An aid group says an Israeli strike on its workers in Gaza has killed at least seven people, including several foreigners.
World Central Kitchen, the food charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, said Tuesday that the seven people killed included citizens of Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom and a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. He did not provide details and said at least one Palestinian had also been killed.
He said workers were delivering desperately needed food aid that had arrived by sea on Monday when they were struck late in the evening.
The Israeli military said it was conducting an investigation “to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.”
World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, said it was aware of the reports and would “share more information when we have gathered all the facts.”
“It’s a tragedy. Aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. NEVER,” WCK spokesperson Linda Roth said in a statement.
Mahmoud Thabet, a Palestinian Red Crescent rescuer who was part of the team that transported the bodies to hospital, told The Associated Press that the workers were in a three-car convoy heading out of northern Gaza when an Israeli missile struck. Thabet said WCK staff told him the team was in the north to coordinate distribution of newly arrived aid and was returning to Rafah in the south.
The source of the fire could not be independently confirmed.
Three aid ships from Cyprus arrived earlier on Monday, carrying some 400 tonnes of food and supplies organized by the charity and the United Arab Emirates – the group’s second shipment after a pilot operation last month. The Israeli army participated in coordinating both deliveries.
The United States has touted the sea route as a new way to deliver desperately needed aid to northern Gaza, where the U.N. says much of the population is on the brink of famine, largely cut off from the rest territory by Israeli forces. Israel has banned UNRWA, the main UN agency in Gaza, from making deliveries to the north, and other humanitarian groups say sending truck convoys north is too dangerous due to the military’s inability to provide safe passage.
The strike came hours after Israeli troops ended a two-week raid on Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, leaving the facility largely empty and a slew of destruction in surrounding neighborhoods. Images showed Shifa’s main buildings had been reduced to burned hulks.
Israel said it launched the raid on Shifa because senior Hamas officials had gathered there and were planning attacks. The army said its troops killed 200 militants during the operation, although the claim that they were all militants could not be confirmed, and Palestinians arriving at the site after the withdrawal of troops found bodies of civilians.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS MONDAY:
Syrian officials and state media said an Israeli airstrike destroyed the Iranian consulate in Syria, killing two Iranian generals and five officers. The strike appears to signify an escalation of Israel’s targeting of Iranian military officials and their allies in Syria. Attacks have intensified since Hamas militants – backed by Iran – attacked Israel on October 7.
Israel, which rarely acknowledges such strikes, said it had no comment. Iran’s ambassador, Hossein Akbari, vowed to take revenge for the attack “with the same scale and harshness.”
Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would close the Al Jazeera satellite channel immediately after Parliament passed a law on Monday authorizing the country to ban the Qatari channel from broadcasting from Israel.
The UN Security Council on Monday approved a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu called the network a “terrorist channel” and accused it of harming Israeli security, participating in the October 7 Hamas attacks and inciting violence against Israel.
Al Jazeera condemned his comments, calling them a “dangerous and ridiculous lie” and saying they were a justification by Netanyahu for “the continued attack” on media networks and press freedom. In a press release, the channel pledged to continue its reporting with “audacity and professionalism”.
RAID LEAVES SHIFA IN RUINS
The Shifa raid destroyed a facility that was once the heart of Gaza’s health system, but which doctors and staff had struggled to even partially return to service after a previous Israeli attack in November.
The latest attack sparked days of heavy fighting for blocks around Shifa, with witnesses reporting airstrikes, shelling of houses and troops going house to house to force residents to leave. Israeli authorities have identified six officials from Hamas’s military wing who they say were killed inside the hospital during the raid. Israel also said it had seized weapons and valuable intelligence.
After troops withdrew, hundreds of Palestinians returned to search for lost loved ones or survey the damage.
The dead included Ahmed Maqadma and his mother – both doctors in Shifa – as well as his cousin, said Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, a Palestinian-British doctor who worked pro bono in Shifa and other hospitals during the first months of the war before returning to Britain.
The fate of the three men had been unknown since their phones suddenly went off as they tried to leave Shifa almost a week ago. On Monday, relatives found their bodies with gunshot wounds a block from the hospital, said Abu Sitta, who is in contact with the family.
Mohammed Mahdi, who was among those who returned to the area, described a scene of “total destruction”. He said several buildings had been set on fire and that he had counted six bodies in the surrounding area, including two in the hospital courtyard.
At least 21 patients died during the raid, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday evening on X, formerly Twitter.
Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes and has carried out attacks on numerous hospitals across the territory. Critics accuse the military of recklessly endangering civilians and decimating a health sector already overwhelmed with injured people.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group had established their main northern headquarters inside the hospital. He described days of close combat and blamed Hamas for the destruction, saying some fighters barricaded themselves inside hospital wards while others lobbed mortar shells at the compound.
Republican Party members are reacting after Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Thursday that Israel should hold new elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hagari said troops arrested some 900 suspected militants during the raid, including more than 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, and seized more than $3 million in various currencies, as well as weapons. He said the army had evacuated more than 200 of the estimated 300 to 350 patients. Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the raid, the army said.
The war began on October 7, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 people hostage.
Since then, the Israeli offensive has killed at least 32,845 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The Israeli military blames the civilian death toll on Palestinian militants because they are fighting in dense residential areas.
The war displaced most of the territory’s population and pushed a third of its residents to the brink of starvation.
Netanyahu vowed to continue the offensive until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are freed. He says Israel will soon expand its ground operations to the southern city of Rafah, where some 1.4 million people – more than half of Gaza’s population – have sought refuge.
But he faces growing pressure from the Israelis who blame him for the security failures of October 7 and from certain families of the hostages who blame him for the failure to reach an agreement despite several weeks of talks mediated by the United States. United States, Qatar and Egypt. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated on Sunday, demanding that Netanyahu do more to bring the hostages home, in the largest anti-government demonstration since the war began.
Hamas and other militants are believed to still be holding around 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others, after freeing most of the others in a ceasefire last November in exchange for the release of Palestinians. imprisoned by Israel.
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Magdy reported from Cairo and Goldenberg from Tel Aviv, Israel.
NBC Chicago
