At least 20 Palestinians killed in crush at food distribution site in southern Gaza
Nineteen people were crushed and one stabbed in a 'chaotic and dangerous surge' on Wednesday morning, GHF said in a statement. It did not respond to questions about the use of pepper spray or teargas by its staff at the site near Khan Younis.
Fifteen people died from suffocation after teargas was fired at the crowd, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement.
'All of the 15 arrived at the hospital already dead with obvious symptoms of lack of oxygen. You can see blue marks, vomit, blue lips, swelling faces – all symptoms of suffocation,' Dr Mohammed Zaqqout, the director of hospitals for Gaza, said. 'We couldn't save any of the 15 we received because they were already dead on arrival.'
Abdel Ghani Rouqa's 20-year-old nephew, Mohammad, was among the dead.
'The tents are completely empty now, lacking any food or drink, so people, with no other options or alternatives, are forced to go to dangerous areas just to get a can of fava beans or hummus, or even a few kilograms of flour, anything to feed their hungry families,' Rouqa said.
'Unfortunately, when Mohammad went there today, the place was extremely crowded. The Israeli army had narrowed the area and created some passages for people to walk through,' he added.
'What happened today was that, with the army firing teargas canisters at the densely packed crowd in front of the aid distribution gates, panic broke out. People started pushing and rushing to flee the area.'
'Mohammad fell to the ground and couldn't get up or escape. As the panicked crowd fled, they stepped on him, some on his stomach or back, some on his head, and others on his legs until he lost his life,' his uncle said. 'The main cause of the chaos and deaths of more than 20 people was the firing of gas bombs.'
GHF rejected the accounts provided by relatives and the Gaza health authorities and instead blamed the incident on Hamas.
Chapin Fay, a GHF spokesperson, said: 'Make no mistake, this tragic incident was no accident. This was a calculated provocation, part of a pattern of targeted efforts by Hamas and its allies to dismantle our life-saving operations.
'GHF personnel identified a large number of people within the crowd carrying pistols. One American GHF worker, a medical professional, was targeted by a suspected Hamas affiliate with a pistol.
'The medic attempted to tackle him, but in the process, the Hamas affiliate fled the site, and the medic was stabbed by another Hamas affiliate with an ice pick-like weapon.'
Fay said no teargas was deployed, but pepper spray was used, 'only to protect against additional loss of life'.
He added that warning shots were fired in the air to disperse the crowd when a GHF worker saw a child in danger of being crushed, and that the GHF worker was able to save the child.
In an earlier statement, GHF said that the trampling deaths were 'the result of a surge instigated by armed Hamas agitators who infiltrated the crowd'.
Fay said 19 people had been trampled to death, and another died from stab wounds.
'The 19 victims who were trampled likely died due to compressive asphyxia, otherwise known as suffocation, which is the leading cause of death in these types of incidents,' he said in an online briefing.
The deaths marked a grim milestone for Palestinians in a war where Israeli attacks have already killed more than 58,000 people, the majority of them civilians. On Tuesday 13 members of the same family, including seven children, were reported killed when an Israeli airstrike hit their home in eastern Gaza City. Some of the victims were left to die under the rubble, as the Israeli military prevented rescuers from approaching the scene for roughly eight hours with the use of drone strikes, local rescue workers and family members told the Haaretz newspaper.
Israeli forces have killed at least 800 Palestinians while they were trying to access food since the GHF began operations in late May. Many of them were trying to reach a GHF distribution site. The deaths on Wednesday were the first at a site controlled by the organisation's armed security guards. Gaza health authorities also said they were the first 'due to suffocation and severe stampedes'.
GHF, a startup organisation with no experience of distributing food in complex conflict zones, says it bears no responsibility for deaths outside its perimeters. The Trump administration announced on Tuesday it would donate $30m (£22m) to the organisation, a move decried as 'outrageous' by the Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen.
Van Hollen referred to GHF as a 'shadowy group at the centre of the scheme to replace humanitarian aid orgs in Gaza with mercenaries, leading to the killing of starving civilians trying to collect food'.
'Taxpayers shouldn't be paying for this outrage,' the senator said in a social media post.
GHF runs only four sites to feed 2 million people, in a territory where extreme hunger is widespread and food security experts have warned of looming famine. Food security experts say deaths are inevitable in a system with only four sites, which open for short, irregular periods, providing food for hundreds of thousands of desperately hungry people.
Under the aid model run by the UN and major international humanitarian organisations, which fed Palestinians during nearly 20 months of war, there were more than 400 aid distribution points used to bring food into communities.
Israeli authorities claimed they needed a new aid system because Hamas was diverting aid, but have not provided evidence to back up allegations that closely audited supply chains of UN and humanitarian agencies were compromised.
William Christou in Beirut contributed reporting
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