Massive crowds of Palestinians stormed an aid distribution centre in southern Gaza, scaling fences and breaking down barriers.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) facility is backed by the United States and Israel, and has started to bring critical supplies to the city of Rafah in the south of the region this week.
Thousands of people, including women and children, some on foot and others in donkey carts, flocked to the foundation’s distribution sites to receive food packages.
Footage from Tuesday, filmed or verified by news agency Reuters, shows a throng of Palestinians rushing through broken-down fences and carrying cardboard boxes and crates of bottles, jars, and packages of food.
GHF said it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes, equivalent to 462,000 meals, after an 11-week Israeli blockade on aid into the war-devastated enclave.
Thousands of people flocked to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites in Rafah city to secure food packages. Source: Reuters
The foundation said at one point the number of people seeking aid was so great that its team had to pull back to allow people to “take aid safely and dissipate,” and to avoid casualties.
Last week, Israel eased its blockade, allowing a trickle of aid trucks from international agencies into Gaza.
But the amount of aid that has entered the densely populated coastal enclave has been a fraction of the 500-600 trucks that United Nations agencies estimate are needed daily.
Israel has eased its blockade, allowing a trickle of aid trucks from international agencies into Gaza. Source: Reuters
GHF said it is looking to expand its operations to deliver aid to approximately two million civilians in the “near term”.
Aid includes pre-packaged food rations, potable water, hygiene kits, blankets, and other “necessary humanitarian” supplies.
There is little clarity on who is funding the GHF, and international bodies have raised concerns about its independence.
There are also claims that trucks from other food relief organisations like World Central Kitchen are being held at the border to Gaza.
Aid includes pre-packaged food rations, potable water, hygiene kits, blankets, and other “necessary humanitarian” supplies. Source: Reuters
What is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation?
The GHF is an Israeli and US-backed body that has started distributing aid in the Gaza Strip.
The group plans to establish four secure distribution sites for aid under Israeli military control in southern and central Gaza.
These four centres would each support up to 300,000 civilians initially, with room to expand to around 500,000 each on average, GHF said in a report.
But the endorsement of the plan by Israel and the US has led many to question the neutrality of the foundation, including its own former boss, who resigned over the weekend.
Jake Wood, GHF’s outgoing executive director, said it had become “clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon”.
UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric described the scenes out of Rafah as tragic and said the US and Israel must stop efforts to undermine UN aid work.
UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric says a meaningful scale-up of humanitarian operations is crucial to avert famine. Source: Reuters
“Frankly, these images are heartbreaking to say the least,” Dujarric said.
“As the secretary-general noted last week, we and our partners have a detailed, principled, operationally sound plan supported by member states to get aid to the desperate population.”
Why is Israel controlling aid to Gaza?
Israel and the GHF have accused Hamas of trying to block civilians from reaching the aid distribution centre, which Hamas denies.
Later on Tuesday, the Hamas media office accused the Israeli military of killing at least three Palestinians and wounding 46 others near one of the distribution sites, while seven people remained missing.
A GHF spokesperson said the information from Hamas was “totally false”.
Israel’s claims of large-scale aid diversion by Hamas are so far unsubstantiated and have been rebutted by international organisations.
The UN and its humanitarian partners say there is no evidence Hamas is diverting aid and have publicly shared details of their end-to-end monitoring systems.
Israel has bombarded Gaza since Hamas’ October 7 attack in which more than 1,200 people, including an estimated 30 children, were killed and over 200 hostages taken, according to the Israeli government. More than 53,977 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The October 7 attack was a significant escalation in the long-standing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
— Additional reporting by the Reuters News Agency
