Abdel Jalil Al-Fayoumi

Abdel Jalil Al-Fayoumi, 22, went to al-Rashid Street on the evening of February 28, 2024, with his uncle Abbas and his 15-year-old cousin Moatasem, joining tens of thousands of northern Gaza residents waiting through the night for a rare convoy of flour trucks. “There was a sense of hope and even joy that we would get flour to take back to our families,” he told +972 Magazine. When the trucks arrived before dawn on February 29, survivors said, Israeli forces opened fire on the crowd. Al-Fayoumi was separated from his relatives as people fled: “Everyone was screaming and fleeing. There were bodies on the ground, and wounded people crying for help.”

After searching the area until 9 a.m., Al-Fayoumi went to Al-Shifa Hospital, where the dead and wounded had been brought by donkey cart, and found his uncle Abbas standing over Moatasem’s body; the boy had been shot after lifting his head from behind the rubble where they had taken cover. Gaza health officials said at least 112 people were killed and more than 750 injured in what Palestinians call the “flour massacre.” The Israeli military said its forces had fired at individuals who posed a threat and attributed most of the deaths to crowding and trampling; a UN official who visited Al-Shifa afterwards told the BBC that Israeli forces had “shot into the thickest part of the crowd.”

Sources

• Survivors of Gaza aid convoy massacre describe ‘indiscriminate’ Israeli fire — +972 Magazine
• UN experts condemn ‘flour massacre’, urge Israel to end campaign of starvation in Gaza — OHCHR