Aid stampede in Gaza result of Israel weaponizing starvation: Media office
The Gaza Media Office says the massive wave of Palestinians quickly advancing toward the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) center in Rafah is the result of the systematic weaponization of starvation by the Israeli regime.
The Media Office condemned the Israeli regime on Tuesday, and said the video footage of starving Palestinians overrunning a GHF aid center is an indictment of the regime and its systematic policy of “starvation, siege, and bombing.”
The GHF is an Israeli-US-backed group, based in Geneva, that has been set up to function as an alternative to the already established methods of aid delivery, through UN-affiliated organizations, to Gaza.
The UN and many aid organizations have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say contradicts humanitarian principles and appears to “weaponize aid.”
“Thousands of starving civilians besieged and cut off from food and medicine by the occupation for nearly 90 days, rushed to these areas in a heartbreaking scene that ended with the storming of distribution centers and the seizing of food under the crushing weight of hunger,” the Media Office said.
The Israeli regime’s forces have responded to the starving crowd by “opening fire and injuring several citizens, which reflects the total collapse of the so-called humanitarian track that the occupation claims to uphold,” the Media Office added.
Ahmed Abu Taha, that was one of the people who went to the center to seek aid, reported that crowds of people stormed into the distribution center and broke the fences. They heard gunfire and saw Israeli forces aircraft overhead, “It was chaos … people were panicked,” he said.
According to the reports by the Israeli media, the so-called aid workers affiliated with the GHF, instead of trying to control the situation or at least provide some semblance of order amid the chaos, have evacuated the center.
The GHF has said in a statement that due to the huge number of people moving toward the center, it was forced to evacuate its employees and although it has its own armed forces, they did not open fire on the people.
The GHF has claimed it began “distributing” aid yesterday and according to the organization, by late afternoon on Tuesday it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes, equivalent to about 462,000 meals.
But the reality of the situation, as seen by the reports coming from southern Palestine, has shown that the GHF operations have collapsed under the strain of the entire population being starved for three months.
Since October 7, when the Israeli regime began its genocidal war on Gaza, it has killed nearly 54,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 119,000 others, most of whom are children and women.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has escalated dramatically since March 18 because the Israeli regime has severely restricted the entry of food, fuel, medicine, and water into the territory.
According to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), Gaza suffers from phase 5 famine, and nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are at risk of acute malnutrition.
IPC defines phase 5 famine as when at least one in five households experience an extreme lack of food and face starvation, resulting in destitution, extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition, and death.
