Deir Al-Balah. An Israeli attack killed seven World Central Kitchen workers, prompting the aid group to suspend distribution of vital food aid on Tuesday in Gaza, where the Israeli offensive against Hamas has put hundreds of thousands of Palestinians on the brink of destruction. famine.
Several ships that recently arrived in Gaza began returning to Cyprus with 240 tons of aid not distributed after the event, an official in the Mediterranean island nation, which has played an important role in establishing the sea route, announced Tuesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that Israeli forces had carried out the “unintentional attack” against “innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” he said. Authorities are “reviewing this thoroughly” and “will do everything possible to that this does not happen again,” he added.
Images of the bodies of the dead at a hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah showed that several were wearing protective clothing with the charity’s logo. The deceased were three Britons, an Australian, a Pole and a person with dual US and Canadian citizenship, according to hospital records.
The charity, founded by famed chef José Andrés, was a centerpiece of a sea route recently opened to bring desperately needed aid to northern Gaza, where the United Nations says much of the population is at risk of die of hunger, practically isolated from the rest of the territory by Israeli forces.
Andrés, whose charity operates in several countries affected by war or natural disasters, including Israel after the October 7 attack that sparked the current conflict, said he was “heartbroken” by the deaths of his colleagues.
“The Israeli government must stop this indiscriminate killing. “You must stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The organization said the team was traveling in a convoy of three vehicles, two of them armored, and had coordinated their movements with the Israeli army.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief army spokesman, said Tuesday that authorities were analyzing what happened at the highest level. An independent investigation would be opened that “will help us reduce the risk of such an incident happening again,” he said.
Erin Gore, CEO of the organization, said that “this is not just an attack on WCK, it is an attack on humanitarian organizations that go to the most difficult situations where food is used as a weapon of war. “This is unforgivable.”
UNRWA, the main United Nations agency in Gaza, said in its latest report that 173 of its workers had died in the territory since the war began when Hamas-led militants swept into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 hostages. Israel responded with one of the most lethal and destructive offensives in recent history.
Faced with a growing humanitarian catastrophe in northern Gaza, several countries worked to open a sea route in the hope that it would allow more aid to be brought to the enclave, where supplies have entered in dribs and drabs through land routes controlled by Israel. The United States and other countries have also dropped deliveries from the air, but aid workers say those efforts fall far short of meeting the population’s growing needs.
Israel has banned UNRWA from participating in the delivery of aid in the north, and other humanitarian groups say that sending truck convoys to the north of the territory is too dangerous because the armed forces do not guarantee safe passage.
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– 2024-04-08 17:52:08
