The Israeli military says it has fired warning shots outside a newly opened aid centre in Gaza to control Palestinians rushing in for food.
Video independently verified by Reuters showed a crowd storming into a site in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Tuesday where aid was being distributed.
The site was set up by a new US-backed aid group that was on its second day of operations.
Chaos erupted as desperate civilians, including women and children, some on foot or in donkey carts, overwhelmed one of the distribution sites to receive food packages.
People were then seen fleeing in panic after Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops set off tank and gunfire, and fired flares from a military helicopter, according to the Associated Press.
In a statement, the IDF said it fired warning shots outside the compound and that "control over the situation was established".
Israel previously said it would employ biometric and other checks before supplies were handed out to civilians, but desperation for food overcame those concerns after almost three months of its near-complete aid blockade.
A United Nations spokesperson called images of the incident "heartbreaking".
Israel claims Hamas blocked access to centre
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which Israel has slated to take over aid operations, opened the distribution hub outside Rafah on Monday.
The UN and other humanitarian organisations have rejected the new aid system, saying it will not be able to meet the needs of Gaza's 2.3 million people and it allows Israel to use food as a weapon to control the population.
They have also warned of the risk of friction between Israeli troops and people seeking supplies.
By late afternoon on Tuesday, local time, the GHF said it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes, the equivalent of about 462,000 meals.
Israel and the GHF both accused Hamas of trying to block civilians from reaching the centre where shots were fired on Tuesday. Hamas denied the accusation.
"The real cause of the delay and collapse in the aid distribution process is the tragic chaos caused by the mismanagement of the same company operating under the Israeli occupation's administration in those buffer zones," Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, told Reuters.
"This has led to thousands of starving people, under the pressure of siege and hunger, storming distribution centres and seizing food, during which Israeli forces opened fire," he added.
The GHF said in a statement that because of the large number of Palestinians seeking aid, staff at the hub followed the group's safety protocols and "fell back" to allow them to dissipate, then later resumed operations.
The Israeli aid blockade imposed on March 2 and partially lifted on May 19 has pushed Gaza to the brink of famine.
Although the aid was available on Monday, Palestinians appeared to have heeded warnings, including from Hamas, about biometric screening procedures employed at the foundation's aid distribution sites.
On Tuesday morning, civilians at the scene told AP they made their way to the GHF and received food boxes containing basic items such as sugar, flour, pasta and tahini.
As word spread, large numbers of men, women and children arrived there from tent camps around Gaza, after passing through nearby Israeli military positions.
"There was no order. The people rushed to take [food]. There was shooting and we fled," Hosni Abu Amra, who had been waiting to receive aid, said.
"We fled without taking anything that would help us get through this hunger."
"It was chaos," said Ahmed Abu Taha, who said he heard gunfire and saw Israeli military aircraft overhead. "People were panicked."
Aid foundation boycotted
Israel says the Switzerland-based GHF is a US-backed initiative and that Israeli forces will not be involved in the distribution points where food will be handed out.
But its endorsement of the plan and its closeness with the US have led many to question the neutrality of the foundation, including its own former chief, who resigned unexpectedly on Sunday.
The IDF said four aid sites had been established in Gaza in recent weeks, and that two of them in the Rafah area began operations on Tuesday and were "distributing food packages to thousands of families in the Gaza Strip".
The GHF said the number of people seeking aid at one distribution site was so great that at one point on Tuesday, its team had to pull back to allow people to "take aid safely and dissipate" and to avoid casualties. It said normal operations later resumed.
Israeli officials said one of the advantages of the new aid system was the opportunity it created to screen recipients and exclude anyone found to be connected with Hamas.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing supplies and using them to entrench its position. Hamas denies the accusations.
Humanitarian groups briefed on the foundation's plans say anyone accessing aid will have to submit to facial recognition technology, and many Palestinians fear that data will end up in Israeli hands and be used to track and potentially target them.
Details of exactly how the system will operate have not been made public.
The UN and other international aid groups have boycotted the GHF, which they say undermines the principle that humanitarian aid should be distributed based on need and independently of the parties to a conflict.
"Humanitarian assistance must not be politicised or militarised," said Christian Cardon, chief spokesperson of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday commented on the turmoil at the Rafah centre, saying: "There was some loss of control momentarily … happily, we brought it under control."
COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of coordinating aid, said on Tuesday that 400 trucks containing supplies, mainly food, were waiting on the Gaza side of the main crossing from Israel, but the UN had not collected them.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva that agencies struggled to pick up the supplies "because of the insecure routes that are being assigned to us by the Israeli authorities to use".
In all, more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and ground war, Gaza health authorities say.
The war was launched following a cross-border Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
ABC/wires
