*

Professor Nizam Salama describes terrifying bid to reach

aid

under fire

*

GHF aid distribution violates humanitarian principles,

Norwegian

Refugee Council says

*

Gaza health authority says 127 Palestinians killed seeking

aid

since May 26, Israel says investigating shootings near aid sites

By Hatem Khaled and Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA/CAIRO, June 10 (Reuters) - When university

professor Nizam Salama made his way to a southern Gaza aid point

last week, he came under fire twice, was crushed in a desperate

crowd of hungry people and finally left empty handed.

Shooting first started shortly after he left his family's

tent at 3 a.m. on June 3 to join crowds on the coast road

heading towards the aid site in the city of Rafah run by the

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new U.S.-based

organization working with private military contractors to

deliver aid in Gaza.

The second time Salama came under fire was at Alam

Roundabout close to the aid delivery site, where he saw six dead

bodies.

Twenty-seven people were killed that day by Israeli fire on aid

seekers, Palestinian health authorities said. Israel said its

forces had shot at a group of people they viewed as a threat and

the military is investigating the incident.

At the aid delivery site, known as SDS 1, queues snaked

through narrow cage-like fences before gates were opened to an

area surrounded by sand barriers where packages of supplies were

left on tables and in boxes on the ground, according to undated

CCTV video distributed by GHF, reviewed by Reuters.

Salama said the rush of thousands of people once the gates

opened was a "death trap."

"Survival is for the stronger: people who are fitter and can

make it earlier and can push harder to win the package," he

said. "I felt my ribs going into each other. My chest was going

into itself. My breath...I couldn't breathe. People were

shouting; they couldn't breathe at all."

Reuters could not independently verify all the details of

Salama's account. It matched the testimonies of two other aid

seekers interviewed by Reuters, who spoke of crawling and

ducking as bullets rattled overhead on their way to or from the

aid distribution sites.

All three witnesses said they saw dead bodies on their

journeys to and from the Rafah sites.

A statement from a nearby Red Cross field hospital confirmed

the number of dead from the attack near the aid site on June 3.

Asked about the high number of deaths since it began

operations on May 26, GHF said there had been no casualties at

or in the close vicinity of its site.

The Israeli military didn't respond to detailed requests for

comment. Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie

Defrin told reporters on Sunday that Hamas was "doing its best"

to provoke troops, who "shoot to stop the threat" in what he

called a war zone in the vicinity of the aid sites. He said

military investigations were underway "to see where we were

wrong."

Salama, 52, had heard enough about the new system to know

it would be difficult to get aid, he said, but his five children

- including two adults, two teenagers and a nine-year-old -

needed food. They have been eating only lentils or pasta for

months, he said, often only a single meal a day.

"I was completely against going to the aid site of the

American company (GHF) because I knew and I had heard how

humiliating it is to do so, but I had no choice because of the

bad need to feed my family," said the professor of education

administration.

In total, 127 Palestinians have been killed trying to get

aid from GHF sites in almost daily shootings since distribution

under the new system began two weeks ago, Gaza's health

authority said on Monday.

The system appears to violate core principles of

humanitarian aid, said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian

Refugee Council, a major humanitarian organisation. He compared

it to the Hunger Games, the dystopian novels that set people to

run and fight to the death.

"A few will be rewarded and the many will only risk their

lives for nothing," Egeland said.

"International humanitarian law has prescribed that aid in

war zones should be provided by neutral intermediaries that can

make sure that the most vulnerable will get the relief according

to needs alone and not as part of a political or military

strategy," he said.

GHF did not directly respond to a question about its

neutrality, replying that it had securely delivered enough aid

for more than 11 million meals in two weeks. Gaza's population

is around 2.1 million people.

FAMINE RISK

Israel allowed limited U.N.-led aid operations to resume on May

19 after an 11-week blockade in the enclave, where experts a

week earlier warned a famine looms. The U.N. has described the

aid allowed into Gaza as "drop in the ocean."

Separate to the U.N. operation, Israel allowed GHF to open four

sites in Gaza, bypassing traditional aid groups. The GHF sites

are overseen by a U.S. logistics company run by a former CIA

official and part-owned by a Chicago-based private equity firm,

with security provided by U.S. military veterans working for a

private contractor, two sources have told Reuters.

An Israeli defence official involved in humanitarian matters

told Reuters GHF's distribution centres were sufficient for

around 1.2 million people.

Israel and the United States have urged the U.N. to work with

GHF, which has seen a high churn of top personnel, although both

countries deny funding it. Reuters has not been able to

establish who provides the funding for the organisation, but

reported last week that Washington was considering an Israeli

request to put in $500 million.

GHF coordinates with the Israeli army for access, the

foundation said in reply to Reuters questions, adding that it

was looking to open more distribution points. It has paused then

resumed deliveries several times after the shooting incidents,

including on Monday.

Last week, it urged the Israeli army to improve civilian

safety beyond the perimeter of its operations. GHF said the U.N.

was failing to deliver aid, pointing to a spate of recent

lootings.

Israel says the U.N.'s aid deliveries have previously been

hijacked by Hamas to feed their own militants. Hamas has denied

stealing aid and the U.N. denies its aid operations help Hamas.

The U.N., which has handled previous aid deliveries into

Gaza, says it has over 400 distribution points for aid in the

territory. On Monday it described an increasingly anarchic

situation of looting and has called on Israel to allow more of

its trucks to move safely.

SHOOTING STARTS

Salama and four neighbours set out from Mawasi, in the Khan

Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip, at 3 a.m. on Tuesday for

the aid site, taking two hours to reach Rafah, which is several

miles away near the Egyptian border.

Shooting started early in their journey. Some fire was

coming from the sea, he said, consistent with other accounts of

the incidents. Israel's military controls the sea around Gaza.

His small group decided to press on. In the dark, the way

was uneven and he repeatedly fell, he said.

"I saw people carrying wounded persons and heading back with

them towards Khan Younis," he said.

By the time they reached Alam Roundabout in Rafah, about a

kilometre from the site, there was a vast crowd. There was more

shooting and he saw bullets hitting nearby.

"You must duck and stay on the ground," he said, describing

casualties with wounds to the head, chest and legs.

He saw bodies nearby, including a woman, along with "many"

injured people, he said.

Another aid seeker interviewed by Reuters, who also walked

to Rafah on June 3 in the early morning, described repeated

gunfire during the journey.

At one point, he and everyone around him crawled for a

stretch of several hundred meters, fearing being shot. He saw a

body with a wound to the head about 100 meters from the aid

site, he said.

The Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah received a mass

casualty influx of 184 patients on June 3, the majority of them

injured by gunshots, the International Committee of the Red

Cross said in a statement, calling it the highest number of

weapon-wounded patients the hospital had ever received in a

single incident. There were 27 fatalities.

"All responsive patients said they were trying to reach an

assistance distribution site," the statement said.

When Salama finally arrived at the aid point on June 3,

there was nothing left.

"Everyone was standing pulling cardboard boxes from the

floor that were empty," he said. "Unfortunately I found nothing:

a very, very, very big zero."

Although the aid was gone, ever more people were arriving.

"The flood of people pushes you to the front while I was

trying to go back," he said.

As he was pushed further towards where GHF guards were

located, he saw them using pepper spray on the crowd, he said.

GHF said it was not aware of the pepper spray incident but

said its workers used non-lethal measures to protect civilians.

"I started shouting at the top of my lungs, brothers I

don't want anything, I just want to leave, I just want to leave

the place," Salama said.

"I left empty-handed... I went back home depressed, sad and

angry and hungry too," he said.