Barefoot and dressed in tattered clothes, Amir approached a GHF aid distribution point in Gaza desperate for help. He had walked 12km (7.5 miles) to collect food. And moments after the frail boy received his small packets of aid, the Israeli army opened fire.
That was the account Anthony Aguilar, a United States Army veteran, gave during a recent interview. The former GHF contractor has been warning the world about the US- and Israeli-backed aid scheme.
On Thursday, outrage over the GHF and the accounts Aguilar has been sharing with US lawmakers and journalists continued to grow.
In an interview with Israeli activist Offir Gutelzon and journalist Noga Tarnopolsky on the UnXeptable podcast this week, Aguilar recounted that Amir approached him as a crowd of aid seekers began to depart an aid distribution site.
Aguilar shared photos of the boy he identified as Amir – a small child that looks to be no older than 10 or 12.
“He puts out his hand, and so I beckoned him to come to me. I said, ‘Come here.’ And he reaches out and he holds my hand, and he kisses my hand and he says, ‘Shukran [Thank you],’” Aguilar recounted.
But their meeting was swiftly interrupted as “pepper spray, tear gas, stun grenades and bullets” were shot into the air and at the feet of Amir and the crowd of aid seekers still gathered, Aguilar said.
As the “last group of people, women and children and small children and kids and children and babies” left the site, Aguilar said he could hear machinegun fire from the Israeli army.
“They’re shooting to control the population that’s along the Morag Corridor. And as they’re doing that, they’re shooting into this crowd, … and Palestinians, civilians, human beings, are dropping to the ground, getting shot,” he said.
“And Amir was one of them. Amir walked 12km to get food, got nothing but scraps, thanked us for it and died,” he said.
Health authorities have said more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed seeking aid since the GHF began its operations in late May, replacing the United Nations-backed system that had previously overseen aid deliveries to the enclave.
All told, at least 60,249 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023.
‘Generated a bloodbath’
Israel has maintained that aid distribution by the GHF, which requires aid seekers to travel long distances, is needed to prevent Hamas from stealing aid entering Gaza.
However, a recent internal analysis by the US Agency for International Development recently found no evidence of widespread aid diversion by Hamas. Israeli military officials similarly told The New York Times last week that they had no evidence that Hamas was systemically stealing aid.
Israel has maintained that it does not intentionally target civilians but has acknowledged some instances in which its forces have opened fire on crowds near distribution sites.
Amid mounting international pressure and reports of rising starvation deaths, Israel last week agreed to allow agencies other than the GHF to once again bring aid into Gaza.
Since the war began, at least 154 people, including 89 children, have died of malnutrition, most in recent weeks, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, amid what a global monitor called a “worst-case scenario of famine” unfolding.
Still, the UN has warned the aid flow remains deeply insufficient with the trickle of deliveries leading to more scenes of deadly desperation. Local health sources reported at least 15 aid seekers killed since dawn on Thursday.
The GHF has dismissed Aguilar as a disgruntled former employee, saying in a statement that he “was terminated for misconduct, pleaded to be rehired and threatened repercussions, and is now spreading false allegations”. But the group continues to face mounting international condemnation.
On Thursday, French Foreign and European Affairs Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the GHF has “generated a bloodbath” in Gaza.
Barrot said the “militarised distribution of humanitarian aid … is a scandal which is shameful and has to stop”.