Friday Briefing: Many Killed in Gaza as Israelis Opens Fire

Israeli forces opened fire yesterday as a crowd gathered near an aid convoy in Gaza City, leaving dozens killed or injured, according to the Palestinian Authority news agency and an Israeli official.

The details of what happened were unclear, and Palestinian and Israeli officials offered starkly different accounts. Here’s the latest.

The Gazan health authorities said that more than 100 people had been killed and more than 700 injured in a “massacre.” The official Palestinian Authority news agency, Wafa, reported that “Israeli tanks had opened fire with machine guns at thousands” waiting for aid to arrive.

The Israeli official acknowledged that troops had opened fire but said most of the people had been killed or injured in a stampede several hundred yards away. The Israeli military said that Gazans had surrounded aid trucks and “looted the supplies.” As a result, dozens were “killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks.” It did not directly address the Palestinian claims of machine gun fire and said it was investigating.

A Hamas official warned that the killings might derail cease-fire talks. President Biden, after expressing hope earlier in the week that a deal could be reached by Monday, agreed that the shooting was likely to complicate negotiations.

A grim milestone: The death toll in Gaza passed 30,000 people since the war began on Oct. 7, roughly one person killed for every 73 Palestinians in the enclave. The figures, provided by the Gazan health ministry, are probably an undercount, experts said.