Several Palestinians were injured by Israeli army fire when starving Palestinians stormed a US-backed aid distribution facility in Rafah, southern Gaza on Tuesday, local authorities said.
“The Israeli occupation’s plan for aid distribution in the so-called buffer zone has failed disastrously,” Gaza’s government media office said in a statement.
It said Israeli forces opened fire after thousands of starving Palestinians rushed into the aid distribution facility.
The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said American workers affiliated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundations (GHF) were evacuated from Rafah after the storming.
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UN in the dark
The United Nations (UN) has said it had no information on whether the GHF, a US-backed aid group, had actually delivered any supplies inside the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, AFP reports.
The little-known group announced yesterday it had begun distributing truckloads of food in Palestine’s Gaza. But officials from the UN humanitarian agency OCHA and UNRWA said they were unaware whether any aid had actually been distributed.
The UN and international aid agencies have said they will not cooperate with the GHF, amid accusations it is working with Israel without any Palestinian involvement.
“It is a distraction from what is actually needed, which is a reopening of all the crossings into Gaza; a secure environment within Gaza; and faster facilitation of permissions and final approvals of all the emergency supplies that we have just outside the border that need to get in,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke told a press briefing in Geneva.
