源 稿 窗
在文章中双击或划词查词典
字号 +
字号 -
折叠显示
全文显示
At least 104 Palestinians were killed in Gaza City on Thursday as Israeli troops opened fire on people trying to get food from humanitarian aid trucks, but accounts of the attack remain at odds.
U.S. President Joe Biden said U.S. officials were checking "competing versions" of how the attack unfolded.
White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton called the death toll "tremendously alarming" and of deep concern.
"This latest event needs to be thoroughly investigated," she told reporters on Air Force One, traveling with Biden to the U.S.-Mexico border. "This event underscores the need for ... expanded humanitarian aid to make its way into Gaza."
Gaza hospital officials initially reported an Israeli strike on the crowd at the al-Nabusi roundabout in the western part of the city. Witnesses later said Israeli troops opened fire as people pulled flour and canned goods off trucks.
Israeli officials acknowledged that troops opened fire, saying they did so because they thought the people rushing toward the aid trucks "posed a threat."
The military had at first said that "dozens were killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office offered a similar explanation, saying many of the dead were crushed by the trucks after "aid trucks were overwhelmed by people trying to loot."
The United Nations said its agencies were not involved in Thursday's aid delivery. The U.S. State Department said it was a commercial convoy.
"Two things are clear ... just from the aerial footage," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. "You can look at that and right away conclude the situation is incredibly desperate, that people are swarming these trucks because they're hungry, because they need food, because they need medicine and other assistance. And that tells you that we need to do more to get humanitarian assistance in."
"And then the second thing is, that too many Palestinians died today, as has been true for too many days since October 7th," he said.
Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said with Thursday's incident, the death toll now tops 30,000 in the nearly five-month Israeli war against Hamas militants that started October 7 with Hamas' attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people.
Biden said a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was now unlikely to happen by Monday, the timeline he had predicted earlier this week.
Asked by reporters whether he expected that to happen, Biden said that "hope springs eternal" and that he had been speaking to regional leaders about the possibility of a cease-fire, but added, "probably not by Monday."
The Israel Defense Forces reported carrying out ground operations in northern Gaza on Thursday, as well as airstrikes in the Khan Younis area in the southern part of the territory.
In Geneva, United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said all parties in the Israel-Hamas war had committed war crimes.
"It is time - well past time - for peace, investigation and accountability," Türk told the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Türk also warned about a planned Israeli offensive in Rafah, the area of southern Gaza where an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians are living, many of them having fled other areas in search of safety.
Türk said an offensive in Rafah "would take the nightmare being inflicted on people in Gaza into a new, dystopian dimension."
Israeli officials have said they would evacuate civilians from Rafah, but they have not given any details about where the Palestinians might be able to go. Egypt, which borders Rafah, has said it will not open its borders. Much of Gaza has been leveled during Israel's massive counteroffensive since the October start of the war.
The U.N. said Wednesday that aid workers trying to distribute or receive humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip are facing life-threatening challenges.
Speaking to reporters in New York, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the dangers presented by the conflict have prompted repeated U.N. calls for a humanitarian cease-fire.
"Yes, there are trucks that have crossed from Israel into Gaza. The situation in Gaza is, as we've described it numerous times, almost impossible for us to do humanitarian work," Dujarric said.
"There is an active conflict going on. There's a breakdown of law and order. There is insufficient coordination on the security end, on deconfliction with Israel. We've laid out all the challenges. That doesn't stop us from working."
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.