PM demands answers after Israel air strike kills Britons
Sunak ‘appalled’ by aid workers’ deaths and calls for urgent investigation
RISHI SUNAK has told Benjamin Netanyahu he was “appalled” by the killing of three British citizens in an Israeli strike as he described the situation in Gaza as “intolerable”.
In a call with the Israeli prime minister last night, Mr Sunak demanded answers as he called for a “thorough and transparent independent investigation” after aid workers were killed.
James Henderson, 33, and John Chapman, 57, who are both said to have served in the Royal Marines, were named alongside James Kirby, a former Army rifleman and sniper marksman, as the three Britons who had died in the bombing of a convoy.
Mr Netanyahu admitted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were behind the strike on the World Central Kitchen vehicles, which killed seven aid workers. The charity had alerted the IDF to the route it was using and was travelling in cars marked with its logo on the roof.
He said the strike was “unintended” and described it as a tragic event of the kind that “happens” in wartime. Mr Sunak said he was “shocked and saddened” by the deaths, adding: “We’re asking Israel to investigate what happened urgently because clearly there are questions that need to be answered.”
The Prime Minister then went further in a call with Mr Netanyahu last night, not just saying he was “appalled” by the attack, but issuing wider demands on Israel’s actions in Gaza.
A Downing Street spokesman said of the call: “The Prime Minister said far too many aid workers and ordinary civilians have lost their lives in Gaza and the situation is increasingly intolerable.
“The UK expects to see immediate action by Israel to end restrictions on humanitarian aid, deconflict with the UN and aid agencies, protect civilians and repair vital infrastructure.”
The Foreign Office has for weeks been considering whether Israel is failing to demonstrate a commitment to international law, and therefore the UK should stop selling the country arms.
Calls are emerging for intelligence sharing to be scaled back if UK legal advice concludes that Israel is now falling short of that requirement.
Alicia Kearns, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said: “A determination that Israel is not demonstrating a commitment to international humanitarian law would have implications for our intelligence sharing, alongside arms sales.”
Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, described the killings as “completely unacceptable” in a phone call with his Israeli counterpart Israel Katz. He said Israel must make “major changes to ensure the safety of aid workers on the ground”.
The Foreign Office took the unusual step of summoning the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, for a 30-minute meeting with Andrew Mitchell, the development minister. Lord Cameron has cut short his Easter break to address the crisis.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, condemned the deaths as “outrageous”, and “unacceptable”, adding: “This war must stop now. Far too many innocent people have died in this conflict.”
A friend of Mr Henderson said the family were told of his death yesterday morning. They said: “Everybody is gutted, he was a lovely lad. He hadn’t been out there long, only a couple of weeks.” A former colleague of Mr Kirby confirmed he had died in the air strike. Mr Kirby, also an Army veteran, worked as a security consultant for risk management and security specialists Solace Global.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, said the US was “outraged” at the killing of the aid
‘Far too many aid workers and civilians have lost their lives... the situation is increasingly intolerable’
workers, which he described as “emblematic of a larger problem”.
The strike on the convoy was carried out by drone, The Telegraph understands, via an operator with the 933 brigade based in the southern city of Khan Younis. It would have been signed off by three people – an intelligence officer, a unit commander and a legal adviser.
An Israeli military source said the strikes were an “intelligence failure”, saying that suspicions of the convoy were based on intelligence and heightened by it travelling at night.
Israeli security officials told Haaretz newspaper that the convoy was trailed by IDF drones and fired upon three times. The IDF believed an armed Hamas operative had joined a WCK convoy transporting 100 tons of food aid to its warehouse in Deir Al-balah. The food had been delivered by sea from Cyprus.
Subsequent intelligence revealed that when the convoy left the warehouse, the Hamas operative stayed behind, the sources told Haaretz. The killed workers included Australian, Canadian and Polish citizens as well as a Us-canadian dual national.
IT WAS not a single rogue missile that killed seven aid workers on the coast road in central Gaza between 10 and 11pm on Monday night but three precisely targeted missiles.
According to unnamed Israeli security sources who briefed the local media, they were dropped in succession from a Hermes 450 drone with sophisticated night sights and deliberately guided onto the three clearly marked humanitarian vehicles travelling below.
Even though the drone pilots would have had the authority and technical means to swerve the bombs away until the very last moment, they chose not to.
On the ground it was carnage. As the first vehicle was hit, several aid workers reportedly scrambled from it and into the other cars, before it was reduced to a burnt-out shell. An emergency call was put in to Israeli authorities, who had cleared the mission ahead of time, but to no avail.
As the two remaining vehicles continued their journey south on the Al Rashid Road, one was hit by a bomb that passed through the humanitarian badge on its roof. The third vehicle got another kilometre and a half before it too was picked off. All that remained of it at first light yesterday morning was a twisted, blackened hulk of metal.
Pictures of the corpses of the seven victims circulated on social media soon after, some torn beyond recognition. Three blood-stained passports, one British, one Polish and one Australian, were also shared widely online.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claimed yesterday in off-record briefings to the Israeli press that it had been targeting an “armed” Hamas operative.
A military lawyer, an intelligence officer and a senior commander would have to approve the strike, as per IDF standard drone operating protocol.
Yet even in the unlikely event that the extra-judicial killing of seven aid workers could be justified because of the presence of a single terror suspect, it later transpired he was not even travelling in the convoy.
“According to the defence sources, that armed man did not leave the warehouse,” reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “The cars travelled along a route preapproved and coordinated with the IDF.”
The attack could not have come at a more sensitive time for Israel, whose assault on Gaza has claimed more than 32,000 lives, according to Hamas, and sparked a humanitarian disaster.
In addition to civilians, some 196 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began on Oct 7 – more than in any other conflict, according to Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state. Last Thursday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague said “famine is setting in” among Gaza’s 2.3 million population and ordered Israel to ensure “the unhindered provision at scale” of aid and humanitarian assistance.
The ICJ took action as part of its investigation into allegations, vehemently disputed, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza with its response to Hamas’s Oct 7 attack.
That the IDF should hit World Central
Kitchen (WCK), one of the few humanitarian groups not overtly regarded with suspicion by Israel, is also a shock. The group is independent of the United Nations and is seen as one of the few viable alternatives to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which Israel asserts has been compromised by Hamas.
Jose Andres, who started WCK in 2010, said he was heartbroken. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he said the Israeli government “needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon”.
The attack could damage efforts to provide aid to Gazans. Yesterday, Cyprus said a ship loaded with supplies would return to port until the safety of aid workers can be guaranteed.
Ehud Olmert, Israel’s former prime minister, told Sky News the killings were “disgusting” and “Israel should apologise formally”.
Prof Ben Saul, UN special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, said Israel’s reported killing of the WCK aid workers in Gaza could be a war crime.
“It’s a human tragedy. But, of course, it could well be a violation of international humanitarian law, under which Israel has a duty not to deliberately target humanitarian relief workers or their convoys or their relief consignments,” said Prof Saul.
He added: “[Israel] also has a wider duty to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers in a conflict zone; to ensure their freedom of movement and to coordinate with them so that these kinds of tragedies never happen.”
‘Israel has a duty to ensure the safety of aid workers in a conflict zone’