Aid workers killed in Gaza
Four foreign nationals, Palestinian driver dead after apparent Israeli strike
An apparent Israeli airstrike killed four international aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity and their Palestinian driver late Monday, hours after the group brought in a new shipload of food by a maritime route the United States has hoped would be an alternative lifeline for northern Gaza, isolated and pushed to the brink of famine by Israel’s offensive.
Footage showed the bodies of the five dead at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. Several of them wore protective gear with the charity’s logo. Staff showed the passports of three of the dead — British, Australian and Polish. The nationality of the fourth aid worker was not immediately known.
The Israeli military said it was conducting a review “to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.”
World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, said it was aware of the reports and would “share more information when we have gathered all the facts.”
“This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. EVER,” WCK spokesperson Linda Roth said in a statement.
Mahmoud Thabet, a Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic who was on the team that brought the bodies to the hospital, told The Associated Press the workers were in a threecar convoy that was crossing out of northern Gaza when an Israeli missile hit. Thabet said he was told by WCK staff the team had been in the north co-ordinating distribution of the newly arrived aid and were heading back to Rafah in the south.
The source of fire could not be independently confirmed.
Three aid ships from Cyprus arrived earlier Monday carrying some 400 tons of food and supplies organized by the charity and the United Arab Emirates — the group’s second shipment after a pilot run last month. The Israeli military was involved in co-ordinating both deliveries.
The U.S. has touted the sea route as a new way to deliver desperately needed aid to northern Gaza, where the UN has said much of the population is on the brink of starvation, largely cut off from the rest of the territory by Israeli forces. Israel has barred UNRWA, the main UN agency in Gaza, from making deliveries to the north, and other aid groups say sending truck convoys north has been too dangerous because of the military’s failure to ensure safe passage.
The strike came hours after Israeli troops ended a two-week raid on Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, leaving the facility largely gutted and a swath of destruction in the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Israel said it launched the raid on Shifa because senior Hamas operatives had regrouped there and were planning attacks. The military said its troops killed 200 militants in the operation, though the claim that they were all militants could not be confirmed, and Palestinians coming to the site after the troops withdrew found bodies of civilians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would shut down satellite broadcaster Al Jazeera immediately after parliament passed a law Monday clearing the way for the country to halt the Qatari-owned channel from broadcasting from Israel.
Netanyahu called the network the “terror channel” and accused it of harming Israeli security, participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and inciting violence against Israel.
The war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.
Israel’s offensive since has killed at least 32,845 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. Israel blames the civilian toll on Palestinian militants because they fight in dense residential areas.