The Israel Defence Forces has claimed its review of a deadly incident involving humanitarian aid trucks last week has shown its troops did not fire at the convoy.
At least 100 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were injured as crowds tried to collect humanitarian aid, the Hamas-led health ministry said.
At the time, Israeli forces were accused of firing at aid trucks and the people surrounding them.
The IDF denied that civilians were attacked from the air or the ground, saying tanks issued “warning shots” and tried to retreat.
Now, after carrying out a review, the IDF has said it “did fire at a number of suspects who approached nearby forces and posed a threat to them” but not at the convoy.
“The command review reveals that while the trucks were travelling toward the distribution centres, a crowd of about 12,000 Gazans gathered around them and looted the equipment they were transporting,” it said.
“During the course of the looting, incidents of significant harm to civilians occurred from the stampede and people being run over by the trucks.
“In addition, during the incidents of crowding, dozens of Gazans advanced towards nearby IDF troops, up to several metres from them, and thereby posed a real threat to the forces at that point.
“At this stage, the forces fired cautionary fire in order to distance the suspects. As the suspects continued to advance toward them, the troops fired precisely toward a number of the suspects to remove the threat.”
It said the incident would continue to be examined by an independent body called the Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism to draw formal conclusions.
The Palestinian foreign ministry has previously asked the International Court of Justice to “issue subpoenas and arrest warrants” over the incident.
At least 30,878 Palestinians killed in Gaza, says Hamas-led ministry
At least 30,878 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, the Hamas-led health ministry has said.
A further 72,402 have been wounded, it added.
Some Israeli officials have sought to cast doubt on the ministry’s figures.
But several independent groups say they have previously proved to be largely reliable and in line with those later produced by the UN and Israel itself.
Examination of data from previous Gaza conflicts – the Hamas-run health ministry’s counts compared with the post-war United Nations analysis – shows that the initial data is largely accurate with, at most, a 10-12% discrepancy.
