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Gaza City.- At least 86 Gazans lost their lives this Wednesday while going to seek humanitarian aid in different points of the Gaza Strip, Gaza, sources from local hospitals confirmed to EFE.
Most of the deceased, 60, were registered by Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the Gazan capital, after going to the Zikim crossing, in the northwest of the enclave, to try to get some of what was introduced in the few aid trucks that are entering the territory these days.Read more: Israel bombs the only Catholic church in Gaza
Another 22 fatalities were recorded at the Naser hospital in Jan Yunis, in southern Gaza, and 4 more in the center of the enclave, where a food distribution point of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is located. The Hamas government in Gaza said that, in the "Zikim massacre" alone, at least 58 people died, of whom at least 50 ended up at Al Shifa hospital, 5 at the Kuwaiti field hospital, and 3 at Al Ahli hospital. The incident took place between 7:00 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. local time (4:00 p.m.–4:45 p.m. GMT), a time that the Israeli Army had announced last Sunday as being within the so-called 'tactical pauses' in which it assured that it would not attack certain points of the Palestinian enclave to facilitate the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid.This Thursday EFE spoke with eyewitnesses at Al Shifa hospital, who recounted how the Israeli army opened fire yesterday with tanks and snipers at dusk against the crowd that gathered near the Zikim crossing.
One of the survivors of the incident, who did not want to give his name, told EFE that he visited the site on Wednesday with his cousin, who was hit by a bullet in the head. "What pause (humanitarian) are you talking about?" she asks. "If they want to occupy Gaza, let them do it now, but enough with this story in which every day we lose a brother, a friend, a loved one or a relative. Enough," she said. Medical sources at this hospital center told EFE that all the deceased had gunshot wounds in different parts of the body. "Every day our children arrive dead," Jamil Achur Kafani commented to EFE about the incident, who denounced that the established humanitarian aid distribution points, including the Zikim crossing, are "death traps for our young people." The Israeli Army acknowledged having launched "warning shots" against Gazans who went to the Zikim border crossing on Wednesday afternoon. Asked by EFE, he indicated that the Gazans gathered around the aid trucks that entered through that crossing and "very close to the troops of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operating in the area", after which those troops fired warning shots "in response to the threat they faced". These deaths add to the 1,239 people who - according to the Gazan Ministry of Health - have died from shots fired by the Israeli Army while trying to collect aid since the distribution of humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip under military control began at the end of May, after more than two months of total blockade. More than 60,000 people have died in the Palestinian enclave since the beginning of the Israeli offensive in October 2023, according to local health authorities, in a situation denounced as genocide by countries such as South Africa before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a qualification that has also been used by international and Israeli human rights organizations.
