The IDF publishes footage it says shows armed Hamas operatives looting a truck

The IDF publishes footage it says shows armed Hamas operatives looting a truck of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip last week.

The clip, which the IDF says is from Friday, shows gunmen on top of a truck carrying aid, while a crowd of Palestinians surrounds it.

The military claims the video shows "armed Hamas terrorists... violently looting humanitarian aid that had been transferred into the Gaza Strip, preventing it from reaching the civilian population of Gaza."

"Contrary to Hamas's false claims that the individuals in the video are security personnel, they are in fact Hamas terrorists who arrived to seize the aid from Gaza's residents. Even when aid is delivered into Gaza, Hamas loots it for its own use, blatantly disregarding the needs of the population," the IDF says, adding that "this footage is further evidence that Hamas is the primary obstacle to the delivery of humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip."

The military says it is publishing the video after Hamas in recent weeks "spread false claims about a deliberate starvation campaign in Gaza."

Last week, a senior Israeli defense official said that nearly all of the trucks heading to the warehouses of aid organizations and the UN were looted by Gazan mobs, not Hamas.