A retired U.S. Army officer who worked as a subcontractor for the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is sounding the alarm over the atrocities he said he saw Israeli soldiers and American mercenaries carry out against starving Palestinians trying to access aid.
Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar, who served 25 years in the U.S. Army Special Forces as a Green Beret, was hired as an independent subcontractor by UG Solutions to serve as armed security for the private, U.S.-funded GHF, which launched its so-called aid delivery sites in May.
“When I first went into this, I was excited. I felt it was a noble cause,” he told Democracy Now! on Tuesday. “Within hours of being in Israel and seeing how this was going to unfold, I immediately had dire concerns as to the intentions, as to the execution, and what was going to happen when this fails.”
Aguilar said he ended his contract on June 14 after witnessing his fellow security officers and soldiers with the Israeli Defense Forces repeatedly open fire on Palestinian civilians who had trekked to GHF’s four aid hubs. Armed officers often celebrated hitting civilians at the sites, where the United Nations says more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed.
The IDF has maintained that soldiers only use their guns to deliver warning shots for unruly crowds. But Aguilar said that officers attacked civilians with tank rounds, mortars and fully automatic weapons with at least 210 rounds each of green-tipped, armor-piercing ammunition designed to kill.
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