The aid organization World Central Kitchen (WCK) has confirmed the deaths of seven of its employees in the Gaza Strip in an airstrike and blamed Israel for it.
“The WCK team was traveling in a conflict-free zone in two armored vehicles with the WCK logo and one unprotected vehicle,” the NGO said on Tuesday. In view of the fatal incident, it will immediately stop its operations in the region. Israel announced an investigation.
The convoy was hit even though the trip had been coordinated with the Israeli army, the aid organization wrote in a statement. The aid workers had just left a warehouse in the town of Deir al-Balah in the central part of the Gaza Strip when they were fired upon. There they unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid that was brought to the Gaza Strip by sea.
Investigation
“This is not just an attack on WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations that find themselves in dire situations where food is used as a weapon in war,” said the organization’s executive director, Erin Gore. “This is unforgivable.”
According to the statement, the seven victims came from Australia, Poland, Great Britain and the Palestinian territories – and one of the victims also has US and Canadian citizenship. There had previously been talk of at least five deaths.
The Israeli military said it was “conducting a thorough, high-level investigation to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.”
Gaza: More deaths during food distribution
WCK has been involved in distributing aid in the Palestinian territory since the beginning of the war between Israel and the radical Islamic Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It is one of two aid organizations that deliver aid supplies by ship from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip and was also involved in the construction of a temporary pier there.