At least 20 dead when food trucks overturn on crowds in Gaza

BarcelonaAt least twenty Palestinians died this Wednesday when several trucks carrying food overturned when they were invaded by a group of desperate people looking for food. The incident occurred southeast of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, late Tuesday night, when a crowd climbed onto food trucks on very bumpy roads and caused the drivers to lose control of their vehicles. The trucks fell on the crowd, killing 20. According to Gaza government data, of the 26 trucks that entered Gaza on Tuesday, 20 were able to pass through the Strip without serious problems, but six were looted, of which four overturned. Up to 10 drivers were injured.

These 20 deaths are in addition to the 135 people killed in Israeli army airstrikes also on Wednesday and another five Palestinians who have died of starvation in recent hours, including a six-month-old baby and a fifteen-year-old boy. In total, 193 people have already died of hunger in Gaza, including 96 children, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health. In total, since the start of the conflict nearly two years ago, 61,000 Palestinians, many of them children, have been killed by the Israeli army.

Meanwhile, plans by Benjamin Netanyahu's government to annex the Gaza Strip have met with opposition from both the leader of the political opposition and the chief of staff. On Wednesday, after a forty-minute meeting with the prime minister, opposition leader Yair Lapid told reporters that he had warned Netanyahu that the public was not interested in continuing the war and that a complete military takeover would be a "very bad idea."

The day before, on Tuesday, Israel's military chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, had also warned the prime minister that taking the rest of Gaza (the 25% of the territory not yet under Israeli control) could trap the military in the territory from which they withdrew two decades ago, and could cause Reuters sources informed about the meeting. The meeting between Zamir and Netanyahu was also very tense, lasting three hours.

This same Sunday, Netanyahu's National Security Minister, the ultra-right Itamar Ben-Gvir called for "conquering all of Gaza" and declare [Israeli] sovereignty over the entire Strip." The UN called reports of a possible expansion of Israel's military operations in Gaza "deeply alarming" if true. Netanyahu himself said last May that Israel would eventually control all of Gaza. that the military commander has the right and the duty to express his opinion, but that the army would carry out the government's decisions until all the war's objectives were achieved.