Three Palestinians killed in Gaza bread stampede

A child and two women were trampled to death in a stampede at a bakery in the central Gazan city of Deir el-Balah on Friday, the hospital that received the bodies said.

Two women and “a young girl, died in front of a bakery in Deir al-Balah as a result of a stampede while trying to buy bread”, Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa hospital said in a statement.

“The crowding and pushing were intense in front of the bakery. Suddenly, there was loud screaming, and they fell to the ground, suffocated by the stampede, including a young girl”, one eyewitness told AFP.

“I don’t know what happened”, Osama Abu Luban, father of the girl who died, told AFP.

“I went to the market with my daughter. She went to buy bread, and she barely managed to get a loaf of bread before being swept away by the crowd of women. They brought her out a lifeless body”, he said.

The UN’s World Food Program said that all bakeries in Gaza had to close on Wednesday due to a lack of supplies entering the Palestinian territory, and warned that “famine looms” in Gaza.

Israel has imposed a near-total siege on Gaza since the war began more than a year ago when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 that left 1,207 people dead.

Since then, the UN and international organisations have repeatedly called on Israel to allow more aid into the besieged territory.

The UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) warned Thursday of a worsening nutritional situation across Gaza, with two-thirds of cases of acute malnutrition in children 2024 being reported over the past five months.

At least 44,363 people were killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.

AFP