Khan Younis, Gaza – Yazan Musleh, 13, lies in a hospital bed set up in a tent on the grounds of Nasser Hospital, his t-shirt pulled up to reveal a large white bandage on his thin torso.
Beside him, his father, Ihab, sits fretfully, still shaken by the bloodied dawn he and his sons lived through on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of people gathered to receive aid from the Israeli-conceived, and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Ihab, 40, had taken Yazan and his 15-year-old brother, Yazid, from their shelter in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, to the Rafah distribution point that the GHF operates.
They set out before dawn, walking for about an hour and a half to get to the al-Alam Roundabout in Rafah, near the distribution point.
Worried about the size of the gathering, hungry crowd, Ihab told his sons to wait for him on an elevation near the GHF gates.
“When I looked behind the hill, I saw several tanks not far away,” he says. “A feeling of dread came over me. What if they opened fire or something happened? I prayed for God’s protection.”
As the crowd moved closer to the gates, heavy gunfire erupted from all directions.
Yazid, also sitting by his brother’s bedside, describes the moments of terror.
“We were standing on the hill as our father told us, and suddenly, the tanks opened fire.” He says. “My brother was hit in the stomach immediately.”
“I saw his intestines spilling out – it was horrifying. Then people helped rush him to the hospital in a donkey cart.”
Down by the gates, Ihab was struggling to reach his sons, trying to fight against the crowd while avoiding the shots still ringing out.
“Shooting was coming from every direction – from tanks, quadcopters.
The group distributing aid
“I saw people helping my son, eventually dragging him away.”
When Ihab managed to get away from the crowd, he ran as best as his malnourished body could manage, towards Nasser Hospital, in hopes that Yazan had been taken there. It felt like more than an hour, he says.
The bullet that hit Yazan had torn through his intestines and spleen, and the doctors say he needs long and intensive treatment.
Sitting by him is his mother, Iman, who asks despairingly why anyone would shoot at people trying to get food. She and Ihab have five children, the youngest is a seven-month-old girl.
“I went to get food for my children. Hunger is killing us,” says Ihab.
“These aid distributions are known to be degrading and humiliating – but we’re desperate. I’m desperate because my children are starving, and even then, we are shot at?”
He had tried to get aid once before, he says, but both times he came away empty-handed.
“The first time, there was a deadly stampede. We barely escaped. This time, my son was wounded and again… nothing,” he says.
But he knows he cannot stop trying.
“I’ll risk it for my family. Either I come back alive or I die. I’m desperate. Hunger is killing us.”
The GHF, marketed as a neutral humanitarian mechanism, was launched in early 2025 and uses private US military contractors to “secure the distribution points”.
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