Pits, gunfire and panic: Palestinians navigate death at US aid points
Palestinians collect aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, 29 May 2025
Isra’a Ar-Ramli reports in Middle East Eye on 8 July 2025:
At 2am, Ahmad Abu Zubaida received a text message from friends: aid had finally arrived. Starving under a months-long Israeli siege, he set out for the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution point in the central Gaza Strip. Driven by the urgent need to feed his children and orphaned nephews, Abu Zubaida, a Palestinian father who had recently lost three brothers in Israeli attacks, risked his life to reach the site.
On the way to the centre in the Gaza Valley area, there were no lights and no paved roads. As he approached the gate, Israeli gunfire erupted. Dozens around him dropped, some killed, others wounded, many screaming in agony. “It was as if it were the Day of Judgment,” Abu Zubaida told Middle East Eye, recalling the chaotic scene: shrapnel flying in every direction, the cries of the injured, and the relentless crack of gunfire.
In the midst of the chaos, Abu Zubaida fell into a pit more than five metres deep. “Suddenly, I fell and remembered nothing.” In pitch darkness, his friends scrambled to find anything that could be used to rescue him. They gathered discarded electrical wires, tied them together, and fashioned makeshift ropes. One friend climbed down into the pit to secure him. The rescue took nearly two hours, all under constant threat of sniper fire and drone surveillance.
“They pulled me out with electrical cables. After that, I remember nothing… I woke up in a hospital bed, my clothes reeking of the decomposing bodies that were beneath me.” Abu Zubaida had been transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where medical staff were already overwhelmed with casualties from the same aid point.
Burying wounded leg in the sand
In March, Israel imposed a total blockade on the Gaza Strip, plunging two million people into a severe hunger crisis. By early June, the GHF had opened four aid distribution points, all located in perilous zones surrounded by Israeli forces. These distribution points replaced the 400 aid points set up across Gaza under the UN, which as well as food, distributed tents and toiletries.
‘Every minute felt like the agony of death, a torment known only to God’