Chaos erupts on first day of US-backed aid distribution in Gaza after weeks of hunger
By
Jeremy Diamond, Kareem Khadder, Abeer Salman
and
Mohammad Al Sawalhi
, CNN
Palestinians gather near an aid distribution site run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Rafah, Gaza, on May 27.
Photo:
Hatem Khaled/Reuters via CNN Newsource
Chaos broke out at an aid distribution site in Gaza run by a controversial US-backed group as thousands of desperate Palestinians rushed to receive food supplies, with Israeli troops firing warning shots into the air and the US contractors overseeing the site briefly withdrawing.
An 11-week Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid has pushed the enclave's population of more than 2 million Palestinians towards famine and into a deepening
humanitarian crisis
, with the
first resumption of humanitarian aid
trickling into the besieged enclave last week.
Videos from the distribution site in Tel al-Sultan, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), showed large crowds rushing the facilities, tearing down some of the fencing and appearing to climb over barriers designed to control the flow of the crowd.
On Wednesday, Palestinian health officials said one person had been shot dead and 48 wounded during the chaos. The person who was killed died of severe injuries at the Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah, the officials said.
The GHF said later on Wednesday that a second distribution site opened and distributed eight truckloads of food in Rafah in southern Gaza "without incident."
The first site in Tel al-Sultan also reopened on Wednesday, it added, after it was restocked with aid.
Wafiq Qdeih, who had come to the Tel al-Sultan site on Tuesday in the hope of receiving aid, said: "They want order, but there will be no order because these are desperate people who want to eat and drink."
"The Israeli army was shooting in the air, and the Americans and their workers retreated, making it impossible to distribute aid to the people."
Several residents trying to access the aid told CNN they were grateful for the food they received, but described walking long distances to reach the distribution centre, hours-long lines and general confusion.
"The place is very far, and we struggled until we arrived. I am tired and exhausted. How can they provide food for all these people? There are too many people here; security will not be able to control them all," Abu Ramzi said.
Dislocated Palestinians carry the humanitarian aid they have received.
Photo:
AFP/SAEED JARAS
A diplomatic official called the chaos at the site "a surprise to no one".
The GHF acknowledged the pandemonium and said "the GHF team fell back to allow a small number" of Palestinians to take aid safely. "This was done in accordance with GHF protocol to avoid casualties," it said.
A security source said American security contractors on the ground did not fire any shots and that operations would resume at the site on Wednesday.
The Israel Defence Forces said their troops fired warning shots in the area outside the compound and that the situation was brought under control. They denied carrying out aerial fire toward the site.
"It's a big failure that we warned against," director of Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network Amjad al-Shawa said.
"If Israel believes that through this blockade and emboldening starvation, which violates humanitarian principles, that this distribution method would work, they are mistaken."
GHF said it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes totalling 462,000 meals in Gaza so far. They said the flow of meals would increase each day, with a goal of delivering food to 1.2 million - 60 percent of Gaza's population - by the end of the week.
The GHF claimed it began operating on Monday, but photos from the organisation showed only a handful of people carrying boxes of aid, with pallets of boxes sitting at an otherwise empty lot.
GHF is readying three additional sites for the distribution of aid, two of which are in southern Gaza and one in central Gaza. All of the sites in the south are in an area that fell under a massive evacuation order one day earlier.
There are no distribution sites in northern Gaza - a point of criticism from many aid experts.
The UN had previously warned that the fact the initial sites were only in southern and central Gaza could be seen as encouraging Israel's publicly stated goal of forcing "the entire Gazan population" out of northern Gaza, as Defence Minister Israel Katz put it earlier this month.
Wednesday marks 600 days of Israel's war against Hamas following the deadly October 7 attacks and the military operations show no signs of abating despite rising international condemnation, including from many of Israel allies.
Israel plans to occupy 75 percent of Gaza within two months as part of its new offensive in the besieged territory, an Israeli military official told CNN earlier this week.
If carried out, the plans would force more than two million Palestinians into a quarter of the already decimated coastal enclave, surrounded on nearly all sides by Israeli forces.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month the entire population would be displaced to southern Gaza.
The GHF aid mechanism "appears practically unfeasible, incompatible with humanitarian principles and will create serious insecurity risks, all while failing to meet Israel's obligations under international law," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs wrote earlier this month in a document obtained by CNN.
In a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, an Israeli military official said both the new mechanism and the old mechanism under the United Nations were working now. The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said 95 trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) had earlier said that it was ready, with other humanitarian organisations, "to distribute meaningful quantities of aid the moment we are allowed to."
Displaced Palestinians ferry bags of food aid after storming a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on May 28, 2025.
Photo:
AFP/EYAD BABA
Commissioner-general of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini condemned Tuesday's chaotic scenes at the aid distribution point as "undignified" and "unsafe".
"We have seen yesterday the shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food. It was chaotic, undignified and unsafe," Lazzarini said, adding that "it is a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities."
A spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office Jens Laerke also criticised the GHF aid plan as "a distraction from what is actually needed, which is a reopening of all the crossings into Gaza, a secure environment within Gaza and faster facilitation of permissions and final approvals of all the emergency supplies that we have just outside the border."
Other diplomats beyond the UN also expressed their concern about GHF's role. The European Union's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas critiqued the aid plan as an attempt at weaponising humanitarian aid.
"We have also been very clear on not supporting any kind of privatisation of the distribution of humanitarian aid," Kallas said Wednesday.
"Humanitarian aid cannot be weaponised.
"Bypassing the UN in aid deliveries undermines humanitarian principles," she added.
Israel and the US had declined to name the humanitarian organisations involved in the controversial new mechanism, but images from the GHF showed boxes labelled "Rahma Worldwide", a Michigan-based non-profit organisation that said it provided "aid and assistance to the most vulnerable communities in the world."
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