Gaza civil defence says 20 killed by overturned aid truck
Photo:
Eyad Baba / AFP
Gaza's civil defence agency said on Wednesday that 20 people were killed when an aid truck overturned on a crowd of aid seekers in the central Gaza Strip.
"Twenty people were killed and dozens injured around midnight last night in a truck carrying aid overturned... while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid," the agency's spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The incident took place near the Nuseirat refugee camp, as the truck was driving on an unsafe road that Israel had previously bombed, Bassal added.
The Israeli military told AFP it was looking into the reports.
Hamas accused Israel of forcing truck drivers to take dangerous routes to reach aid distribution centres, and to "intentionally engineer... starvation and chaos".
Israel "forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities", Hamas's media office said in a statement.
"This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks," it added.
-AFP
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