Hunger and despair rife as Gaza slides into lethal chaos

Just after midnight last Thursday morning, Abdullah Ahmed left his wife and children in their small and crowded home in the battered al-Bureij camp in central Gaza and headed north.

- By Jason Burke and Malak A Tantesh GAZA

The 31-year-old vegetable seller had heard that the nearby food distribution site recently opened by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a secretive Israeliand US-backed private organisation that began operations in the territory last month, would be handing out food at 2am.

To get there early and maximise his chance of grabbing a box of flour, oil, beans and other basics, Ahmed and some friends set out across the dangerous rubble-strewn roads.

Just reaching the vicinity of the centre, one of four run by the GHF, was dangerous. “All the time we could hear the sound of shells and stray bullets flying over us. We kept taking cover behind the ruins of houses. Whoever doesn’t take cover is exposed to death,” he said.

All that week, every night and most mornings, there were similar scenes across Gaza, as tens of thousands of hungry, desperate people converged on the GHF sites or waited at points where trucks loaded with UN flour were expected.

Every day, somewhere in the devastated territory, these gatherings had a similarly lethal conclusion when Israeli forces open fire.

The exact death toll is unclear.

Medical authorities in Gaza say about 450 have died and thousands more have been injured. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say that some have been hurt by their fire but have not admitted any deaths in shootings, which they say are directed at "suspects" who have posed a threat to their forces and only ever follow warning shots.

The GHF said its model was working: "The Gaza health ministry, operated by Hamas, has been putting out false information on a daily basis which unfortunately media outlets have not verified before publishing." But 10 witnesses interviewed by the Guardian all broadly corroborated reports of repeated lethal incidents involving high numbers of casualties, as do the records of medical aid groups working in Gaza.