The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Palestinian gunmen opened fire as the crowd gathered and that some civilians had been run over by the aid trucks.
“An intensive preliminary review conducted overnight by the IDF found that the IDF did not open fire at the aid convoy,” the statement said.
Three people interviewed by The Washington Post who said they went to meet the trucks Thursday night said they saw an Israeli helicopter and drones randomly firing on Palestinians who had gathered to receive the aid. Two of the witnesses said they saw armed Palestinian police officers as well, but they were some distance from the convoy, and one said the officers fired their weapons in the air to control the crowds.
The killings occurred as Gaza reels from a hunger crisis humanitarian officials say is man-made and due in large part to Israel’s obstruction of aid. The dire shortages and retreat of authorities have led to desperate scrambles around aid convoys and scenes of chaos that Gazans were unaccustomed to.
As limited supplies of food, medicine and other necessities have entered Gaza through land crossings, the United States and other nations have resorted to delivering a small amount of supplies by air and by sea.
Israel has denied restricting aid to Gaza. U.N. and other relief officials say that without a cease-fire, the enclave’s population could face mass starvation.
Israel’s war cabinet met Friday to evaluate a new cease-fire proposal by Hamas. Afterward, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the militant group’s demands were “still unreasonable” but that Israel would send a delegation to Qatar, which has brokered cease-fire talks, to discuss Israel’s position.
Shortly before midnight Friday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said that dozens of people had been killed or injured as the result of an Israeli attack on civilians waiting for food at the Kuwaiti Roundabout, a place in northern Gaza where people have rushed to intercept aid deliveries. Al-Shifa hospital had received 11 bodies and 100 injured people, the statement said. The Health Ministry later said at least 20 people had been killed.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense in Gaza, said in an interview late Thursday that thousands of people who had gathered near the roundabout were forced to “take cover” after what he said was shooting by Israeli helicopters and drones, followed by tank and artillery fire. An artillery shell landed on a destroyed house where people were sheltering, he said.
The IDF in a statement said it had “facilitated the passage” of 31 trucks carrying humanitarian aid intended for residents in northern Gaza. About an hour before they arrived at the “humanitarian corridor, armed Palestinians opened fire while Gazan civilians were waiting,” the statement said.
“The Palestinian gunmen continued to shoot as the crowd of Gazans began looting the trucks,” the statement said. No Israeli “tank fire, airstrike or gunfire was carried out toward the Gazan civilians at the aid convoy,” it added, calling reports that Israel was responsible for the deaths part of a “smear campaign” by Hamas.
Police in Gaza stopped guarding aid deliveries in the territory last month after Israel launched several strikes targeting the force. Last month, police in Gaza said they would no longer accompany aid deliveries after an increase in Israeli attacks targeting the force, according to the United Nations. The retreat of police has consequently fueled the lawlessness surrounding aid distribution.
Abdul Hakim Jawwad, one of the witnesses, said he left his home in the town of Beit Lahiya around 7 p.m. after the evening prayer. About an hour later, when he was still north of the Kuwaiti Roundabout, he first heard what he described as artillery and gunfire. Then, he said, he saw a helicopter and a quadcopter that fired “shells and bullets.”
Jawwad said the firing began before the trucks arrived. It stopped at times, he said, when a truck sped through the crowd and people clamored to jump in and grab flour or other supplies. Then the firing would start again, he said, estimating that there were seven trucks.
“The trucks ran over people, too,” he said. “I am one of those people. A truck ran over my foot.”
Jawwad said he has gone several times to the Kuwaiti Roundabout to try to get flour, though he always came away empty-handed, as he had Thursday.
The chaos of the aid deliveries, which people hear about through word of mouth, has become routine, he said. In the darkness, people are fixated on trying to get food and survive, he said.
For the first time at the roundabout, Jawwad said he saw groups of men, some armed with automatic weapons, who he identified as police. He said they were about 350 feet away from the roundabout and at times “fired into the air” to quiet the crowds, adding that he did not see Palestinians firing on other Palestinians.
Another witness, Mohammed Samir Bassel, 49, from the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, told The Post by phone that he saw police stationed less than a mile away. He said that starting around 8 p.m., Israeli helicopters and drones periodically fired toward the crowds.
One of Jawwad’s friends, Mohammed Safi, 29, also went to the Kuwaiti Roundabout in search of flour. When the crowds first arrived, Israeli troops threw “sound and smoke bombs,” he said. “Then they started shooting.”
“Victims started being brought out,” he said.
The accounts could not be independently corroborated. Late Friday, the IDF released grainy, edited footage of what it said showed “Palestinian gunmen opening fire in the midst of Gazan civilians.”
The Post could not immediately verify the location in the footage or the events the IDF said it depicted.
The United States reviewed a new hostage release offer from Hamas on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, declaring that there was intense ongoing work to try to reach a deal that would impose a cease-fire on a war that started five months ago.
“There has been a counterproposal put forward by Hamas,” Blinken told reporters in Vienna after a day of meetings with United Nations policymakers and Austrian leaders. “I obviously can’t get into the details.”
The United States is “working intensively with Israel, with Qatar, with Egypt to bridge the remaining gaps and to try to reach an agreement,” he added. “We have conversations that are happening now as we speak here, and I’m convinced they’ll go on into the coming days.”
Basem Naim, a Hamas official, told The Post that he could not confirm the exact details of the proposal, but said the group is aiming for a comprehensive deal to end the fighting rather than just a partial one. “A whole deal or no deal,” he said.
Reuters, which said it reviewed the proposal, reported that details included the release of women, children and elderly, as well as sick Israeli hostages, in exchange for 700 to 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, 100 of whom are serving life sentences. According to figures from the Israeli government, around 99 living hostages remain in captivity in Gaza.
In response to news of a potential deal nearing, some families of Israeli hostages said they would gather outside a government building in Tel Aviv on Friday to put pressure on the war cabinet to accept the deal.
“Now is the moment for the members of the Security Cabinet and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision that will save our beloved ones,” they said in a statement Friday.
“An entire nation is counting on them to make the right choice — the return of our brothers and sisters.”
Michael Birnbaum, Hajar Harb, Itay Stern and Adela Suliman contributed to this report.
