An Israeli airstrike Monday killed seven aid workers who were delivering food to Palestinians on the brink of widespread famine in Gaza.
The attack — whose victims were almost all foreign citizens and were with World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit run by Spanish American chef and humanitarian José Andrés — has drawn widespread international condemnation and underscored the risks that humanitarian workers take every day in trying to deliver still-insufficient levels of aid to Gaza.
“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,” World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore said in a statement. “This is unforgivable.”
The victims, who were wearing bulletproof vests bearing their organization’s logo, were from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Palestine, and the US and Canada. (Israel has acknowledged the incident, which it called an accident, and expressed its “condolences” to the families.)
US President Joe Biden said in a statement Tuesday night that he was “outraged and heartbroken” about their killings.
“Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen,” Biden said. “Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians. The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to deconflict their military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties.”
World Central Kitchen has paused operations in Gaza as a result of the attack, both threatening one of the few sources for food aid in Gaza and highlighting the challenges humanitarian workers are facing as Israel threatens to escalate its assault with an invasion of the southern city of Rafah and continues to obstruct the delivery of aid.
According to the Aid Worker Security database, 260 aid workers were…
Read the full article here
