Geneva : UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the deadly “incident” in northern Gaza in which “more than 100 people were reportedly killed or injured while seeking life-saving aid”, a statement from his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said.
The statement said, “The Secretary-General condemns the incident today in northern Gaza in which more than a hundred people were reportedly killed or injured while seeking life-saving aid. The desperate civilians in Gaza need urgent help, including those in the besieged north where the United Nations has not been able to deliver aid in more than a week.”
Desperate for food, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza City flocked to an aid distribution point early Thursday, only to be met with a chaotic situation and live fire by Israeli troops, according to media reports.
An Israeli source, these reports said, has acknowledged that troops opened fire on the crowd, believing it “posed a threat,” but a spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister office claimed that many people had been run over by the aid trucks.
Dujarric, the United Nations spokesman , said the events “need to be investigated.”
“We don’t know exactly what happened but whether people were shot and died as a result of Israeli gunfire, whether they were crushed by a crowd, whether they were run over by truck, these are all acts of violence, in a sense, due to this conflict,” said Dujarric.
He said there was “no UN presence” at the scene and reiterated the secretary-general’s call for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the unconditional release of all hostages.”
“The desperate civilians in Gaza need urgent help, including those in the besieged north where the United Nations has not been able to deliver aid in more than a week,” Dujarric said, adding that Guterres was “appalled by the tragic human toll of the conflict.”
“Even after close to five months of brutal hostilities, Gaza still has the ability to shock us,” said UN relief chief Martin Griffiths in a post on X.
“I am appalled at the reported killing and injury of hundreds of people during a transfer of aid supplies west of Gaza City today,” he said. “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”
Intense Israeli bombardment from air, land and sea continues to be reported across much of the Gaza Strip, resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure, according to the latest situation report from UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
Ground operations and heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups also continue to be reported, particularly in northern Gaza, Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Fears persist over the planned Israeli incursion into Rafah, where more than one million people are seeking shelter from the violence since Oct 7. 2023.
Rafah is under fire every day, said Georgios Petropoulos, OCHA’s head of the Gaza sub-office.