying lifeless with parts of the inside of his head
exposed. Abbas explained that when Israeli forces opened fire on the crowd, he
and his son had tried to take cover behind debris from previous bombings.
Moatasem lifted his head for a second, and was struck by an Israeli bullet.
“My uncle couldn’t stop crying in
front of his son’s body, saying, ‘I couldn’t bring you flour, forgive me,’”
Al-Fayoumi continued, with tears streaming down his face. “The only reason he
went with his son was their dire need to bring home food.”
It was the same scene at hospitals
across Gaza City. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital told the New York Times
that they received the bodies of 12 people killed by gunshots and another 100
with bullet wounds. At Al-Awda Hospital, the interim manager Dr. Mohamed Salha
told the BBC that they had received 176 wounded people on the morning of Feb.
29, of whom 142 had bullet wounds. A UN official who visited Al-Shifa in the
aftermath of the incident described seeing dozens of patients wounded by
bullets, and told the BBC that Israeli forces had “shot into the thickest part
of the crowd.”
‘The scene was like doomsday’
“The situation was catastrophic,” Said
Al-Suwairki, another survivor of the massacre — who, as the eldest sibling, had
taken on the responsibility of getting food for his family — told +972. “After
hours of waiting, the first aid trucks arrived and everyone rushed toward them.
People were scrambling and pushing each other to get a bag of flour. Once
people crowded the trucks, the Israeli army vehicles opened heavy gunfire on
us. I saw the bullets hitting people directly.
“As soon as I witnessed this, I
started leaving,” Al-Suwairki continued. “I wanted to survive. As I was
retreating, I stumbled over something. I lit my phone torch so I could see in
the darkness, and I discovered a dead body on the ground.
“The scene was like doomsday,” he went
on. “No one cared for anyone there. Everyone just wanted to get flour or
anything they could from the aid truck. There were dead bodies on the ground
and wounded people screaming for help, but no one was paying attention to them.
Hunger drove people to extremes, pushing them to death.”
Salameh Rafiq Obeid, 27, told +972
that he arrived at Al-Rashid Street around midnight, by which time it was
already extremely crowded. “Almost every resident in the north came out that
night to get flour — women and men alike,” he explained. “No one wanted to go
back to their children empty-handed. Everyone advanced toward the trucks; there
was no distance between the Israeli tanks and the people.
“When the crowds descended on the aid
trucks near the Israeli forces, the army responded by indiscriminately firing
at everyone who was there, forcing them back,” Obeid continued. “Seeing this
unfold, I desperately searched for my relatives to head back to the school
[where Obeid’s family is sheltering]. “The situation was extremely difficult
and dangerous.
“We returned to the school, but some
of us were missing,” he went on. “My 13-year-old cousin, Nidal, was shot dead
while attempting to get a bag of flour from a truck near the Israeli army.”
Chaos and panic
Amid the panic induced by the gunfire,
many Palestinians were also killed and wounded as a result of being crushed by
the crowds and the aid trucks themselves. Haitham Jarrada, 51, suffered a
broken right foot amid the chaos. “I was waiting for aid, just like everyone
else,” he told +972. “When the first truck arrived, people rushed in to get
flour, and then there was random gunfire from the army. At that moment, I
didn’t know what was happening.
“It all unfolded in the blink of an
eye,” Jarrada continued. “We were waiting in darkness. Some truck drivers kept
moving, fearing harm from the gunfire. I tried to escape, but because of the
crowding, people pushed me in front of the truck, and it crushed my leg.”
Mohammed Mushtaha and his brother Raed
(this author’s second cousins) were also among the crowds trying to bring back
food for their children and elderly parents, waiting since 5 p.m. on Feb. 28.
“Since the first ceasefire [in November], we have had no flour — almost 100
days,” Mohammed told +972.
“Before we went to Al-Rashid Street, I
told Ra’ed, ‘Let me go alone, and you stay with our mother and your wife and
three children,’” Mushtaha recounted. “He refused and said to me, ‘I am a
father, I must feed my children. Let’s both go, and each of us will bring back
one bag of flour. We don’t know how long this crisis will last.’”
When the gunshots started ringing out
and the chaos unfolded, Mushtaha lost sight of his brother, and went to wait
for him at a meeting point they had agreed on in advance in case they were
separated. For two hours, he waited in fear and anxiety, but his brother never
showed up. After the crowds had dispersed, he returned to the coastal road and
found his brother’s lifeless body on the ground. Ra’ed, Mushtaha insists, was
killed by a tank shell fired into the crowd of people waiting for aid.
Mushtaha now mourns the loss of two of
his brothers: Ra’ed was preceded by Ahmed, who was killed in early December
when Israel shelled his home in the Shuja’iya neighborhood.
In response to a request for comment
on the events described in this article, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office referred
us to the army’s previous statements and added that they will publicize a
fuller account following the completion of an internal investigation in the
coming days.
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