A first examination of the tragedy that occurred on February 29 in Gaza where 115 people, according to Hamas authorities, were killed around a humanitarian aid convoy stormed by a hungry crowd, shows that Israeli soldiers “fired specifically on several suspects,” the Israeli army said on Friday.
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“The review conducted by the command revealed that the troops [israéliennes] did not fire on the humanitarian convoy, but that they fired on a number of suspects who were approaching [de soldats israéliens] and presented a threat,” the army wrote in a statement.
According to a witness interviewed by AFP that day, violence broke out as thousands of desperate people in search of food gathered in western Gaza City. As an aid convoy passed “thousands of people [ont] stormed the trucks” and “the soldiers [israéliens présents] fired on the crowd, because people were getting too close to the tanks,” this witness said.
On the evening of the tragedy, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israeli army, insisted on the fact that the Israeli army was protecting this convoy, chartered according to him by Egypt, to allow it to arrive safely. port, in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the UN fears an imminent famine after five months of war between Israel and Hamas.
According to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Islamist movement which held the Gaza Strip on the first day of the war started on October 7 by its attack which led to the death of more than 1,160 people on the Israeli side, 115 people were killed, all by Israeli shots, in the drama of February 29, the circumstances of which are still far from clear, and which sparked a wave of international indignation.
But according to the Israeli army, the convoy, attacked around 4:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m. GMT) on the coastal road in the west of Gaza City, was “looted” by “a crowd of around 12,000 Gazans “.
“While the looting was taking place, incidents causing great harm to civilians were caused by [une] stampede and the fact that people were run over by trucks,” the army wrote.
In addition, “dozens of Gazans advanced towards the troops [israéliennes] close, up to several meters from them, thus posing a real threat” for these soldiers.
“At this point, troopers fired preemptively to keep the suspects at bay. As the suspects continued to advance towards them, the troops fired precisely at several suspects to eliminate the threat,” the army press release further indicates, without specifying the possible number of deaths caused by these shots, or in the stampede or crushed by trucks.