CaliToday (03/11/2025): The video, released by CENTCOM, emerges amid a fragile ceasefire and high-stakes U.S. diplomacy, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio blames Hamas for "depriving the people of Gaza" of aid.
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| The drone video shows men from a pick-up forcing the driver out of the aid truck |
The United States has released chilling drone footage that it claims shows Hamas operatives violently hijacking a humanitarian aid truck in southern Gaza, leaving the driver motionless in the middle of a road.
The video, published by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), captures a number of men surrounding the cab of the vehicle. They appear to forcibly remove the driver and drag him to the road’s central reservation, where he is left "inert." The men are then seen driving off with the truck.
The incident's release is politically charged, occurring while General Dan Caine, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Israel for an official visit as a guest of the IDF Chief of Staff.
In a statement, CENTCOM said its new Civil-Military Coordination Centre "observed suspected Hamas operatives looting an aid truck travelling as part of a humanitarian convoy delivering needed assistance from international partners to Gazans in northern Khan Younis."
The footage was captured by an MQ-9 drone, which is part of a U.S. mission to monitor the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The U.S. said the truck driver's "current status is unknown."
"Hamas is the Impediment"
The footage provides potent visual backing to long-standing Israeli claims that its hunger problems have been primarily caused by Hamas's widespread looting of aid an assertion previously disputed by the United Nations and other international aid organizations.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio immediately seized on the footage to condemn the group.
"Hamas continues to deprive the people of Gaza of the humanitarian aid they desperately need," Rubio said in a statement shared online. "This theft undermines international efforts in support of President Trump’s 20-point plan to deliver critical assistance to innocent civilians."
He added: "Hamas is the impediment. They must lay down their arms and stop their looting so that Gaza can have a brighter future."
Hamas issued a statement denying any involvement in the incident.
The "100 Percent" Conclusion
Despite the denial, Gaza experts pointed to a key piece of evidence in the footage: a specific type of vehicle associated with the terror group.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza native now based in the U.S., said the video provides a "100 per cent" conclusion.
"What makes the conclusion... 100 per cent is the presence of a pick-up truck full of Hamas operatives, passing by the truck as the knocked-out driver is being thrown in the median divider of the road," Alkhatib posted. "These are the pick-up trucks that Hamas’s ‘police’ and enforcers use to roam around Gaza, execute, murder, kidnap, torture, and disappear people.”
Fragile Truce, Fraying Negotiations
The video surfaces at a moment of extreme delicacy. The UN, which had previously denied widespread looting, has recently reported a significant decrease in such incidents since the ceasefire came into force last month.
Stéphane Dujarric, a UN spokesman, said in a briefing on Friday that only 5 percent of collected aid supplies had been intercepted between October 10 and 28. This is a dramatic improvement from the period between May 19 and October 9, when the UN reported a staggering 80 percent of supplies were looted.
This incident threatens to unravel that progress, which has been critical to stabilizing the strip. Currently, Israel controls approximately 53 percent of Gaza, with Hamas in control of most, but not all, of the urban areas west of the "yellow" ceasefire line, where the vast majority of the population lives.
The ceasefire itself is under strain. On Sunday, Hamas handed over the remains of what it claimed were three more hostages. The transfer comes just after Israel announced that partial remains handed over on Friday do not belong to any of the 11 remaining deceased captives yet to be returned.
Israel has accused Hamas of breaching the U.S.-brokered truce by being too slow to deliver the bodies. Hamas, in turn, claims it is struggling to locate the scattered remains across the bombed-out territory. The release of the hijacking footage now adds another volatile element to the already tense negotiations.