‘See you in heaven’: Four Palestinians killed storming UN food warehouse in Gaza

Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip: Hundreds of Palestinians stormed a United Nations food warehouse on Wednesday in Gaza in a desperate attempt to get something to eat, shouting and shoving each other and even ripping off pieces of the building to get inside.

Four people died in the chaos at the warehouse in Zawaida, in the central Gaza Strip, hospital officials said, two after being crushed in the crowd and two from gunshot wounds.

Their deaths came just a day after a crowd was fired upon while overrunning a new aid-distribution site outside Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah set up by an Israeli and US-backed foundation, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding 48 others, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

In response to Wednesday’s run on the UN warehouse, the World Food Program said “humanitarian needs have spiralled out of control” after nearly three months of Israeli border closures pushed Gaza to the brink of famine.

“Gaza needs an immediate scale-up of food assistance. This is the only way to reassure people that they will not starve,” the group said.

Under growing international pressure, Israel ended an 11-week aid blockade on Gaza 10 days ago. It has allowed a limited amount of relief to be delivered via two avenues – the UN or the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

A UN envoy compared the limited aid being allowed into Gaza to “a lifeboat after the ship has sunk”. Sigrid Kaag, acting UN special co-ordinator for the Mideast, told the UN Security Council that people facing famine in Gaza “have lost hope”.

“Instead of saying ‘goodbye,’ Palestinians in Gaza now say, ‘See you in heaven,’” Kaag said.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has reportedly invited Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to visit his country, two days after Albanese condemned the blockade of Gaza as “outrageous” and “completely unacceptable”.

Albanese is under pressure from party members and elders to introduce sanctions on senior Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as other nations have threatened to do, but has expressed scepticism about the effectiveness of the measure.

Two people were killed in the crush, while two others died of gunshot wounds, hospital officials said.Credit: AP

The Rafah distribution hub was opened on Monday by the GHF, which has been slated by Israel to take over aid operations.

The Israeli military, which guards the site from a distance, said it fired only warning shots to control the situation there on Tuesday. The foundation said its military contractors guarding the site did not open fire. The Red Cross Field Hospital said the 48 people who were wounded suffered gunshot wounds, including women and children.

The UN and other humanitarian organisations have rejected the new aid system, saying it will not meet the needs of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and that it allows Israel to use food to control the population. The organisations have also warned of the risk of friction between Israeli troops and people seeking supplies.

Israel says it helped establish the new aid mechanism to prevent Hamas from siphoning off supplies, but it has provided no evidence of systematic diversion, and UN agencies say they have mechanisms in place to prevent it while delivering aid to all parts of the territory.

Palestinians carry bags of flour from the warehouse.Credit: AP

GHF says it has established four hubs, two of which have begun operating in the now mostly uninhabited Rafah. It said about eight truckloads of aid were distributed at the hubs on Wednesday without incident. About 600 trucks entered Gaza every day during a ceasefire earlier this year.

The GHF sites are guarded by private security contractors and have chain-link fences channelling Palestinians into what resemble military bases surrounded by large sand berms. Israeli forces are stationed nearby in a military zone separating Rafah from the rest of the territory.

The UN and other aid groups have refused to participate in GHF’s system, saying it violates humanitarian principles. They say it can be used by Israel to forcibly displace the population by requiring them to move near the few distribution hubs or else face starvation, a violation of international law.

Netanyahu said on Tuesday that “there was some loss of control momentarily” at the Rafah distribution point, adding that “happily, we brought it under control”.

He repeated that Israel planned to move Gaza’s entire population to a “sterile zone” at the southern end of the territory while troops fought Hamas elsewhere. Netanyahu has also vowed to facilitate what he refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of Gaza’s population to other countries, a plan for what Palestinians and others view as forcible expulsion.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu told parliament his country had killed senior Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of Yahya Sinwar, one of the October 7 masterminds who was killed by Israeli forces last year.

Wednesday marks 600 days since the war in Gaza began with Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing some 1200 people and abducting 251. Hamas still holds 58 hostages, around a third of whom are believed to be alive. Most of the rest were released in ceasefire deals or other agreements. Israeli forces have rescued eight and recovered dozens of bodies.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The US has been trying to broker a ceasefire. Israel – which resumed its military operation in Gaza in March after a brief truce – continued strikes on Wednesday, killing at least 30 people, Palestinian health officials said.

“We are on the precipice of sending out a new term sheet that hopefully will be delivered later on today,” US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Wednesday. “The president is going to review it.”

Witkoff made the comments at the White House alongside Trump, who said that his administration was working on accelerating food deliveries to Palestinians living in Gaza. “We’re dealing with the whole situation in Gaza. We’re getting food to the people of Gaza. It’s been a very nasty situation,” Trump said.

In other developments on Wednesday, Israel said it would establish 22 Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, including the legalisation of outposts already built without government authorisation. Most of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to resolving the decades-old conflict.

Israel also carried out airstrikes on the international airport in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, destroying the last plane belonging to the country’s flagship airline. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said it had been used by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The strikes came after Houthi rebels fired several missiles at Israel in recent days, without causing casualties.

Houthi-backed Yemeni President Mahdi al-Mashat visited the airport on Wednesday and said his group would not back down from its support of people in Gaza until the siege ended, according to SABA Yemen News Agency.

AP, Reuters

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