Dozens feared killed after Israeli tank fires on crowd waiting for aid in Gaza, witnesses say

Dozens were feared dead and scores wounded Sunday after the Israel Defense Forces opened fire on a group receiving food from a collection point in the Gaza Strip, according to hospital officials and witnesses on the ground.

According to three witnesses who spoke to NBC News, a tank fired on Palestinians crowding around an aid distribution center near Rafah. Witnesses told the Associated Press that Israeli forces had earlier fired on the crowds around 1,000 yards from the aid site.

At least 28 people were killed in the strike, Mohammed Zaqout, Gaza hospitals director, told NBC News, adding that more than 200 wounded had arrived as Nasser Hospital, 30 of whom were in critical condition.

“Their injuries are direct gunshot to the head, to the chest, to the abdomen,” he added. Israeli officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Zaqout’s description of the dead and wounded.

Footage taken by an NBC News team on the ground showed a truck arriving at Nasser Hospital with the bodies of several wounded men lying in the back, as bystanders lifted them onto stretchers and rushed them inside, laying them beside other bloodies bodies strewn across the floor.

Ahmad Abu Labdeh, 28, said Israeli soldiers started shooting as people were trying to collect food.

“They told us to come and collect aid, and when we gathered, they opened fire on us,” he said. “It was hell.”

NBC News journalists at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, said they saw at least 50 of the wounded enter the facility.

The Palestine Red Crescent said it had transported “23 fatalities and 23 injured individuals” from the aid distribution point in Rafah.

The Israeli military said it was “unaware of injuries caused by IDF fire within the humanitarian aid distribution site,” adding that “the matter is still under review.”

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which began distributing aid in the enclave last week as part of a new U.S. and Israel-backed plan, said that it delivered 16 trucks of food “without incident,” and denied reports of “deaths, mass injuries and chaos” at its distribution sites.

GHF was tasked with distributing aid in Gaza after Israel earlier this month lifted an almost three-month-long blockade barring the entry of food, medicine and other vital supplies following warnings of rising starvation in the enclave.

But its first week in operations has been marred by controversy and chaos.

Last week, thousands of hungry Palestinians flooded one of their distribution centers and Israeli soldiers fired live rounds into the air to disperse crowds.

The GHF rejected statements by Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office that three Palestinians were killed, 46 others injured and seven people were missing after the incident. The foundation said that no one was killed while trying to access its distribution site.

GHF’s former executive director, Jake Wood, also quit the organization ahead of its operations in Gaza, saying it was impossible to implement the plan while also adhering to the “humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence,” according to a statement published by Reuters.

The United Nations, which has refused to participate in the plan, has condemned the GHF initiative as a “distraction” that undermines a long-standing humanitarian framework in Gaza. The U.N. says the effort poses a threat to the independence of aid operations, while simultaneously displacing Palestinians en masse to Gaza’s south.

Israel has maintained that a new aid distribution system was necessary, alleging that Hamas was diverting supplies. The United Nations and other humanitarian groups have said they have not seen evidence that the group was siphoning off aid meant to go to civilians.

Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage, marking a major escalation in a decadeslong conflict.

Since then, more than 54,000 people, including thousands of children, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the enclave, which has been run by Hamas since 2007.