Israel says strike that killed seven Gaza aid workers was unintentional

Western capitals are calling for a probe of the deadly incident in Gaza, which jeopardises aid effort in the hunger-stricken enclave.

Israel struggled to contain a growing crisis after a strike by its military killed seven aid workers in Gaza, drawing condemnation from around the globe and putting more pressure on the country to lower the civilian toll of its campaign to wipe out the militant group Hamas.

The deadly strike late Monday that hit workers with World Central Kitchen — an aid group founded by celebrity chef José Andrés and one of the most important providers of food assistance in the Gaza Strip — risks further isolating Israel and adds friction with the US, its chief ally.

Concerns already had been increasing internationally over the course of the nearly six-month war, which has killed around 33,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. The numbers don’t distinguish between militants and civilians.

But the deaths — including the first known among foreign aid workers in Gaza since the start of the war — had an immediate effect of galvanising pressure on Israel to protect people caught up in the fighting.

“We shouldn’t have a situation where people who are simply trying to help their fellow human beings are themselves at grave risk,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We’ve impressed upon the Israelis the absolute imperative of doing more to protect innocent civilian lives, be they Palestinian children, women, and men or be they aid workers, as well as to get more humanitarian assistance to more people, more effectively.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel was responsible for the strike.

“Unfortunately in the past day there was a tragic incident of an unintentional hit by our forces on innocent people in the Gaza Strip. It happens during war,” Netanyahu said Tuesday in a recorded message on X. “We are in touch with governments and we’ll do everything so that this doesn’t happen again.”

World Central Kitchen, one of the most important providers of food aid in the Gaza Strip, said Tuesday that it had paused operations across the Middle East after seven of its workers, including a U.S.-Canadian dual citizen, were killed in the strike. It said its staff had co-ordinated their movements ahead of time with the Israeli military, which said it would open a probe to examine the incident.

A man displays British, Polish, and Australian passports next to the bodies of World Central Kitchen workers at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP.

The Washington-based charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés has ramped up operations since Oct. 7 to provide 300,000 meals a day in Gaza, closely co-ordinating with Israel to make deliveries by truck and airdrops and by sea through a maritime corridor that it pioneered with an initial shipment last month. It called Monday’s strike a targeted attack by the Israeli military.

“I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family,” Andrés said on X. “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.” Israel denies using food as a weapon and says it is constantly trying to ease the flow of aid into Gaza. The amount of aid that has been entering Gaza since Israel launched its war against Hamas there has been vastly inferior to the basic needs of the enclave’s 2.2 million population, humanitarian groups say. More than one million people are estimated to be starving in Gaza as a result of the war Israel launched against Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 attacks, which Israeli authorities say killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

While the U.N. provides nearly 80% of humanitarian aid in Gaza, World Central Kitchen accounts for more than half of non-U. N. deliveries, mostly food, according to Cogat, the Israeli military body co-ordinating aid there. The group’s operational pause threatens to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with more aid groups expected to suspend their activities out of fear for their staff’s safety.

American Near East Refugee Aid, a U.S. aid group that has operated in the Palestinian territories for more than 50 years and worked with World Central Kitchen, said it was also suspending its Gaza operations. Project Hope, another Washington-based charity that provides healthcare in Gaza, said it was pausing programming in Deir al-Balah and Rafah for the next three days.

The aid workers’ deaths drew condemnation from Western capitals and risk further isolating Israel over its conduct of the war, and could have ramifications for ties between the U.S. and Israel. That relationship has steadily deteriorated over the course of the nearly six-month war, which has killed around 33,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Their numbers don’t distinguish between militants and civilians.

Competing political agendas and conflicting war aims have pushed the relationship between Netanyahu and President Biden toward rupture.

Biden has pressed for more humanitarian aid into Gaza, withheld support for a planned Israeli operation in the southern city of Rafah and left open the possibility of withholding some U.S. weapons deliveries unless Israel takes further steps to protect civilians. He has made clear, however, that the U.S. would never abandon Israel, and officials from the two countries continue to co-ordinate closely.

White House national security spokeswoman Adrienne Watson tweeted that the U.S. was “deeply troubled” by the strike and called on Israel to investigate.

Zomi Frankcom is believed to have been killed in Gaza. Picture Facebook.

World Central Kitchen founder Andrés, who owns several restaurants in Washington, D.C., and has had significant access to the Biden administration, could inject his outsize influence into that dynamic. The twice-Michelin-starred chef won credit in Israel for delivering meals to Israelis displaced from border areas after Oct. 7 and has tried to steer clear of politics. But in recent weeks he has grown more critical of Israel’s conduct in the war.

Aid workers say incidents like Monday’s have been a lot more common in Gaza compared with other wars, in part because, unlike in most conflict zones, there is no safe space for humanitarian operations in the densely packed enclave, which is about twice the size of Washington, D.C.

An Israeli official briefed on the military’s inquiry said that troops wouldn’t have shot at the convoy randomly so must have identified a threat, but he couldn’t specify what that was before the investigation was completed. Israel’s initial findings are expected within the next 24 hours, the official said, with a more complete probe expected to take several more days.

The rules of war require that combatants avoid targeting civilians and refrain from targeting humanitarian groups that provide aid to the population. In complex conflict zones, the U.N. and other aid groups voluntarily share the location coordinates of their offices, warehouses and other premises with the warring parties to carve out safe zones and avoid getting hit by mistake.

In some cases, they also co-ordinate on their movements, such as on aid-delivery missions, to avoid being caught in fighting. In Gaza, this is standard practice by all humanitarian groups. Missions to northern Gaza, deemed especially high-risk, require approval from Cogat, which denies most requests.

Even so, humanitarian buildings and convoys have been hit multiple times, and it isn’t clear why the so-called deconfliction mechanism has repeatedly failed to keep aid workers safe. The U.N. has largely halted aid missions to the north since early February, after an aid truck convoy was struck by Israeli navy fire while it waited to cross a checkpoint inside Gaza. The Israeli military said that its forces were targeting Hamas infrastructure and that it would take the lessons from the incident on board.

“This is not an isolated incident,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian co-ordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, referring to Monday’s fatal strike. Since October, at least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed in Palestinian territories, he said, making them one of the most dangerous places in the world to work.

Monday’s incident unfolded after a second convoy of ships organised by World Central Kitchen that departed from Cyprus over the weekend had begun to unload some 400 tons of food. World Central Kitchen said its workers, who were travelling in two armoured cars branded with the group’s logo and a “soft-skin vehicle,” were hit as they left a warehouse in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah where they had deposited food from the ships. One of the vehicles had a hole torn through its roof and another appeared entirely burned out.

A spokeswoman for World Central Kitchen said the ships were sent back to Cyprus after the incident, having only unloaded a quarter of the food they were meant to deliver.

Israel has provided an unusual level of support to the nonprofit’s effort to deliver aid by sea, securing the landing area on the beach north of Gaza City and sending inspectors to Cyprus to check the aid before it was loaded onto ships. The deaths of the aid workers could derail that initiative, which was seen as part of Israel’s effort to replace the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which it accuses of supporting Hamas, with other aid groups.

The aid groups’ pause in operations comes as U.S.-backed efforts to get more aid into Gaza, secure a ceasefire and free the remaining hostages held by militants have repeatedly faltered. France said Monday it would table a resolution at the U.N. Security Council that includes setting up a force to monitor a ceasefire once agreed.

The victims of Monday’s strike included three British nationals, a U.S.-Canadian dual-citizen, one Palestinian, an Australian and a Polish citizen, according to World Central Kitchen.

U.K. Foreign Minister David Cameron called on Israel to investigate and provide a full, transparent explanation of what happened. “It is essential that humanitarian workers are protected and able to carry out their work,” he said on X.

Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, said his government would investigate the death of Polish aid worker Damian Sobol. “I personally asked the Israeli ambassador for urgent explanations,” Sikorksi said on X. “He assured me that Poland would soon receive the results of the investigation into this tragedy.” The Palestinian victim was Saif Issam Abu Taha, who worked as a driver and translator for World Central Kitchen.

Zomi Frankcom, the Australian aid worker who was killed, was one of the group’s first employees after it was set up in 2010.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the strike “completely unacceptable.” He said that he expected full accountability for the aid workers’ deaths and that the Foreign Ministry had requested a call with the Israeli ambassador to Australia.

“This is beyond any reasonable circumstances – that someone going about providing aid and humanitarian assistance should lose their life,” he said.

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