IDF releases audio of Gazan man blaming Hamas for firing on Palestinians near Rafah aid site

The IDF publishes an audio recording it says is of a conversation between a Gazan man and an officer from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, in which he claims that Hamas is the one who opened fire on Palestinians near an aid distribution site in Rafah.

“The people who fired were Hamas terrorists,” the Gazan man says, according to a translation provided by the IDF.

“They don’t want the people to receive aid, they want to foil the plan so that the aid will go to them, allowing them to steal it. They’ve gone completely bankrupt,” the man says.

The IDF has acknowledged firing warning shots at Palestinians who headed to the aid site before it was open and/or approached it from outside the designated safe route. The military has said that its fire hit an unspecified number of people, but has not acknowledged killing anybody. It said that Hamas’s claims of dozens killed and wounded were “exaggerated.”