Professor in Gaza braves bullets and bodies to reach Israeli-approved aid
When university professor Nizam Salama made his way to a southern Gaza aid point last week, he came under fire twice, was crushed in a desperate crowd of hungry people and finally left empty-handed.
Shooting started shortly after he left his family's tent at 3am on June 3 to join crowds on the coast road heading towards the aid site in the city of Rafah run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new US-based organisation working with private military contractors to deliver aid in Gaza.
The second time bullets started to fly on Salama's journey was at Alam Roundabout close to the aid delivery site, where he saw six dead bodies. A total of 27 people were killed that day by Israeli fire on aid seekers, Palestinian health authorities said. Israel said its forces shot at a group of people they viewed as a threat and the military is investigating the incident.
At the aid delivery site, known as SDS 1, queues snaked through narrow cage-like fences before gates were opened to an area surrounded by sand barriers where packages of supplies were left on tables and in boxes on the ground, according to undated CCTV video distributed by GHF and reviewed by Reuters.
Salama said the rush of thousands of people once the gates opened was a 'death trap'.
'Survival is for the stronger: people who are fitter and can make it earlier and push harder to win the package,' he said.
'I felt my ribs going into each other. My chest was going into itself. I couldn't breathe. People were shouting. They couldn't breathe at all.'
Reuters could not independently verify all the details of Salama's account. It matched the testimonies of two other aid seekers interviewed by Reuters, who spoke of crawling and ducking as bullets rattled overhead on their way to or from the aid distribution sites.
All three witnesses said they saw dead bodies on their journeys to and from the Rafah sites.
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