How did 118 people die in Gaza's Al-Rashid aid convoy violence? 

Questions remain after more than 100 people were killed in the chaos surrounding an aid convoy being escorted by the Israeli military.

Authorities in Gaza call it a massacre. The Israeli military maintains its forces were acting in self-defense. 

In the early hours on Feb. 29, thousands of Palestinians gathered on a stretch of seaside road in Gaza City to receive a much-anticipated aid shipment. 

By dawn, over 100 were dead and hundreds more injured, according to Gazan health authorities. The Israeli military says the majority were trampled or run over in the chaotic surge on the 30 trucks, but witnesses say the civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers, shot by gunfire and tank artillery shells. 

Israel “lies about the flour massacre,” Salama Maroof, head of the government media office in the Gaza Strip, wrote on X on March 3, asserting that people who died and were wounded “were hit by bullets from its tanks, and some of them were shot by more than one bullet.”

For many the incident turned up the international outrage at the war’s humanitarian cost, as deadly force appeared to have been deployed against a desperate and hungry civilian population.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-aid-convoy-deaths-al-rashid-israel-idf-hamas-rcna141497

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