The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: India on Friday, March 1, said that it was “deeply shocked” over the loss of Palestinian lives during the delivery of humanitarian aid in North Gaza but refrained from explicitly attributing the victims’ deaths to gunfire or mentioning Israel.
“We are deeply shocked at the loss of lives in Northern Gaza yesterday during the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Such loss of civilian lives and the larger humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to be a cause for extreme concern,” said a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs.
More than 100 Palestinians in Gaza were killed on Thursday as crowds, starving and desperate for food, gathered around aid trucks, with Israeli troops opening fire. The United Nations had told the Security Council two days ago that the famine in Gaza was “almost inevitable”, with at least 576,000 people are “facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation”.
Israeli military claimed that soldiers only fired at a small group that swarmed a checkpoint and that the rest had died due to stampede. However, witnesses told western media agencies that crowds around the food trucks were hit by bullets.
The acting director al-Awda hospital, Mohammad Salha told The Associated Press that out of the 176 injured treated, 142 had received gunshot wounds. As per Health officials, at least 112 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 injured.
The Israeli military action began after Hamas launched attacks into Israel that killed more killed more than 1,200 people, with 240 others taken as hostages.
The death toll in Israel’s five-month-long military campaign in Gaza now stands at over 30,000, with more than 71,000 wounded. The US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin said at a Congressional hearing that around 25,000 women and children have been killed in Gaza since October 7.
The backlash from European capitals after Thursday’s killing has been sharp, with French President Emmanuel Macron squarely blaming Israel.
“Deep indignation at the images coming from Gaza where civilians have been targeted by Israeli soldiers. I express my strongest condemnation of these shootings and call for truth, justice, and respect for international law,” he wrote on X.
He demanded that a ceasefire must be immediately implemented to allow distribution of aid.
The French foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné called for an “independent probe”. “France calls things by their name. This applies when we designate Hamas as a terrorist group, but we must also call things by their name when there are atrocities in Gaza,” she said.
A close ally of Israel, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock wrote that Israeli army had to “fully explain how the mass panic and shooting could have happened”. “People wanted relief supplies for themselves and their families and ended up dead. The reports from Gaza shock me,” she posted.
Expressing horror at “yet another carnage among civilians in Gaza desperate for humanitarian aid”, EU foreign minister Josef Borrell Fonteles said that depriving people of food aid constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
Within the region, there was strong condemnation from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait and Qatar.
The United States President Joe Biden said that there are “competing versions” about the incident and warned that the deaths would complicate the negotiations for release of hostages and ceasefire.
In an urgent meeting held behind closed doors, the UN Security Council discussed Thursday’s killings in Gaza.
According to Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, the US blocked the issuing of a statement by the Council, arguing that there were contradictory reports.
The intensity of the international outcry meant that India did not have much choice but to issue a condemnatory statement, even though it didn’t name the reason for the deaths or cite Israel by name.
Immediately after the October 7 attack by Hamas, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had simply tweeted that India was in “solidarity” with Israel.
After an explosion in a Gaza hospital killed hundreds two weeks later, the Indian PM for the first time during this current conflict reiterated that New Delhi had traditionally supported the Palestinian cause.
However, India abstained during the voting on the UN General Assembly resolution that called for immediate cessation of violence in Gaza. Less than two months later, India voted in favour of a new resolution adopted by UNGA that called for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.