‘Flour massacres’ continue: At least 40 dead, 150 injured in Occupation attack on aid delivery in Gaza City 

At least 40 people were killed and another 150 injured on Thursday evening by Occupation forces who opened fire on crowds of an estimated 3,000 people waiting for humanitarian aid due to arrive at Gaza City’s Kuwait Roundabout in the north of the strip, according to Palestinian news outlets.

An eyewitness told Mada Masr that he was in the crowd waiting for aid to arrive when Occupation forces opened fire on them using live rounds. The eyewitness added that the military opened fire suddenly, aiming above the waist and killing scores and injuring hundreds immediately. 

The eyewitness said he was able to escape injury by fleeing until gun and artillery fire stopped. He returned to the scene later to help remove bodies. 

The incident is the latest in a pattern of mass casualty shootings by the Israeli military targeting Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza where Israel’s siege has deprived tens of thousands of people from accessing food and other basic goods for months.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday evening that the bodies of 20 people and 155 injured were transported from Salah Eddin Street to the Shifa Medical Complex in west Gaza City. Those injured were being treated on the hospital floor. 

Medical facilities, especially in northern Gaza, have been repeatedly attacked by the Occupation. As a result, their operational capacity has severely diminished, with staff being forced to evacuate and little resources making their way into the strip let alone to the north. 

The Health Ministry said that due to the limited capacity, medics were struggling to respond to the quantity and variety of different injuries reaching hospitals across northern Gaza in the wake of the incident.

Others were transferred to the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Ahli Arab Hospital in east Gaza City and the Awda Hospital in northern Gaza City. 

Following the shooting, Israeli military fire prevented the removal of bodies from the scene, according to Al-Aqsa Radio Station.

Avichay Adrea, a spokesperson for the Israeli military, denied on Friday that the Occupation had opened fire on civilians awaiting food aid, calling the reports false in a statement posted on X.

Over 500 people have been killed in similar incidents, the monitoring group EuroMed for Human Rights said on Thursday, pointing to the Israeli military’s pattern of targeting crowds waiting for aid deliveries with machine gun fire from helicopters, tanks and drones. Others were trampled, said the group. 

“Amid conditions of famine created by Israel’s government, the Israeli army continues to deliberately commit massacres in the besieged enclave,” said EuroMed Human Rights Monitor. 

Thursday’s attack on people in desperate need of aid is the latest in a series of similar crowd-shootings. Just hours earlier at the same site near Gaza City’s Kuwait Roundabout, seven people were killed and dozens were injured. Days before, nine were killed in the same area. 

Over 100 people were killed in a shooting that has become known as the Flour Massacre, during which Israeli soldiers opened fire on thousands of Palestinians waiting for aid at Dawar al-Nabulsi in Gaza City in late February. 

The Israeli military claimed at the time that it had fired warning shots at crowds to contain disorder, and that the majority of the casualties were killed by a stampede as people rushed to access an incoming aid delivery. It claimed it fired at people in the crowd when a direct threat to Israeli military troops emerged. 

The Palestinian Authority Foreign Ministry condemned on Friday “the bloody massacres that Occupation Forces have committed at the Kuwait Roundabout.” The massacres are now taking place almost daily, said the ministry, adding that it was “shocked by countries arming Israel” and “continuing to claim that those weapons are not used to kill civilians.”

Northern Gaza, now unrecognizable following intense bombardment in the first months of Israel’s aggression on the strip and demolitions conducted by the Occupation military following its ground invasion, is still home to tens of thousands of residents. 

They are almost completely cut off from aid deliveries, with humanitarian groups suspending delivery operations from the southern half of the strip to the north due to the Israeli military’s repeated aerial targeting of convoys and the absence of security personnel capable of supporting deliveries. The ranks of the Hamas police have been depleted by targeted airstrikes. 

In these circumstances, incidents of public disorder and theft have become increasingly common amid jostling to obtain rare supplies for northern Gaza’s deprived population. US President Joe Biden’s special Middle East envoy said that “criminal gangs” are increasingly targeting truck convoys carrying desperately needed humanitarian supplies due to the absence of police escorts following Israeli strikes. He added that aid entry into Gaza has been disrupted by lawlessness and constant Israeli protests, PBS reported last month. 

Starvation, malnutrition and disease are also rising precipitously, with one in six children under the age of two screened at centers in north Gaza being acutely malnourished, according to a recent report published by the Global Nutrition Center.