“The attack was not carried out with the intention of harming the WCK volunteers,” he said. US President Joe Biden sharply criticized Israel.
“It was a mistake that followed a false identification – at night in a war under very complex conditions. That should not have happened,” Halevi said in a video statement on Wednesday night. “This incident was a serious mistake,” he said. This was revealed by a preliminary investigation. He did not give further details.
An independent committee will thoroughly investigate the incident and “conclude it in the next few days,” the Israeli chief of staff continued. The army will learn from the conclusions “and implement them immediately,” said Halevi. The army shares “from the bottom of our hearts” the grief of the relatives and the aid organization.
Seven employees killed
World Central Kitchen had confirmed the deaths of seven employees in the Gaza Strip the day before. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in a video message of a “tragic case of an accidental hit by our armed forces once morest innocent people in the Gaza Strip.” The incident is being investigated and everything will be done to ensure that something like this does not happen once more.
According to media reports, the death of foreign aid workers in the Gaza Strip in the Israeli airstrike calls into question the continued supply of Palestinians in the war zone. “Everyone feels threatened now,” the New York Times quoted Michael Capponi, founder of the aid organization Global Empowerment Mission, as saying on Tuesday (local time). The international community of non-governmental organizations must be “guaranteed that we are safe in our work, which is so important,” Capponi demanded.
US government outraged
Israel risks ending up without a partner to provide and deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the Times of Israel quoted a US government official as saying. Tess Ingram, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told the New York Times newspaper that she hopes the deaths of WCK workers in Gaza will “make the world realize that what is happening here “, is not okay”. “The news of the attack is horrific – a nightmare come true for us,” Soraya Ali, spokeswoman for the organization Save the Children, told the US newspaper.
The US government also reacted with outrage to the death of the World Central Kitchen helpers and urgently demanded clarification from Israel. “More than 200 aid workers have been killed in this conflict, making it one of the worst conflicts for aid workers in recent history,” National Security Council Communications Director John Kirby said Tuesday.
Criticism of Biden
US President Biden then made serious accusations once morest his ally Israel. “This is not an isolated case,” complained Biden in a written statement on Tuesday evening (local time). “This conflict is one of the worst in recent memory in terms of the number of aid workers killed.” The Democrat literally criticized: “Israel has not done enough to protect the aid workers who are trying to provide the civilian population with urgently needed help.” This is one of the main reasons why distributing humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip is so difficult. “Israel has not done enough to protect the civilian population,” Biden continued. The United States has repeatedly called on Israel to decouple military operations once morest the militant Palestinian organization Hamas from humanitarian operations in order to avoid civilian casualties.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese personally expressed “Australia’s anger and concern” over the deaths of the seven aid workers in a telephone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Albanese said this at a press conference. An Australian young woman was among the civilian aid workers killed. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong had previously condemned the airstrike as “outrageous and unacceptable” in a conversation with her Israeli counterpart Israel Katz. Israel will continue to lose support if it does not change course. Israel must explain how and why the aid organization’s vehicles were attacked. According to media reports, the Israeli military was informed regarding the movement of the aid organization’s clearly marked vehicles.
In complex conflict zones like the Gaza Strip, the United Nations and other aid agencies voluntarily provided warring parties with the coordinates of their offices, warehouses and other facilities to avoid being accidentally hit, the Wall Street Journal wrote. Operations in the northern Gaza Strip, which is considered particularly high-risk, would have to be approved by the Israeli military authority COGAT, which is responsible for coordinating aid. Most applications would be rejected. Nevertheless, aid convoys in Gaza have been attacked several times, it was said. It is not clear why the so-called “deconfliction” mechanism has repeatedly failed to ensure the safety of the helpers, the US newspaper continued.
