‘Either you get the flour or you get shot': Survivors recount Israel's ‘flour massacre' near Zikim crossing

Mada

5 days ago

Hamdy Abu Sidu and his two brothers were among the thousands of aid seekers who walked toward the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza on Sunday morning to try to collect flour from a few United Nations trucks. They hadn't eaten bread for four days.
Abu Sidu described dense crowds moving toward the aid trucks while Israeli forces were stationed nearby. He, along with four other eyewitnesses speaking to Mada Masr, said that it wasn't until aid seekers converged around the convoy that Israeli troops opened fire on the desperate crowds.
Eighty-six people were killed at the site on Sunday, Zaher al-Wahidi, director of the Health Ministry's Health Information Unit in Gaza, told Mada Masr.
Footage released by the Israeli military, filmed around 200 meters from the scene. Source: IOF Spokesperson Avichay Adraee
Israel's four-month siege has created mass-starvation conditions in the Gaza Strip, where most Palestinians now rely entirely on aid to access food, the World Food Program (WFP) said Sunday in a statement on the 'countless lives' lost to Israeli fire at Zikim. The few goods available on the market are sold at soaring prices, it added.
The 'flour massacre' at Zikim marked yet another fatal attack on aid seekers at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution points across central and southern Gaza..
Thirteen aid seekers were killed on Sunday in the south near a GHF distribution center north of Rafah, Wahidi said, adding that, since the GHF began operating in May, the death toll among aid seekers has reached 1,021.
Civilians have no choice, however, but to risk the journey to collect aid. 'I was overcome by my children's hunger,' Emad Eissa told Mada Masr, describing his decision to approach the Waha area, a dangerous zone where Israeli forces are stationed near Zikim. He found thousands already gathered at the spot, waiting for the flour trucks. Ismail Abu Dan, who also approached Waha, voiced the same need. 'I was just trying to find food for my children,' he said.
When the trucks arrived, they eventually stopped about 200 meters from the soldiers' positions. According to the World Food Program, the convoy comprised 25 trucks carrying vital food aid.
Eissa said Israeli soldiers allowed the crowds to approach the trucks in Waha. Ismail Massoud, who was also among the crowd, described hearing the soldiers order them over loudspeakers to come forward with their hands raised to collect flour.
He raised his hands and moved with the others, but as soon as they reached the trucks, heavy fire broke out. Dozens were killed or wounded within moments, he told Mada Masr.
Eissa described witnessing tanks and quadcopter fire that sent hundreds of the wounded and companions of the killed screaming and wailing. Israeli sniper fire also targeted the waiting aid seekers, according to the WFP.
Abu Sidu, who was a little farther away at the Sudaniyya roundabout a few kilometers from the crossing, said Israeli fire also targeted that area, though it was more intense near the crossing.
People still waited for the chance to access some of the aid. 'Every time we tried to move forward, they shot at us. When the gunfire let up, we'd try again,' Abu Sidu said. There were only two options: 'Either you take the flour or you get shot.'
'We never faced this level of direct fire before,' he continued, comparing Sunday's incident to previous times he had gone to collect aid from trucks. The soldiers continued to kill and injure civilians from the moment they arrived until their retreat.
As people fled 'each in a different direction,' Abu Sidu lost sight of his two brothers, who had travelled with him from Sheikh Radwan that morning.
The three had 'dragged their feet' over the five kilometers from their home, weak from hunger after four days without bread.
'People were dying, getting trampled. Children were falling and getting lost underfoot,' he said. Carts pulled by animals carried away piles of the wounded and dead.
Abu Sidu began inspecting the shoes and clothes of the dead to see if his brothers were among them. 'You sift through bodies asking yourself, 'Is this him? No, it's not,'' he said.
He eventually returned home around noon 'to save his own skin,' he said. Two hours later, his brothers made it back and confirmed that the shooting had continued after they left.
Many of his neighbors spent those same hours in suspense, as their relatives had also gone to Zikim and hadn't returned, prompting searches that stretched into the night. 'One of our neighbors was thought to be dead until he came back at 10 pm, saying he'd been trapped and hiding behind a barrier,' Abu Sidu said.
Abu Dan described hiding during the massacre behind a mound near Waha, before later fleeing back to Gaza City.
The Israeli military's only comment on the incident was to claim its troops withheld fire, citing 45 seconds of video footage from the incident.
Aid is now a matter of life or death for the hundreds of thousands in Gaza, around one in three of whom are currently eating only every few days, the WFP said in its Sunday statement.
'Only a massive scale-up in food aid distributions can stabilize this spiraling situation,' the WFP said.
Twenty-nine nations issued a call Monday night for an immediate ceasefire, condemning 'the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food,' and calling on Israel to uphold international humanitarian law.