An airstrike killed six international aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity and their Palestinian driver, the aid group said Tuesday, hours after it brought a new shipload of food into northern Gaza, which has been isolated and pushed to the brink of famine by Israel’s offensive.
The group said Israel had conducted the strike. That couldn’t be independently confirmed as of late Monday.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that, “Following the reports of the incident concerning the employees of the WCK organization in the Gaza Strip, the IDF began an in-depth investigation of the incident by the most senior ranks, in order to understand all the circumstances of the incident. The IDF makes great efforts to enable the safe passage of humanitarian aid, and works in full cooperation and coordination with the WCK organization in order to support their efforts to provide food and humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip.”
Graphic photographs showed the mangled, bloodied corpses of the aid workers, some still wearing World Central Kitchen t-shirts, with their passports, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah.
Abdel Kareem Hana / AP
The food charity said early Tuesday that the seven killed included citizens of Australia, Poland and the United Kingdom, and that one was a U.S.-Canada dual citizen and one was Palestinian.
WCK, a nonprofit founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, has shipped more than 37 million meals to Palestinians in Gaza since Oct. 7, the group says.
“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,” World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore said in a statement
In a lengthy social media post, Andrés said his organization had lost several “brothers and sisters in an IDF air strike in Gaza,” and called on the Israeli government to “stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.”
“I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family,” Andrés wrote. “These are people … angels … I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless … they are not nameless.”
Yasser Qudaih / Anadolu via Getty Images
The WCK team “was traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo,” the group said in a statement.
“Despite coordinating movements with the (Israeli army), the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse,” in central Gaza, the group said, adding that the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route.
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 coordinating both deliveries.
The U.S. has touted the sea route as a new way to deliver desperately needed aid to northern Gaza, where the U.N. 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 U.N. 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.
Yasser Qudaih / Anadolu via Getty Images
The UNRWA said in its latest report that 173 of its “colleagues” have been killed in Gaza in the violence. The figure does not include workers for other aid organizations.
World Central Kitchen board member Robert Egger and the media reported that the Australian killed in Monday night’s strike was 44-year-old Zomi Frankcom from Melbourne.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was urgently seeking to confirm reports of an Australian death. The department said in a statement: “We have been clear on the need for civilian lives to be protected in this conflict.”
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said on social media that, “We are heartbroken and deeply troubled by the strike that that killed [World Central Kitchen] aid workers in Gaza. Humanitarian aid workers must be protected as they deliver aid that is desperately needed, and we urge Israel to swiftly investigate what happened.”
WCK said the shipments bound for Gaza were loaded with rice, pasta, flour, legumes, canned vegetables and proteins, and contained enough food to prepare more than 1 million meals. Also on board were dates, which are traditionally eaten to break the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
The United Nations and partners have warned that famine could occur very soon in devastated, largely isolated northern Gaza. CBS News previously reported that an estimated 1.7 million people in Gaza have been displaced in the territory, according to the U.N., with many having no access to food, water, medicine or appropriate shelter.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have been killed since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostage. Israel responded with an air, land and sea offensive that has killed nearly 33,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.
—S. Dev, Brian Dakss and Camilla Schick contributed reporting.
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