Witnesses describe carnage as Israel fires at people waiting for aid in Gaza

Witnesses described scenes like "a horror movie" yesterday in Gaza after Israeli forces fired towards a crowd waiting for trucks loaded with flour near Khan Younis on one of the bloodiest days for weeks in the devastated territory.

- Jason Burke Malak A Tantesh Gaza

At least 51 Palestinians were reported to have been killed and hundreds more wounded in the southern city. People at the scene and doctors described seeing the injured and dead with wounds typical of those caused by artillery or tank fire.

Unverified video shared on social media showed about a dozen mangled bodies lying in a street.

Multiple other incidents of violence involving crowds of desperate Palestinians trying to get food were reported yesterday. Eight Palestinians were reported to have died in a separate shooting near an aid distribution site in the city of Rafah, and several more injured or killed in a third incident between Rafah and Khan Younis. The Israeli military acknowledged firing in the area of the crowd in Khan Younis and said it was looking into the incident.

Musab Barbakh, 22, said he had arrived at the al-Tahlia junction at midnight. "I was sitting with a group of young men at around 8.30am when suddenly a shell landed right in the middle of us. I don't know how I survived without any injuries. As I was running away, another shell hit another group of people. Then a missile was fired, followed by random gunfire," he said.

"The ground was filled with martyrs, the wounded, and pools of blood. Cars were exploding, the bodies of the martyrs were torn apart.

"Wherever you looked, you saw scenes of body parts, blood, and corpses. I felt like I was living in a horror movie."

Abdullah Anshasi, 30, from the al-Amal neighbourhood in Khan Younis, said he, too, was waiting for the aid to arrive when "explosions began and shrapnel rained down around us".

"Many people were killed. We saw several artillery shells land around us," he said. "What we witnessed was horrifying: human bodies flying through the air, hundreds of injured people lying on the ground. We survived by a miracle."