Radwan Abdel-Hai, a father of four young children, heard a rumor late Wednesday that an aid convoy was on its way. He and five others took a donkey cart to meet it and found a “sea of people” waiting for the aid.As people reached the trucks, “tanks started firing at us,” he said. “As I ran back, I heard tank shells and gunfire. I heard people screaming. I saw people falling to the ground, some motionless.”Abdel-Hai took shelter in a nearby building. When the shooting stopped, many dead people were on the ground, he said. “Many were shot in their back,” he said.Abu Hussein, the widow, said more than 5,000 people — mostly women and children — living with her in the Jabaliya school have not received any aid for more than four weeks. Adults eat one meal or less to save food for the children, she said.A group of people went to the shore to try to fish, but three were killed and two were wounded by gunfire from Israeli ships, she said. “They just wanted to get something for their children.”The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mansour Hamed, a 32-year-old former aid worker living with more than 50 relatives in a Gaza City house, said some are eating tree leaves and animal food. It has become normal to find a child coming out of the rubble with a rotten piece of bread, he said.”They are desperate. They want anything to stay alive.”Acknowledging the difficulty of getting aid in and the extreme need for food, US President Joe Biden said the US would look for other ways to get shipments in, “including possibly a marine corridor.”Jordan’s military said its own airdrops targeted sites in northern Gaza and the drops it coordinated with the US occurred in the south.But the EU statement, echoing humanitarian groups including the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians, said airdrops “should be the solution of last resort as their impact is minimal and not devoid of risks to civilians.” It called for the opening of further ground crossings into Gaza and the removal of obstacles from the rare ones open.Aid workers hoped a possible cease-fire would help. A senior Egyptian official said cease-fire talks would resume Sunday in Cairo. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.International mediators hope to reach agreement on a six-week pause in fighting, and an exchange of some Israeli hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10.
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