BBC Middle East Correspondent
supplyA former security contractor for Gaza’s controversial new Israel- and US-assisted assistance distribution sites told the BBC that they saw several fire-opening colleagues on hungry Palestinians, who had no threat, including machine guns.
On one occasion, he said, a guard had set fire to a watchtower with a machine gun as a group of women, children and elderly people were moving very slowly from the site.
When asked that the GHF asked to reply that the allegations were clearly false.
He referred to us a statement and said that no citizen set fire to GHF distribution sites ever.
GHF began its operations in Gaza in late May, distributing limited assistance from several sites in Southern and Central Gaza. After Israel’s 11 -week total blockade of Gaza, during which no dining area was entered, which warned of famine.
The system has been widely criticized for forcing a large number of people to run to a handful of sites through active fighter areas.
The United Nations and local doctors say that since GHF began, more than 400 Palestinians have tried to get food aid from their sites, the United Nations and local doctors say. Israel says that the new distribution system prevents the assistance to Hamas.
Continuing his details of the incident in one of the GHF sites – in which he said that the guard firing on a group of Palestinians – the former contractor said: “As it happened, another contractor at the location, standing on the barum with an exit scene, opened with 15 to 20 shots of repetitive weapons.
“A Palestinian man became indestructible on the ground. And then it was like another contractor standing there, ‘Damn, I think you have found one.’ And then they laughed about it. “
The contractor, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, said that the GHF managers brushed their report as a coincidence, suggesting that the Palestinian man could “get stuck” or “tired and exit and exit”.
The GHF claimed that the former contractor made these allegations, a “disgruntled former contractor” he had abolished for misconduct, which he refuses.
supplyThe man we talked to said that he had worked in all four of the GHF distribution sites, describing the culture of impurity with some rules or controls.
He said that contractors were not given any clear rule of engagement or standard operational procedures, and told by a team leader: “If you have been threatened, shoot – shoot to shoot and ask questions later”.
Culture in the company, he said, “We felt that” we are going to Gaza, so this is not a rule. Do what you want. “
“If a Palestinian is moving away from the site and not demonstrating any hostile intentions, and we are shooting the warning shots on them, even if we are wrong, we are criminally negligent,” he told me.
He told us that the site on each site was CCTV surveillance activity, and GHF stated that any person was hurt or shot was “a full bare -faced lie”.
The GHF said the bullets recited in the footage shared with the BBC were coming from the Israeli forces.
The team leaders referred to Ghazan as a “zombie crowd”, “the contractor told me, saying that these people have no value.”
The former contractor also said that the Palestinian GHF sites were coming to harm in other ways, for example, stun grenades were being sprayed with the mess due to debris, or the crowd was pushed into the razor wire.
He said that he himself saw several occasions, including the Palestinians seriously hurt, including a man, who had a full can of pepper spray on his face, and a woman who says he was killed with a metal portion of a stun grenade, improperly fired into the crowd.
“This metal piece hit him directly into the head and he fell on the ground, not shaken,” he said. “I don’t know that she was dead. I know for a fact that she was unconscious and completely lame.”
RootsMore than 170 charity and other NGOs earlier this week Called to close ghfOrganizations including Oxfam and Save the Children, Israeli forces and armed groups say “regularly” seeking help on Palestinians seeking help from open fire.
Israel shot its soldiers deliberately on support recipients and stated that the GHF system provides direct assistance to those who need it, bypassing Hamas’s intervention.
The GHF says that it gave more than 52 million food in five weeks and other organizations “stand helpless because their aid is looted”.
The Israeli army launched a campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and 251 others were taken hostage.
According to the Hamas-Interested Health Ministry of the region, at least 57,130 people have been killed in Gaza since then.
