Israeli forces in Gaza faced global condemnation on Friday for opening fire on Palestinian civilians scrambling for food aid, resulting in a chaotic incident that Gaza's Health Ministry said killed over 100 people.
The Israeli military cited a "stampede" when thousands surrounded a convoy of aid trucks, leading to deaths and injuries, with some being run over by vehicles.
An Israeli source confirmed troops fired on the crowd, viewing it as a threat, while Gaza's Health Ministry labeled it a "massacre," reporting 112 dead and over 750 wounded.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in a post on the social media platform X, expressed his "strongest condemnation of these shootings and call for truth, justice and respect for international law."
Iran denounced "the barbaric attack by the Zionist regime," China said it was "shocked," and the head of the Arab League said the "brutal" act showed "total contempt for human life."
U.S. President Joe Biden said Washington was checking "two competing versions" of the incident that occurred early Thursday in northern Gaza, where famine threatens after nearly five months of war between Israel and Hamas.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said aerial footage of the incident made clear "just how desperate the situation on the ground is." Washington was pushing Israel to allow in more aid, he said.
The deaths came after the World Food Programme's deputy executive director, Carl Skau, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday: "If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza."
Famine warning
While the situation is particularly acute in Gaza's north, Gazans are struggling for food, water and medical care throughout the territory, including in far-south Rafah, where around 1.4 million people have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.
Israel is threatening to send in troops against Hamas in Rafah.
The conflict began on Oct. 7 with a Hamas incursion on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, according to Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 30,000 people, according to the Health Ministry, which reported on Friday that another 83 people were killed in strikes overnight.
The Gaza City aid incident would complicate efforts to broker a truce, Biden said.
The White House said he spoke with Qatari and Egyptian leaders – fellow mediators – in separate phone calls to discuss both the cease-fire and the "tragic and alarming" incident.
The U.N. Security Council held a closed-door emergency meeting on the incident, which U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood condemned before entering the chamber.
Desperation
Washington has three times blocked Security Council resolutions for a cease-fire in Gaza.
"This outrageous massacre is a testimony to the fact that as long as the Security Council is paralyzed" and vetoes cast, "then it is costing the Palestinian people their lives," Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour said ahead of the Council meeting.
Separately, Saudi Arabia strongly condemned what it called the "targeting" of unarmed civilians, while Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also issued condemnations.
Qatar warned that Israel's "disregard for Palestinian blood ... (will) pave the way for an expanding cycle of violence."
Türkiye said the incident "is evidence that Israel aims consciously and collectively to destroy the Palestinian people."
Spain's foreign minister said the "unacceptable" events underline the "urgency of a cease-fire," while European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell expressed horror at "yet another carnage among civilians in Gaza desperate for humanitarian aid."
Further afield, in South America, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced the suspension of arms purchases from Israel after the "genocide" in Gaza City.
Information conflicted on what exactly unfolded there.
A witness, declining to be named for safety reasons, said the violence began when thousands of people rushed toward aid trucks at the city's Nabulsi roundabout, with soldiers firing at the crowd "as people came too close" to tanks.
Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the military had fired "a few warning shots" to try to disperse a crowd that had "ambushed" the aid trucks.
When the crowd got too big, he said the convoy tried to retreat and "the unfortunate incident resulted in dozens of Gazans being killed and injured."
Day from hell
Aerial images released by the Israeli army showed what it said were scores of people surrounding aid trucks in the city.
Ali Awad Ashqir, who said he had gone to get some food for his starving family, said he had been waiting for two hours when trucks began to arrive.
"The moment they arrived, the occupation army fired artillery shells and guns," he said.
Hagari denied Israeli forces carried out any shelling or strikes at the time.
Looting of aid trucks has previously occurred in northern Gaza, where residents have taken to eating animal fodder and even leaves to stave off starvation.
The chief of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said no U.N. agency had been involved in Thursday's aid delivery and called the incident "another day from hell."
Among its war aims, Israel says it is fighting to bring home 130 hostages captured by Hamas on Oct. 7 who remain in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under increasing pressure over the captives.
At the latest protest in Tel Aviv on Thursday night, Alon Lee Green, 36, said things were at a crossroads.
"It's either we are going into an eternal war that will never stop," he said, "or we're going to a diplomatic agreement, an Israeli-Palestinian peace."
Violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where a gunman shot dead two Israeli men at a gas station on Thursday, the army and medics said.