Israel Denies Killing Over 100 Palestinians In Gaza Aid Rush (Worthy News In-Depth)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
JERUSALEM/GAZA CITY (Worthy News) – Israel’s military denied Thursday that it had killed more than a hundred Palestinians when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks in Gaza.
Separately, Israelis faced a terror attack in the West Bank that killed two Israelis, officials said.
U.S. President Joe Biden warned the alleged shootings by Israeli forces in Gaza were likely to complicate ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas said the incident could jeopardize talks in Qatar. The group added it would not allow negotiations “to be a cover for the enemy to continue its crimes.”
Hamas did not mention its October 7 attacks in Israel when it killed about 1.200 people, including raped women and children, while abducting about 250 others.
Israel says the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust, or Shoah, sparked the war in Gaza against Hamas.
There were starkly different accounts of how the victims died in Thursday’s chaos that ensued near Gaza City in the north of the Palestinian enclave.
ISRAEL DENIES SHOOTINGS
Israel’s military denied shooting into large crowds of hungry people and said most were killed in a crush or run over by trucks trying to escape.
Soldiers only fired at a small group that moved away from the trucks and threatened a checkpoint, a spokesperson said.
The Israel Defense Forces ( IDF) released a 100-second satellite video, which it said showed thousands of Palestinians converging on the aid trucks and attempting to take supplies by force.
It was unclear in the video if and when Palestinians trampled each other. However, the scene from the satellite footage appeared chaotic and did show many Palestinians occupying the same space.
The video didn’t show any firing by the IDF. Yet Gaza health officials said at least 112 people were killed and 280 injured after Israeli forces opened fire on an aid distribution point.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said it was an “ugly massacre conducted by the Israeli occupation army on people who waited for aid trucks at the Nabulsi roundabout.”
However, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, was quick to call the Gaza war a “carnage” and said an arms embargo should be applied against Israel and others involved in the fighting.
US SEEKS INVESTIGATION
Biden said the U.S. was trying to determine what happened and that the loss of life would complicate efforts to broker a deal to stop fighting and release Israeli hostages before the Islamic holiday month of Ramadan, which starts on 10 March.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry claims the latest deaths add to the number of fatalities in Gaza of more than 30,000.
It says that dozens remain missing, of whom many are presumed to be buried under the rubble.
Israel countered that up to 13,000 “Hamas terrorists” are among those killed and that 10-15 percent of Palestinian civilians killed died after rocket misfires by Hamas.
“Presuming the 30,000 dead Palestinians number provided by Hamas’s Health Ministry is correct, this would mean that the number of killed Palestinian civilians could likely be between 15,000-18,000, significantly lower than 25,000,” commented The Jerusalem Post newspaper.
IDF spokesperson Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari announced that the Israeli forces killed over 450 Hamas terrorists in Gaza in the past few days and more than 13,000 in total.
Additionally, the figures given by Hamas have been complex to verify independently in an area where press freedom is virtually nonexistent.
WEST BANK TERROR
Thursday’s reported tragedy in Gaza came as two Israelis were killed when “a Palestinian terrorist” opened fire at a gas station in the West Bank before being shot and killed, officials said.
The gunman was reportedly killed by a reservist on leave from fighting in Gaza, the military and medics said.
The attack, the second deadly shooting at the spot outside the settlement of Eli since June, comes as security tensions around the West Bank have risen ahead of Ramadan
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said two men were found shot dead at the gas station shortly after 5 p.m. local time, one on the side of the road and one in a car.
The victims were named as Rabbi Yitzhak Zeiger, 57, a father of three and a resident of Shavei Shomron in the West Bank, and Uria Hartum, a 16-year-old high school student from the settlement of Dolev who had been hitching a ride with Zeiger.
Israel’s Shin Bet security agency identified the assailant as Muhammad Manasra, 31, an officer in the Palestinian Authority’s police, from the West Bank’s Qalandiya refugee camp near Jerusalem.
Shin Bet said Manasra was jailed between 2018 and 2019 for weapons offenses, Israeli media reported.
If you are interested in articles produced by Worthy News, please check out our FREE sydication service available to churches or online Christian ministries. To find out more, visit Worthy Plugins.