Gaza [Israel], March 1: The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza accused Israeli soldiers of shooting dead 104 people and injuring 760 on Thursday as aid was being handed out to Palestinians, on the day the overall death toll from the war was seen topping 30,000.
The Israeli army said civilians had stormed the aid lorries and dozens of people had been trampled on. It said an investigation is underway. But Israeli media reports, citing army sources, said a crowd endangered Israeli troops by approaching them without a reason and the military therefore opened fire.
A local resident named Mahmud Ahmed told DPA it was still dark in the morning when the incident happened and shots were fired.
How to deliver much-needed aid to the 2 million Palestinians in the sealed-off Gaza Strip has been vexing the international community for weeks.
Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian group Hamas and other organizations killing more than 1,200 people inside the Jewish state on October 7.
One way of distributing aid and avoiding throngs of people descending upon lorries to loot them is dropping packages by parachute.
Jordan and Bahrain asked Britain to supply parachutes and the British Foreign Office said on Thursday it had agreed.
"Together with our international partners we will continue to get humanitarian aid to those most in need," the ministry wrote on X, formerly Twitter. It also posted pictures showing parcels being loaded onto an aeroplane.
Israel's army announced on Wednesday that aid supplies for the residents of the southern Gaza Strip had been dropped from the air in cooperation with the United States, France and several Arab countries over the past few days.
Aid packages attached to parachutes were also dropped from aeroplanes in the north of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, according to Palestinian security sources. Eyewitnesses reported that the boxes contained rice, pasta and beans. Dropping humanitarian aid is a last resort, the United Nations has said. The supply flights are associated with technical difficulties and enormous costs.
However, in view of the disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza, the UN is not ruling out the possibility of air drops becoming commonplace.
UN figures showed that the amount of aid deliveries halved in February compared to the previous month. UN officials warn that thousands of civilians could die of starvation.
Two separate high-profile UN figures also said on Thursday that Palestinian deaths due to Israeli bombardment in the coastal strip had topped 30,000. Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, quoted the number during a meeting of the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The head of the UN's World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also used the figure in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
"The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 30,000 - a large majority women and children. Over 70,000 Palestinians have been injured," he wrote.
"This horrific violence and suffering must end. Ceasefire." Neither Türk nor Tedros quoted a source. An official confirmation from the health authorities in Gaza is expected later.
At the northern end of Israel, Israeli warplanes also staged a series of airstrikes on Thursday on pro-Iranian Hezbollah strongholds in a cluster of Lebanese villages, causing material damage and injuries.
This followed Hezbollah claims they hit Israeli soldiers in the disputed Shebaa Farms area on the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Source: Qatar Tribune