MSF says patients it treated after chaos near Gaza aid site said they ‘were shot from all sides’ by IDF

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that people it treated at a Gaza aid site run by a new US-backed organization reported being “shot from all sides” by Israeli forces.

The IDF has vehemently denied opening fire at Gazans at or near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution site in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

The NGO, known by its French name MSF, blamed the GHF system for chaos at the scene in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency said Israeli fire killed 31 Palestinians at the site. Witnesses also told AFP the Israeli military had opened fire.

“Patients told MSF they were shot from all sides by drones, helicopters, boats, tanks and Israeli soldiers on the ground,” MSF said in a statement.

MSF emergency coordinator Claire Manera in the statement called the GHF’s system of aid delivery “dehumanizing, dangerous and severely ineffective.”

“It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented. Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively.”

MSF communications officer Nour Alsaqa in the statement reported hospital corridors filled with patients, mostly men, with “visible gunshot wounds in their limbs.”

MSF quoted one injured man, Mansour Sami Abdi, as describing people fighting over just five pallets of aid.

“They told us to take food — then they fired from every direction,” he said. “This isn’t aid. It’s a lie.”

The Israeli military said an initial inquiry found its troops “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site”.

A GHF spokesperson said: “These fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas,” the Islamic militant group that Israel has vowed to destroy in Gaza.