‘A GRAVE MISTAKE ... A SERIOUS FAILURE’
Israel to fire two officers over aid workers’ deaths
Israel’s military said Friday that a deadly attack on a World Central Kitchen humanitarian convoy that killed seven aid workers was a “serious violation” of its policies after the airstrikes prompted global outrage and a rare rebuke from the Biden administration.
The findings of the Israel Defense Forces’ investigation, presented in a seven-paragraph statement, were unusual for the speed with which they were released: four days after an IDF drone repeatedly struck the three-car convoy on a coastal road in Gaza used as a humanitarian corridor.
The statement said the attack was the result of “errors” and was “contrary” to military procedures, adding that two officers would be dismissed and three commanders reprimanded.
World Central Kitchen said the findings were an “important step forward” but that the IDF “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza.”
“We demand the creation of an independent commission to investigate the killings of our WCK colleagues,” the statement said.
The mother of a Canadian Army veteran who worked for WCK and was killed in the attack rejects Israel’s explanation.
But Sylvie Labrecque, her voice filled with exhaustion and grief, says she remains hopeful that the deaths of her 33-year-old son Jacob Flickinger and six of his colleagues will lead to positive change for all aid workers and the people of Gaza.
“I just feel good in a way that I feel that a lot of people are honouring Jacob in many different ways,” she said in an interview.
“So I’m hoping that there will be positive impact in terms of possibilities of stopping some of that killing.”
Also killed in the attack were Lalzawmi (Zomi) Frankcom, 43, from Australia, Polish national Damian Sobol, 35, Palestinian Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, 25, and British citizens John Chapman, 57, James Henderson, 33, and James Kirby, 47.
They were killed on April 1 when their convoy that was clearly marked as World Central Kitchen was struck after it delivered 100 tonnes of food to a warehouse in Deir al-balah.
The IDF statement said a commander “mistakenly” assumed that Hamas gunmen were present in the vehicles and that Israeli forces also failed to identify the vehicles as belonging to the WCK.
“The investigation’s findings indicate that the incident should not have occurred,” the statement said. “The strike on the aid vehicles is a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the Standard Operating Procedures.”
The investigation conducted by a retired Israeli general blamed the attack on a breach of policy and a mistaken observation.
Military spokespeople said that under the army’s rules of engagement, officers must have more than one reason for identifying someone as a target before they can be hit.
But the investigation determined that a colonel had authorized the series of deadly drone strikes on the convoy based on one major’s observation — from grainy drone-camera footage — that someone in the convoy was armed. That observation turned out to be untrue, military officials said.
The army said the colonel and the major were dismissed, while three other officers were reprimanded, the most senior being the head of the Southern Command.
And although WCK vehicles were marked with the organization’s logo and name on their roofs, that logo was not visible to the cameras tracking the vehicle at night, said Yoav Har-even, head of the IDF fact-finding and assessment mechanism.
The IDF said three procedural rules were violated: The official coordination plan was not communicated from the top to the ground; the airstrike targets were confirmed only by seeing an armed man, which it said was an insufficient standard; and the shooting continued from one vehicle to another when the operator saw people running from the first vehicle after it was struck.
According to accounts of the attack, after the first vehicle was hit, passengers fled to the remaining two vehicles, which then moved on before each was hit, one after the other.