At least 104 killed as Israeli forces open fire on people at Gaza aid point

Israeli forces in war-torn Gaza opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians at an aid distribution point on Thursday (February 29), killing at least 104 people and wounding over 700 according to Palestinian health officials.

Israeli sources confirmed that troops shot at the crowd, believing they “posed a threat”, in the pre-dawn incident in Gaza City in the north of the besieged territory.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza condemned what it labelled a “massacre” and said it had claimed at least 104 lives and left 760 people wounded.

A witness told AFP that the violence unfolded when thousands of people desperate for food rushed towards aid trucks at the city's western Nabulsi roundabout.

“Trucks full of aid came too close to some army tanks that were in the area and the crowd, thousands of people, just stormed the trucks,” the witness said, declining to be named for safety reasons. “The soldiers fired at the crowd as people came too close to the tanks.”

The Israeli army initially said that “during the entry of humanitarian aid trucks into the northern Gaza Strip, Gazan residents surrounded the trucks and looted the supplies being delivered”.

It added that “during the incident, dozens of Gazans were injured as a result of pushing and trampling. The incident is under review.”

Later, pleading anonymity, an Israeli source told AFP that “the crowd approached the forces in a manner that posed a threat to the troops, who responded to the threat with live fire”.

As the dead and wounded were taken to several of Gaza's few functioning hospitals, health officials reported a steadily rising death count.

“Medical teams are unable to deal with the volume and type of injuries arriving at Al-Shifa Medical Complex as a result of weak medical and human capabilities,” one official said in a statement.