US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said this Thursday (29) that Israel has killed more than 25,000 Palestinian women and children since October in the Gaza Strip.
“It’s more than 25,000,” Austin said in Washington, on the same day that Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd awaiting humanitarian aid, killing more than a hundred people and wounding another 700.
Israeli military officials admitted to the incident, saying the soldiers felt “intimidated” and therefore fired.
Thursday’s massacre led US President Joe Biden to say that “probably” the ceasefire being negotiated will not happen until Monday, as he had previously said he expected.
Shortly after Thursday’s massacre, a man killed two Israelis in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. The shooter was killed.
Israeli Armed Forces say that “a terrorist opened fire at the gas station. We carried out medical procedures, but (…) shortly afterwards we had to record the deaths of two men, one in his 40s and the other in his 20s. “
O massacre
Israeli soldiers fired at a crowd of Palestinians who gathered in Gaza City to receive humanitarian aid this Thursday (29), killing more than a hundred people.
“The death toll in the Al Rashid Street massacre [onde os alimentos eram distribuídos] is 104 dead and 760 injured,” said Hamas Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra.
Witnesses told Agence France Press (AFP) that they saw thousands of people running towards humanitarian aid trucks that were approaching the Nablus roundabout, west of Gaza City, the main city in the north of the territory.
Reactions
“It looks like a trap. As soon as the trucks approached, Israeli tanks and planes started shooting at us. Each convoy is a new massacre”
More than 100 starving Palestinians murdered by “Israel” while waiting for FOOD in Gaza
02/29/2024: The Flour Massacre pic.twitter.com/MjA8v3vi7A
— FEPAL – Palestine Arab Federation of Brazil (@FepalB) February 29, 2024
UN Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, reacting to Thursday’s massacre of Palestinians, said that “Gaza is being emptied of lives at a frightening speed.”
“I am horrified by reports of hundreds of people killed or injured during an operation to route humanitarian aid west of Gaza City,” Griffiths said on social media.
The UN Secretary General “condemned” the events, highlighting that he still does not know “exactly what happened”.
“But if these people died from Israeli fire, if they were crushed by crowds or run over by trucks, these are acts of violence, in a way, linked to this conflict,” said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the secretary general, António Guterres. She said the UN was not present during the incident.
The UN Security Council called an emergency meeting for this Thursday to discuss the massacre. Since October 7, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military.
Editing: Rodrigo Durão Coelho
Source: www.brasildefato.com.br
