Latest news with #aidconvoys
RNZ News
14-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Israel said Hamas was looting aid — then it armed the gangs who were actually stealing it
Mohammad Salman says the bandits who raid aid convoys call themselves "the ones who block the roads". Photo: ABC News By Eric Tlozek and Chérine Yazbeck, ABC Groups of men huddle around fires, waiting for aid trucks to roll through central Gaza. Some of them used to be teachers and other professionals. Now they have banded together to form gangs and raid aid convoys. The scene is like one from the Mad Max movies, a dystopian setting where there are no rules. "We are a group of men organised into crews - we call ourselves 'the ones who block the roads'," one of the men, Mohammad Salman, told the ABC . "If you want to get aid and secure food, you have to come through here; otherwise you won't eat. "Today, all these people have become gangsters. They seize food from trucks and anything they find on the road. They'll take food away from anyone. If someone grabs food from a truck and I don't get my share, I'll go after him. "That's how we have become. If someone gets something, I will take it from him to eat. "Some people here die from stabbings and attacks - all over food. We've all turned into mafias and road blockers." Some of the men say they have worked with a gang leader named Yasser Abu Shabab. Once a wanted criminal, it's now widely believed that Abu Shabab has been armed and protected by the Israeli government - to take control of the part of southern Gaza where his family holds sway. Abu Shabab is apparently an unlikely figure to lead a resistance against Hamas's rule in Gaza, Gazan analyst Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in The New Arab . "Police in Gaza were perplexed when he emerged as a top gang leader. The security source told The New Arab that Abu Shabab is 35-years-old, thin, weak, short [around 150 centimetres tall], uncharismatic, illiterate, has strabismus in one eye, and has never received military training," he said. "To them, he didn't seem like someone with the leadership skills necessary to form a group of 300 armed militants, steal truckloads of aid, and store it under the radar." Israeli media have reported Abu Shabab escaped from jail with Israeli assistance early in the war. "He was in a Hamas prison until October 2023 for theft and drug offences, and his release came under the cover of an Israeli attack on security facilities in the Strip at the beginning of the war. From that moment on, his name emerged as someone who would fill the security vacuum in eastern Rafah," the Israeli newspaper Maariv wrote. The UN says Yasser Abu Shabab's gang has been raiding aid trucks with the apparent indifference or protection of the Israeli military. Photo: Supplied / Facebook The United Nations has identified Abu Shabab's gang as one of those raiding aid convoys when they entered Gaza, saying they were doing so with the apparent protection or indifference of the Israeli military. Former French diplomat Jean-Pierre Filliu, who spent one month in Gaza with Doctors Without Borders from December 2024 to January 2025, said he witnessed the gang being protected by the IDF while looting trucks. "The Israeli military recognised its inability to promote a clan-based alternative to Hamas and decided to rely more or less openly on organised crime," he wrote in Le Monde . "The key figure in this manoeuvre was a previously minor member of a Rafah family, Yasser Abu Shabab, whom Hamas had imprisoned in the past for his various trafficking activities. But Israeli protection allowed Abu Shabab to substantially expand its activities and poach, from other clans, some 100 loyalists ready for anything, often ex-convicts. "What could only be called a gang operated under the eyes of the Israeli army - and it was equipped with brand-new weapons, an irrefutable indication of its collaboration with the occupiers." A gang member confirmed to the ABC that Abu Shabab's group had been stealing and selling aid. "People would work normally with Yasser just like employees. He had two shifts. It was easy," the gang member said. "We used to stand by the roadside to wait for trucks from Gaza to Kerem Shalom. I would take whatever I could - flour, sugar, anything we needed." The man explained that much of the looted food was then sold to merchants, although he insisted aid groups were given some of it. "They would unload the goods, and traders would come to buy them. Half of the supplies were distributed to institutions like schools," he said. "The aid agency would arrive to collect its share and then distribute it to schools." Gangs waiting to loot aid trucks at the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza. Photo: ABC News The gang member alleged Hamas had previously been stealing some aid, something the group denies. "He [Yasser] was working in security when he saw the government and Hamas members stealing from the aid trucks as they passed through central Gaza and Nuseirat," he told the ABC . "That's when he decided to take action - stealing the trucks to distribute some of the aid himself, handing out money, flour - and that was it." Abu Shabab and his men, now calling themselves "the Anti-Terror Service" or the "Popular Forces", have been accused by many Gazans of working with the Israeli government. The Israeli government has said openly it has backed groups like the one Abu Shabab runs. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in June that his government had "activated" clans in Gaza opposed to Hamas. That sparked concerns from the opposition that their weapons could eventually be turned on the IDF, or used to create unmanageable chaos. "In consultation with security officials, we made use of clans in Gaza that are opposed to Hamas," he said in a video on social media. "What's wrong with that? It saves the lives of IDF soldiers." The Times of Israel said Defence officials had confirmed Netanyahu was referring to the Abu Shabab gang. "The sources confirmed that Israel has been arming the gang with Kalashnikov rifles, including some that were seized from Hamas during the ongoing war," it wrote on 5 June. Former Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has alleged Abu Shabab had ties to the IS terrorist group. "The Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with Islamic State, at the direction of the prime minister," he told Israeli public radio. The Abu Shabab group was alleged to be providing security for the new, Israeli and US-backed food distribution operation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Some of the gangs looting aid have reportedly been armed and protected by Israeli authorities. Photo: ABC News It denied any links with the gang. "GHF has no association with Yasser or the 'Anti-Terror Service'," it said in a statement sent to the ABC . Hamas fighters have attacked the group, but said Israeli forces came to its defence, Israeli media reported. The arrival of the new aid operation has changed conditions in the south of Gaza, but Hamas is still keen to kill or imprison Abu Shabab again. On 2 July, the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry in Gaza gave Abu Shabab 10 days to surrender himself and face trial for treason. The ABC called and sent messages to Yasser Abu Shabab but did not receive a response. Comment has also been sought from the Israeli government and the IDF. Meanwhile, the Israeli government and military continue to dismiss United Nations reports of a worsening hunger crisis in Gaza. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is only distributing food parcels at limited locations in southern and central Gaza. Israel's government last month stopped allowing food shipments into the north. The "men who block the roads" are still waiting by the aid routes, hoping for any chance to seize supplies and stay alive.
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Post-apocalyptic': medical staff struggle as gangs fight over aid supplies in Gaza
For the beleaguered staff of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, one new casualty brought into the emergency department last week posed a particular challenge. He had been wounded moments earlier in the southern Gaza city while fighting in a battle between rival armed gangs over hundreds of valuable sacks of flours stripped from aid convoys and, within an hour of his arrival, men with assault rifles had invaded the hospital. They roughed up medical staff, smashed equipment and set fire to vehicles. Other armed men soon arrived and automatic gunfire reverberated around the sprawling hospital compound, already battered bysuccessive Israeli strikes close by or on its buildings. There was worse to come. Soon another force joined the shooting, dispatched by the interior ministry in Gaza, long a bastion of Hamas, to restore order. There was now a new gun battle, which only ended when the opposing gunmen from the two duelling gangs fled. Overhead, throughout the fighting, Israeli drones flew by. The incident, described to the Guardian by medical staff and local residents, was a microcosm of the new violence and anarchy in Gaza after almost 21 months of war. 'You have [these] gangs fighting and the Israeli airstrikes or troops shooting people, and Hamas still there, while there are miles and miles of ruins where desperate people are cooking on fires and living in tents and very hungry,' one humanitarian official said. 'It's like some kind of post-apocalyptic sci-fi film.' The war in Gaza was triggered by a surprise attack launched by Hamas militants into southern Israel in October 2023, which led to the killing of 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the abducton of 251, 50 of whom remain in the territory. So far, the Israeli offensive has killed more than 56,500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, displaced most of the 2.3 million population and reduced much of Gaza to rubble. In recent months, more armed actors have joined the fighting, and a fierce struggle for power and influence has intensified even as the Israeli offensive continues. These now include various other militant factions, a dozen armed militias representing major local families or clans, new coalitions organised by independent community leaders, and criminal gangs empowered by the deepening anarchy. The result is that Gaza is fragmenting into individual fiefdoms. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) holds much of the territory, including a wide 'buffer zone' cleared of buildings along the territory's perimeter and a swath of the south along the border with Egypt, where it works closely with the Popular Forces, a new militia run by a former convict and smuggler called Yasser Abu Shabab. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has confirmed that Israel provides weapons to clans that oppose Hamas. Abu Shabab, who denies getting support from Israel or contacts with the Israeli army, also controls territory along Gaza's eastern perimeter near the main entry point from Israel – though the militia's influence there is contested by several armed local families. The chaos has encouraged other traditionally important families and clans to assert their control over much of the rest of south and central Gaza. In the north, Hamas remains a force in Gaza City and the shattered neighbourhoods of Jabaliya and Shujaiya. Though the Islamist militant organisation's military capabilities are now much reduced and most of its veteran leaders have been killed by Israel, many civilian technocrats remain in their posts in key ministries, and other officials, operating secretly, run neighbourhood administrations. 'They're hiding because they are being instantly hit by [Israeli] planes but they appear here and there, organising queues in front of bakeries, protecting aid trucks, or punishing criminals,' said a 57-year-old construction worker in Gaza City. 'They're not like before the war, but they exist.' Hamas and its paramilitary police forces have clashed with criminal gangs too – as shown by the firefight at Nasser hospital. 'All the people in Khan Younis are blaming [the fighters] for spoiling the hospital and have asked them to apologise,' said a senior medical official at the hospital. The police have also been repeatedly targeted by the IDF. Several members of the Sahm force, set up by Hamas to crack down on looters, profiteers and thieves, were killed last week in an Israeli airstrike on Deir al-Balah, a central town, which also killed about a dozen civilians. The IDF denied reports from witnesses that the police were distributing aid seized from looters when attacked. Stocks of aid built up during the two-month ceasefire early this year ran out during the subsequent 11 weeks when Israel allowed nothing into Gaza. 'The shortage is completely artificial and it means [aid] is the most valuable commodity now, so basically if you've got guns and you can get aid, you can use it to get money and power, and so that's causing a lot of the violence,' said one aid official, pointing out that a single 25kg sack of flour can sell for up to $500. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Community leaders and heads of powerful families in Gaza say their aims are simply to serve the population. 'The clans came … to form a stance to prevent the aggressors and the thieves from stealing the food that belongs to our people,' Abu Salman Al Moghani, a community leader, said, after gunmen from the Supreme Tribal Committee in Gaza guarded one aid convoy that entered last week. In recent weeks, the UN and other agencies have been allowed to bring in about 70 trucks a day. Most carry flour for Gaza's community kitchens but are usually stopped by barricades made of concrete blocks and then stripped of their cargoes, sometimes by armed gangs but most often by desperate civilians who gather in massive numbers at points the convoys are expected to pass. 'The scenes are appalling. You have 50 trucks, spread over two kilometres, and there are 50,000 on the road trying to get the flour,' said another aid official in Gaza. Many civilians are killed as they try to reach aid distribution hubs, opened last month by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a secretive US- and Israel-backed private organisation. The GHF said on Sunday that it has safely delivered more than 51m meals despite 'a highly volatile environment'. Statistics from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirm ministry of health counts of more than 500 deaths from live fire on those seeking aid by Israeli forces in recent weeks, as well as a small number in clashes between looters. A report by Haaretz last week quoted multiple Israeli soldiers describing orders to fire at civilians. The report revealed the IDF has launched an investigation into potential war crimes. An officer quoted in the report told the newspaper about the growing chaos in Gaza. 'I'm stationed there, and even I no longer know who's shooting at whom,' he said. Reuters contributed to this report
