“We were just skeletons, walking.” This is how Younis, 32, a father of four, described the death march to the Gaza aid convoy on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire.
Shortly after the food trucks arrived, a shell blew up a small crowd sending people flying through the air to the side of him. Then a bullet ripped through the air by his head.
“The gunfire was so intense that it was like they were aiming to drink our blood,” he told The Independent, his voice still shaking.
“I feel like we’ve been put on a chicken farm and starved and killed.”
Trapped under a mound of people – some alive, some injured, some dead – he managed to crawl free with a single kilo of flour, which later, in the scrum to safety, he had to drop.
“Since the morning, my children had woken me up crying ‘Daddy I want to eat’. These words burned my blood and made me go to danger.”
The UN’s global hunger monitor has repeatedly warned that nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are teetering on the edge of famine.
Accusing Hamas of stealing supplies to fuel its war, Israel has imposed sieges on Gaza, either fully restricting or significantly restricting aid into the tiny 25-mile long strip, as well as corralling people into areas. These are policies that legal experts have told The Independent would amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and even “genocide in action” – something Israel denies.
On Sunday, the World Food Programme (WFP) said a rare convoy of 25 trucks carrying vital food assistance had been permitted to cross into northern Gaza. It was met with large crowds of civilians anxiously waiting to access desperately needed food supplies – among them, Younis.
“As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire,” the WFP said.
The Palestinian health authorities said that at least 99 people were killed in what is believed to be the deadliest day yet for families seeking aid since the war began in October 2023 – over 800 in total have been killed just trying to get food. The Israeli military has said it fired warning shots “to remove an immediate threat”, but has questioned the death toll reported by the Palestinians.
A day later – on Monday – Israel announced an expansion of its military operation against Hamas, announcing fresh forced evacuation orders for parts of Deir al-Balah, a southwestern area of Gaza mostly labeled as a “safe zone” and home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced during more than 21 months of war in Gaza, as well as several vital UN facilities, aid agency guesthouses, and clinics.
And so the situation in Gaza is so dire that even the foreign secretary David Lammy and his counterparts from 24 other nations said on Monday that the suffering of civilians has reached “new depths”, and told Israel that the war must “end now”.
Belgium’s King Philippe, who is rarely outspoken about this conflict, separately called it a “disgrace to humanity” and again called for “an immediate end to this unbearable crisis”.
Instead, the escalation of killing and conflict is undermining attempts to broker even a temporary truce taking place in Qatar. As one official close to the negotiators told me: “Whatever happens on the battlefield directly impacts what happens at the negotiating table.”
And right now Israel is escalating.
On Monday, Israeli forces pushed into districts of Deir al-Balah for the first time, despite widespread international condemnation and even protests at home from the biggest group representing the families of those taken captive by Hamas militants during its attacks in October 2023.
On the ground in Deir al-Balah, medics told The Independent they had scrambled to evacuate, trying to get patients to safety while having to abandon vital supplies.
“We were only able to extract around 50 per cent of our medical stock. The rest remains behind,” says Maram Shurafa, medical programme officer for UK-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, about the clinic where she works, which serves on average 320 people a day.
Ms Shurafa’s own home is within the evacuation zone, but she couldn’t do anything about it because she had to prioritise the patients.
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“The pressure was immense. We were still treating patients right up to the moment we shut the doors. Many people stood outside waiting for care, but we had to turn them away,” she toldThe Independent .
“I felt lost, overwhelmed, and feared losing everything.”
UN officials meanwhile say despite the orders some offices now inside the evacuation area will stay open despite the obvious dangers. Tamara al-Rifae, spokesperson for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, says that Deir al-Balah had been considered one of the few zones where the UN and an other aid groups could “set up shop, set up services”.
“The UN will stay and deliver which means we will continue to seek the deconfliction of our the aid facilities” she says, adding that across Gaza their facilities and shelters have been repeatedly hit.
“We will continue to ask the Israeli government to spare the UN. The toll is already very, very high. Over 325 UNRWA staff members have been killed. So… we asked to be spared as per international humanitarian law.”
Even in Israel the pressure is mounting on the Israeli government. The largest group representing the families of the hostages said they were “shocked and alarmed” by the push into Deir al-Balah. They demanded an audience with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the heads of the military “to clearly explain why the offensive in the Deir al-Balah area does not put the hostages at serious risk”.
Back in Gaza civilians pray for a ceasefire.
“I hope these are the last days of the war,” says Ihab Abdullah, 43, displaced within Gaza City. “We eagerly await a truce that will end the hunger and war we are living. We are dying of hunger and bombing.”
