OVER the past 23 months, Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 people attempting to get aid in the Gaza Strip and wounded almost 20,000 others. For over a year, The New Humanitarian has been conducting an open-source investigation documenting these killings, which we are now publishing as a publicly accessible database and timeline.
By Riley Sparks
Since the end of May, when the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating, the attacks on people seeking aid have dramatically escalated, drawing global attention and condemnation.
But these attacks are not an aberration. They represent the escalation of a deadly tactic that has been a key part of Israeli strategy – a tactic that has helped precipitate a famine, enable the now-routine slaughter of people trying to collect food and other essential supplies, and deny Palestinians the basic necessities required to sustain life in Gaza.
Our database contains information on almost 200 attacks on people seeking aid in Gaza between January 2024 and the end of July this year, resulting in over 1,200 people killed and nearly 4,700 wounded. These numbers are a conservative estimate and do not include attacks or casualty figures near GHF sites, which opened on 27 May. We paused our documentation at the end of July in order to have adequate time to fact-check incidents before publication.
With the fatalities near GHF sites added in – as well as numbers from the UN’s human rights office (OHCHR) on aid casualties elsewhere in Gaza in August and early September – the cumulative toll from Israeli attacks on aid seekers is at least 2,957 people killed over the past 23 months. During this same time period, at least 19,866 people have been wounded, according to our documentation and numbers from the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
This accounts for around 4.6% of the more than 64,600 deaths from Israel’s military campaign recorded by the Ministry of Health in Gaza during this time period, and just over 12% of all wounded.
“These are not isolated incidents. They’re not just similar incidents. They are a pattern, and reflect policy and an acceptance on the part of the state that this should continue indefinitely,” said Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers University in the US. One of several legal experts, The New Humanitarian shared the database findings with them before publication.
Those experts told The New Humanitarian that these repeated attacks are grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide.
Both the frequency of attacks and the number of casualties have dramatically escalated since the end of May, when the US- and Israeli-backed GHF started operating and Israel began allowing a limited amount of aid into northern Gaza. Prior to that, we recorded 663 people killed in Israeli attacks on aid seekers. In just over three months since then, nearly 2,300 people have been killed.
“If Israeli leaders were simply indifferent to the killing of so many Palestinian aid-seekers, not caring one way or the other, then international condemnation and potential liability for war crimes should be enough to lead them to change their policies to prevent or repress such killings. Their willingness to bear such costs is some evidence that they intend for these killings to continue,” Haque said.
Looking at the incidents over time, clearly discernible patterns emerge showing how Israel has used attacks on people seeking aid as a tool for different purposes at different points in the war: deadly crowd control, forced displacement, and the destruction of the collective ability of Palestinians in Gaza to survive.
We hope this public database will be used as a jumping-off point for further investigation, research, and accountability. Each incident it contains is a potential war crime, and the broader patterns they collectively form provide crucial insight into Israel’s military strategies and intent throughout the war. Below the database, you will find an explanation of our methodology.
Editing and fact-checking by Eric Reidy.
Methodology
To compile this database, we tracked incidents in which Israeli forces killed or wounded civilians receiving aid. This includes people at soup kitchens or bakeries, picking up packages at humanitarian warehouses, waiting for convoys, collecting airdrops, or collecting water.
We excluded attacks which appeared to target aid workers or humanitarian infrastructure without other civilian casualties. These incidents are already tracked by projects like the Aid Worker Security Database. By focusing on aid-seekers, we hoped to understand how these attacks connect to other elements of Israeli strategy.
In designing our approach, we consulted methodologies used by OHCHR and by the monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED).
We recorded attacks and made a conservative casualty estimate by monitoring countless social media updates and visual evidence shared by people in Gaza, as well as reporting from the UN, NGOs, and media outlets. Where possible, we cross-checked with databases maintained by ACLED and the research groups Airwars and Forensic Architecture, which have documented civilian casualties in Gaza.
We tracked more than 500 incidents, but included only those reported by multiple independent media or NGO sources, or by the UN. Incidents with any uncertainty about the target or circumstances were excluded.
When sources differed in casualty figures, we generally used the lowest figure unless a higher number was clearly more accurate. If sources only reported approximate casualties (e.g. “several” or “a number”), we drew on methodology used by ACLED and used the lowest equivalent number (two for “a number”, three for “several” or “many”, etc.). This was relevant mostly for numbers of wounded. Deaths are usually reported more precisely.
We’re confident our estimate is not an overcount, but this approach likely undercounts wounded – particularly in recent high-casualty incidents near the Zikim border crossing in the north and at GHF sites, where we’ve frequently seen early reports describe “several” wounded, and then seen visual evidence of many casualties or reports from hospitals or medical NGOs that count dozens or hundreds of casualties.
For all of these reasons, the real toll is likely higher than our estimate.
Our analysis has relied on the work of Palestinian journalists and researchers reporting despite unrelenting danger in Gaza, including many killed by Israeli strikes – Mohammad Salama, Hussam al-Masri, Mariam Abu Daqqa, Ahmed Abu Aziz, Hossam Shabat, Ismail al-Ghoul, Rami al-Rifi, Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, and Mohammed Noufal, along with many others.
We have seen a significant decline in visual evidence and on-the-ground reporting. Most early attacks were photographed or filmed and reported by journalists in real time. Now, many are reported only on social media, or without visual documentation.
The explanation is simple: Israeli forces have killed at least 197 journalists in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is investigating a further 130 cases. The UN puts the number of journalists killed at at least 247. These killings mean there are fewer people left to report what is happening.
Those who remain – as well as medics, civil defence, and aid workers – continue to be targeted by Israeli forces and face extreme challenges moving around and working. Israeli authorities have also refused to allow international journalists into Gaza since the beginning of their military campaign. Also, the areas where most aid is now being allowed to enter have been depopulated and are difficult and dangerous for people to reach.
Social media documentation is also fragile. Several useful sources of information disappeared or were removed by platforms as we worked on this project.
In late June, The New Humanitarian contributor Hani Qarmoot walked to Beit Lahia to pick up flour from an aid convoy. He saw Israeli forces fire at people waiting, killing at least three, including a boy of about 10.
Qarmoot appears to have been the only journalist present. We found posts on community Telegram groups confirming details of his account – including the route of aid trucks, and reports of Israeli fire in the area. But without him, it’s likely this incident and the circumstances surrounding those casualties would not have been recorded fully, essentially erasing any possibility of accountability or justice for the three people killed.
Based on everything we have seen while documenting these patterns, it’s clear that there are many similar incidents that may never be counted.
The New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more at www.thenewhumanitarian.org.
