THE Israelis were engulfed by a wave of international condemnation on today following the shooting of more than 100 Palestinians during an aid delivery in Gaza.
This came after Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians scrambling for desperately needed food at an aid station in Gaza City on Thursday.
While the Israeli military said that a “stampede” occurred when thousands of Palestinians surrounded a convoy of 38 aid trucks, local officials said the Israeli forces opened fire at people.
Israel said that many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic crush for the food aid, and that its troops only fired when they felt endangered by the crowd.
But China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said today that her country was “shocked by this incident and strongly condemns it.”
She said: “China urges the relevant parties, especially Israel, to cease fire and end the fighting immediately, earnestly protect civilians’ safety, ensure that humanitarian aid can enter, and avoid an even more serious humanitarian disaster.”
Turkey joined a host of other nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, in condemning the shooting.
The Turkish foreign ministry described the massacre as “yet another crime against humanity” and accused Israel of using “starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.”
But the United States, Israel’s main ally, blocked a United Nations security council statement from Algeria that would have blamed Israel for the Gaza City massacre.
Ahead of the council meeting, Palestine’s UN ambassador Riyad Mansour told reporters that the statement was backed by all of the council’s 15 members except the US.
He said: “According to the information we have, dozens of them [aid seekers killed in Gaza] have bullets in their heads.
“It’s not like firing in the sky to restrain people if there was confusion and chaos. It was intentionally targeting and killing. This outrageous massacre is a testimony to the fact that as long as the security council is paralysed, it is costing the Palestinian people their lives.”
Ambassador Robert Wood, the US alternative representative for special political affairs, said: “We don’t have all the facts on the ground — that’s the problem.”
He said that the US was trying to verify the “circumstances around how people died” to see if “we can find some language that everyone can agree on.”
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza now stands at more than 30,035, mainly women and children.
Israel’s killing spree in Gaza began after a Hamas attack on October 7 left 1,200 people dead.
