‘Death race’ for food: Hundreds killed in Gaza aid chaos

Deir Al Balah, Gaza – Like “squid game”. The residents of the housing describe this like this, while the dystopia TV show while describing the deadly gauntlet of getting aid to Gaza.

“This is a death race. They will be able to stay faster, more powerful, more lucky-life, and reach dinner.

“He feels like an animal, competing for a box of materials as if our lives are trusting it. And they do it.”

Since the end of the United Nations and other humanitarian aid organizations at the end of last month, Israel assigned aid operations to the Gaza Humani Foundation, a registered US and Israeli -backed special contractor in Delaware, and became a daily friend of aid delivery.

On Thursday, health officials in Gaza saw that 12 people were killed near the GHF distribution center, and within a week, a relatively low fee killed 59 in similar conditions on Tuesday. The foundation has been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since it started to work on May 26th.

Al-Shaqra was one of the losses this month.

On June 8, he gathered with thousands of people in the early morning, near the GHF center in the Southern Gaza city of Rafa. It was the third attempt to get food.

“Something for my family, my brothers and children – flour, rice, pasta, everything – I was desperate to bring back,” he said.

When the transition to the distribution center was opened, Al-Shaqra ran as fast as possible, hoping to beat others in the crowd and buy a box. But then an Israeli Quadcopter drone – in advance – began to fall into explosives; The third bomb approached him, dedi he said.

“My left arm was shattered. I looked down and I saw the bone hanged, and I had a sharp pain in my intestines,” he said. He embraced his arm and tried to stop bleeding from his belly, and he stumbled almost half a mile before a donkey collapsed. A kind driver took him to a field hospital for the International Red Cross. Doctors saved their arm.

The GHF arrived two months after Israel cut all the aid entering Gaza in March, and even if the Palestinian officials and charity groups reported a hunger crisis, Hamas justified the blockade as a way to release hostages.

Although the UN and Humanitarian Aid organizations begged for access to feed about 2 million people in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s help of Hamas, the UN and other groups insisted that Israel has never provided evidence. The Israeli government said the alternative would be GHF.

The Palestinians flocked to the aid center established by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, led by the US and Israel in Sudaniya, in the north of Gaza, Gaza, on Tuesday.

(Saeed MMT Jaras / Anadolu / Getty Images)

However, the GHF was controversial from the beginning, so that the executive director first left the aid delivery before the start of the delivery, the foundation plan can not be applied without violating humanitarian principles ”. Boston Consulting Group, which helps to design the distribution system, terminated its contract with GHF at the beginning of this month and fired two partners who were included in the project.

Instead of using humanitarian aid workers, GHF used only the Israeli army and armed contractors with armed contractors. In addition, rather than about 400 smaller centers used by GHF’s ​​UN and other aid groups throughout the ENCLAVE, rather than about 400 smaller centers, the GHF has concentrated on what GHF called four “reinforced” centers in Southern Gaza – forcing already hungry people to walk for miles through active war zones.

Palestinians carry food and other help from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Gaza, Rafah. Hungry people had to walk miles through active war zones to access delivery.

(Abdel Kareem Hana / Associated Press)

The inhabitants of Gaza complain that only one or two centers usually operate on any day and rarely opened at the described time. Also, he never expresses what happened in the food boxes. And instead of delivering the boxes directly to people, GHF workers pour them into palette and watch the crowds on them. People gather for hours on safe routes determined by the Israeli army, but when they are allowed to approach the centers, they find themselves under the fire of Israel.

“This is a real version of Squid Game. We run, then the shooting begins, we hit the ground and we stay still, so we are not killed, then we run again,” he said.

Im I watched him die with me, ”he said. “I couldn’t do anything to help because of all the shots.”

Ahmed Abu Daqqa, a former barber, is being treated in a tent clinic in Rafah, Rafah, Nasser Hospital in Gaza. The bullet broke his skull and broke his nose.

(For Bilal Shbeir / The Times)

The Israeli army has repeatedly responded to questions about the nearby murders, saying that it would look at the reports of civilian losses. In an previous incident, he said the troops fired a threatening way to people approaching them.

A few Palestinian and a GHF spokesperson, who named Majed, said that most of the shots emerged when they go beyond the boundaries of the secure route to reach the distribution site faster.

Jassim, a 28 -year -old logistics worker hired by a local contractor working with GHF, is going with empty hand, even if they are not injured or killed.

“Good people, especially the elderly and women with children cannot fight crowds,” he said. Authorized, gangs to rob them and sell the valuable materials in the black market, he added that the people who leave the delivery area followed.

“Many of them carry a knife. This is like a trap and I see that many people have been killed.”

When Al-Shaqra recovered his consciousness, he found himself at the Nasser Hospital and waited for surgery in rooms that were filled with other losses from the attacks at the GHF Center that day. Among them was his father Wadee Al-Shaqra, who was injured by a bullet passing by his belly.

The Palestinians, who were wounded by Israeli fire when they gather near a food aid center, are waiting for a bloody floor at the Nasser Hospital in the Southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

(AFP / Getty Images)

Wadee lost his son’s trail after he was shot, but hours later, he found it in one of the few tents established near the Nasser Hospital to heal patients.

Wadee, “I thought you were dead. I was very happy to see him, I didn’t ask if there was food. I didn’t care, Wade Wadee said. He added that he and al-Shaqra went to the centers despite the danger, because they did not have enough bread to share among his grandchildren.

“We need to protect them,” he said. “We just put our lives at risk to starve.”

The GHF says its efforts are successful and have fulfilled approximately 26 million “food” delivery within 22 days since the operations started. However, according to the classification of integrated food safety phase, almost half a million people face the disaster levels of the hunger level and all the population struggling with acute food safety, deliveries roughly 0.6 meals per person.

The GHF does not explain how it describes a dish, but previously calculated daily rations in 1,750 calories, and calculated well below the 2.200 calorie target used by humanitarian aid organizations. (Majed said that the last aid deliveries have provided 2,500 calories.)

Bedlam, accompanied by GHF’s ​​distribution practices, says that the aid workers are completely predictable.

The Palestinians carry a wounded man after going to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Aid Site by the Israeli forces near the Sudaniya region in Gaza on Tuesday.

(Saeed MMT Jaras / Anadolu / Getty Images)

“The delivery of humanitarian aid can be a very simple operation, but this may be a complex operation, Jul said Juliette Touma, the UN Palestinian Agency Communication Director.

He added that UNRWA and other groups have dozens of years of experience serving Palestinians with a regular distribution system that appoints an appointment in properly placed centers. GHF aid, mostly of dry goods such as pasta or lentils, requires gas and water that is difficult to supply in Gaza. GHF AID also does not contain hygiene and cleaning materials, he said – an important requirement.

“There is this arrogance that a third party can be changed by a third party, a private security company. This is not the case,” he said. “Let’s do our job.”

Saleem Al-Naji, a 33-year-old nurse at the Medic field Hospital in British in Balah, is now scaring GHF delivery times.

“I know what will happen every time the GHF center opens its doors,” he said.

“This means more blood and screams, to whom we can cure more impossible decisions. And less people can really save.”

Shbeir, one Times Special reporter reported from Deir AL Balah. Times STAFF writer Bulos reported from Beirut.