A major United States-sponsored humanitarian operations to help Gaza was disrupted on Tuesday after the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) lost control of a food distribution centre on their second day. The situation escalated quickly when Israeli soldiers started shooting near the crowds of Palestinians scrambling for help.
Thousands of Gazans, starving after 11 weeks of total siege and a continuing Israeli blockade. Hundreds of thousands walked through Israeli military lines to reach the new distribution centre in Rafah on Tuesday.
“We have been dying of starvation. We have to feed our children who want to eat. What else can we do? I could do anything to feed them,” a Palestinian father stated.
“At one moment in the late afternoon, the volume of people at the SDS [secure distribution centre] was such that the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Palestinians in Gaza to take aid safely and dissipate,” the foundation said in a statement.
The Israeli military said it fired “warning shots” near the compound to restore control. It was not immediately clear if there had been any injuries among people trying to get food.
The chaos comes just days after Jake Wood, the founding director of the GHF, resigned, citing the impossibility of delivering aid under current conditions while upholding key humanitarian principles like neutrality, impartiality, and independence.
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