At least 20 people have been killed in a crush at an aid distribution centre in southern Gaza run by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the organisation and a local hospital say.
The GHF said 19 were trampled to death and one was stabbed “amid a chaotic and dangerous surge” at its site in the Khan Younis area. It added that it believed people “armed and affiliated with Hamas” fomented unrest.
But Gaza’s Hamas-run Government Media Office denied the claim and accused the GHF of trying to “cover up” a crime.
Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said it had received the bodies of 21 people who died from suffocation as a result of tear gas inhalation and a crush at the aid site.
It is the first time the GHF has confirmed deaths at one of its aid sites.
In a graphic video shared on social media and verified by the BBC, a witness standing on a cart filled with the bodies of six boys and men at Nasser hospital said they had been crushed between fences set up at the GHF site while waiting for food handouts on Wednesday.
“They are children. What is it their fault dying for aid?” the man shouts as he holds up the body of one of the boys.
“What happened is [that] at the door of the aid [site], the foreigners made a fence here and a fence here,” he gestured. “The boys went to the front and the people came and stepped on them.”
One injured man being treated at the hospital, Mahmoud Fojo, 21, said that when he reached the GHF site he found that contractors were “closing the gates”.
Credit: bbc.com
The post At least 20 killed in crush at US-backed GHF aid site in Gaza appeared first on The Ghanaian Chronicle.
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