Photo: Agence France-Presse Palestinians mourn at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City near the body of a person killed around a humanitarian aid convoy on February 29.
France Media Agency in Jerusalem
March 9, 2024
- Middle East
A first examination of the tragedy that occurred on February 29 in Gaza where 120 people, according to Hamas authorities, were killed around a humanitarian aid convoy stormed by a hungry crowd, shows that Israeli soldiers “precisely shot several suspects,” the Israeli military said Friday.
“The command's review revealed that [Israeli] troops did not fire on the humanitarian convoy, but did shoot at a number of approaching suspects [ of Israeli soldiers] and presented a threat,” the army wrote in a statement.
According to a witness interviewed by AFP that day, the violence broke out as thousands of desperate people in search of food gathered in the west of Gaza City. As an aid convoy passed, “thousands of people stormed the trucks” and “[Israeli] soldiers fired into the crowd because people were getting too close to the tanks,” he said. indicated this witness.
On the evening of the tragedy, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israeli army, insisted on the fact that the Israeli army was protecting this convoy, chartered according to him by Egypt, to allow him to arrive safely, in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the UN fears an imminent famine after five months of war between Israel and Hamas.
According to a latest report on Friday from the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Islamist movement, 120 people were killed, all by Israeli fire, in the drama of February 29, the circumstances of which are still far from clear, and which sparked a wave of international indignation. The war was started on October 7 by a Hamas attack that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,160 people on the Israeli side.
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“Looting”
But according to the Israeli army, the convoy, attacked around 4:30 a.m. (9:30 p.m. in Quebec) on the coastal road in the west of Gaza City, was “looted” by “ a crowd of around 12,000 Gazans.”
“While the looting was taking place, incidents causing great harm to civilians were caused by [a] stampede and people being run over by trucks,” the army wrote.
In addition, “dozens of Gazans advanced towards the nearby [Israeli] troops, up to several meters away, thus posing a real threat” to these soldiers.
“At this point, troopers fired preemptively to keep the suspects at bay. As the suspects continued to advance towards them, the troops fired specifically at several suspects to eliminate the threat,” the army statement said, without specifying the possible number of deaths caused by these shots, by the stampede or crushed. by trucks.
The Israeli military offensive launched in retaliation for the October 7 attack has so far killed 30,878 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.