Newsdeck
US urgently seeking information on what took place in northern Gaza aid incident
WASHINGTON, Feb 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. is urgently seeking information on what took place in northern Gaza on Thursday, where health authorities said more than 100 Palestinians had been shot dead by Israeli forces as they waited for an aid delivery.
By Simon Lewis
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the incident underscored the urgency of expanding and sustaining the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, including through a potential temporary ceasefire as part of a hostage deal.
“We are urgently seeking additional information on exactly what took place. We have been in touch with the Israeli government since early this morning and understand that an investigation is underway. We will be monitoring that investigation closely and pressing for answers,” Miller said.
At least 112 people were killed and more than 280 wounded in the incident near Gaza City, Palestinian health officials said, as the death toll from nearly five months of war passed 30,000.
Israel disputed the account provided by health officials in Hamas-run Gaza, which has been bombarded by Israeli forces for months in a war that began after the Palestinian militant group’s deadly rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Washington continues to make clear to Israel that all possible measures must be taken to allow the entry of more assistance into Gaza, Miller said, adding that the U.S. pushed for the opening of a border crossing in the north as soon as possible.
“If there’s anything that the aerial footage of today’s incident makes clear, it is just how desperate the situation on the ground is. People need more food. They need more water. They need medicine and other humanitarian goods, and they need it now,” Miller told reporters at a regular news briefing.
Become an Insider
This has gone too far. They need to be stopped. I can’t even begin to imagine what life there is like at the moment.
Israel is right and Hamas is wrong. Simple as that.
Impartial Observer
However diabolical the October 7th Hamas raid was, the continued Israeli killing of Palestinians, no doubt many of whom were innocent bystanders, cannot be condoned.
The West has the means to put pressure on Israel to back off, and must do so.
The US is seeking information (ie no judgement yet); your headline mentions an “aid incident”; your article – twice – attributes the statement that Israeli soldiers shot Palestinians to the reliable, irrefutable purveyor of its own “truth”, the Hamas/Gaza Health Authority; and the article itself acknowledges – albeit in way down after repeating the Gaza Health Authority’s claims twice in the first 4 paragraphs – that Israel disputes the claims. But you don’t report what Israel said. Israel, apparently, has stated that the people were crushed in a stampede to reach the aid trucks, and the final paragraph of your article about what the aerial footage indicates seems to lend some credence to this assertion. But the Daily Maverick newsletter summary of the article states as a bald fact that “100 Palestinians (being) killed by Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza”. Sounds like the rush to condemn Israel of the “bombing” of the hospital that “killed 500” – which turned out to be (another) a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, that landed in a parking lot and injured fewer than 50 people.
I place a high premium on truth, and accuracy, and fairness – but it seems Daily Maverick, true to form, still doesn’t.
Very well put. A tragic event but by all appearances not a matter of the IDF “mowing down” innocent civilians.
Are you deaf & blind to the Crime against Humanity that the Zionist Israeli
Government has perpetrated, for at least 75 years, against the Palestinians? In comparison with Hamas, Israeli atrocities are off the charts & should be prosecuted as the Nazis were, including & especially the far-right Zionist Israeli Government. The question then becomes: should they be allowed to remain in Palestine wrongly renamed Israel:
1) For mowing the grass,
2) The Gaza siege,
3) The nightly IDF raids to arrest, humiliate & punish Palestinian youth (minors included.)
4) The carpet bombing of Gaza
Begin to research ‘Stone Cold Justice’ & what the IDF has done to graves -imagine that:
A Nation with its defence force that desecrates graves & makes war against children & women – Hell how low!!!
Could this be a God-fearing nation who believes they are exceptional?
Could not agree more!!! Daily Maverick is so bias and reporting is so inaccurate, I wonder why I even bother to still read what they post.
Quite bizarre that US Seeks answers from Israel and ignores all other sources of information. The reporting here by Daily Maverick is biased
Could not agree more! Why are we even reading this nonsense?