Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday acknowledged that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are responsible for the death of seven people who worked for the disaster relief group World Central Kitchen (WCK) and who died on Monday in Gaza as a result of a deadly air strike against their convoy.
Netanyahu described the attack as a “tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people.” He said that “it happens in war, we are fully examining this, we are in contact with the governments and we will do everything so that this thing does not happen again.”
But the US-based charity noted in a statement on Tuesday that “the WCK team was traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo.” The nonprofit has paused operations in the area, where it was providing critical aid to a population on the brink of famine.
“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” said World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore. Three of the victims were Palestinian, one was Australian, one Polish, one British, and one had dual US-Canadian citizenship.
The WCK said that despite coordinating movements with the Israeli defense forces, the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the recently created maritime route from Cyprus. Last month a ship called the Open Arms, run by a Spanish migrant rescue charity, took charge of WCK food aid to Gaza. A second shipment left Cyprus on Saturday but it is now unclear whether it will be docked and unloaded.
Video footage and photographs showed the bodies of the victims at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in the city of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. Several of them were wearing protective gear that included patches with the charity's logo. There were also photographs of a bombed white car with the WCK logo on the roof. The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that it is “carrying out an in-depth examination at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.”
Founded by the Spanish-American chef José Andrés, WCK is dedicated to providing food in conflict zones and team members have been in Gaza for six months, where they have served more than 42 million meals, according to its data.
“Today WCK lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza. I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family. These are people… angels… I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless… they are not nameless,” José Andrés tweeted.
The award-winning celebrity chef used an unusually harsh tone against Israel in his social media post, adding that “the Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace begins with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”
Just three hours before the attack, the NGO had noted on its social media that its activity on the ground includes a network of 60 portable kitchens in southern and central Gaza, which provided “hundreds of thousands of meals a day” to civilians displaced by the Israeli offensive.
Mahmoud Thabet, a Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic who was part of the team that transported the bodies to the hospital, told the Associated Press that the workers were in a three-car convoy crossing the northern Gaza exit when a missile hit. Israeli. Thabet said WCK staff had informed him that the team had been in the north coordinating the distribution of newly arrived aid and was heading back to Rafah in the south.
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