Fifteen-year-old Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar says Israeli soldiers kept shooting at him even after he was struck by a bullet.
A Palestinian teenager, shot in the eye by Israeli forces while desperately seeking food for his family near a United States and Israeli-backed GHF site in Gaza, is unlikely to regain sight in his left eye, doctors treating him have said, as the population of the besieged and bombarded enclave suffers from forced starvation.
Fifteen-year-old Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar told media that Israeli soldiers kept shooting at him even after he was struck by a bullet, making him think “this was the end” and “death was near”.
Relaying the harrowing chain of events from a hospital bed with a white bandage covering one eye, Abu Jazar said he went to the site around 2am (23:00 GMT).
“It was my first time going to the distribution point,” he said. “I went there because my siblings and I had no food. We couldn’t find anything to eat.”
He says he moved forward with the crowd until he reached al-Muntazah Park in the Gaza City environs about five hours later.
“We were running when they began shooting at us. I was with three others; three of them were hit. As soon as we started running, they opened fire. Then I felt something like electricity shoot through my body. I collapsed to the ground. I felt as though I had been electrocuted … I didn’t know where I was, I just blacked out. When I woke up, I asked people ‘Where am I?’”
Others near Abu Jazar told him he had been shot in the head. “They were still firing. I got scared and started reciting prayers.”
A doctor at the hospital held a phone light near the boy’s wounded eye and asked him if he could see any light. He could not. The doctor diagnosed a perforating eye injury caused by a gunshot wound.
On Sunday since dawn, 92 people were killed by Israeli army fire, including 56 aid seekers, according to hospital sources who spoke to media.
Israeli forces have routinely fired on Palestinians trying to get food at GHF-run distribution sites in Gaza, and the United Nations reported this week that more than 1,300 aid seekers have been killed since the group began operating in May.
Gaza’s famine and malnutrition crisis has been worsening by the day, with at least 175 people, including 93 children, now confirmed dead from the man-made starvation of Israel’s punishing blockade, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
More than 6,000 Palestinian children are being treated for malnutrition resulting from the blockade, according to the Global Nutrition Cluster, which includes the UN health and food agencies.
media’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah, says, “There’s a very, very small amount of trucks coming into Gaza – about maybe 80 to 100 trucks every single day – despite the fact that this ‘humanitarian pause’ was for more aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
Hospitals receive bodies of more aid seekers
“Palestinians are struggling to get a bag of wheat flour. They’re struggling to find a food parcel. And this shows the fact that this pause and all the Israeli claims are not true because on the ground, Palestinians are starving, ” she said.
Khoudary noted that the entire population had been reliant on UN agencies and other partners to distribute food.
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