“I went to bring them food and I returned laden with death and blood”
By 
Very good preliminary investigation into the massacre/starvation-induced stampede in Gaza:
It was hunger that drove Ibrahim al-Rifi from his house in Gaza City at 2 in the morning Thursday. It had been months since he could find bread for his wife and daughters in war-ravaged northern Gaza. Flour sold for close to $1,000 a bag, and even the animal feed many had turned to was running out. Some people are eating grass, the United Nations has said.
Rifi and two cousins set out in the darkness on rumors that aid trucks were on the way. As for thousands of others, hunger overcame their fear of the obvious dangers from Israeli troops and desperatecrowds.
Hours later, after one of the most horrific episodes in a war that has produced so many, Rifi returned with hands empty but bloody. Both cousins were injured and Rifi had had to cower amid the dead in an early morning melee that erupted when the rare aid convoy passed an Israeli military checkpoint and entered Gaza City.
More than 100 people were killed and 700 injured, according to Palestinian officials, after thousands of civilians swarmed the trucks and Israeli troops opened fire.Much remains unclear, however, with contradictory claims from Israelis and Palestinians about what prompted a stampede around the trucks, the role of Israeli gunfire, and how many people were shot as distinct from being injured by the crush of people.
On Friday, France, Italy and Germany called for an independent investigation into what happened, following earlier criticism by French President Emmanuel Macron of the actions of Israeli soldiers. President Biden said Friday that the United States would launch an airdrop campaign to deliver aid to Gaza.
Thursday morning’s deadly event — unfolding as the enclave passed the milestone of 30,000 killed in the war — seemed to fulfill growing warnings that ongoing combat and spiraling deprivation are forcing Gazans into a state of utter chaos.
“I went to bring them food and I returned laden with death and blood,” Rifi said.
This account of the tragedy is based on 12 interviews with eyewitnesses, physicians, aid workers and Israeli military and U.N. officials. In addition, analysis of dozens of videos, including an edited video released by the Israel Defense Forces, reveals that crowds ran and ducked while lifeless bodies lay in the road near two Israeli armored vehicles.
A U.N. team carrying medicine, vaccines and fuel on Friday was able to reach al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where it witnessed “a large number of gunshot wounds” among about 200 patients who had been injured during the arrival of the humanitarian convoy on Thursday, said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres.
Hospital staffers told the U.N. team they had initially admitted more than 700 injured in the Thursday incident, with all but the 200 or so now released, and had received “the bodies of more than 70 killed,” Dujarric said. “I’m not aware that our team examined the bodies of those killed. My understanding, from what [U.N. staff] saw” among those “receiving treatment, is that there was a large number of gunshot wounds,” he said.
The Associated Press reported that the head of another Gaza City hospital, al-Awda, said that 176 wounded were brought there, 142 of whom had suffered gunshot wounds.
Strongly recommend the whole thing.