World Central Kitchen said on Sunday it would resume operations in Gaza with a team of local Palestinian aid workers, nearly a month after the Israeli military killed seven of its staff in a drone strike targeting its convoy. .
Israeli military officials said the attack was a “grave mistake” lists a series of failuresincluding communications disruptions and violations of military operating procedures.
The Washington-based aid group said it was still calling for an independent international investigation into the April 1 attack and had “not received any concrete assurances” that the Israeli military’s operational procedures had changed. But Erin Gore, the aid group’s chief operating officer, said “the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains serious.” a statement.
“We are restarting operations with the same energy, dignity and focus on feeding as many people as possible,” she said.
The aid group said more than 43 million meals have been distributed in Gaza so far, with trucks carrying the equivalent of nearly 8 million meals waiting to enter the enclave through the southern Rafah crossing. World Central Kitchen said it also plans to send trucks to Gaza via Jordan and will open a kitchen in Al-Mawasi. Designated by the Israeli military as a “humanitarian zone” safe for civilians, although attacks there continue.
Six of the seven workers killed in the April 1 attack were from Western countries: three were from the UK, one was from Australia, one was from Poland and one had dual US-Canadian citizenship. The seventh is Palestinian.they are Killed in successive Israeli drone strikes They are on a vehicle heading to Rafah after unloading food aid arriving by sea.
The attack prompted World Central Kitchen to immediately suspend operations in Gaza and drew the ire of some of Israel’s closest allies.
The military said the operations of the World Central Kitchen convoy had been coordinated with the Israeli military in advance, but some officers did not review coordination documents detailing which cars were in the convoy.
According to the United Nations, about 200 aid workers, mostly Palestinians, were killed in Gaza between October 7 and the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy. A New York Times Visual Survey It shows that long before the World Central Kitchen attack, six aid organizations in Gaza came under Israeli fire despite sharing locations with the Israeli military.
Gore said in a statement that the attack forced World Central Kitchen to decide whether to end its efforts in Gaza or continue “knowing that aid workers, aid workers and civilians are being terrorized and killed.”
“Ultimately, we decided we had to continue to provide food and continue our mission of feeding people during the most difficult of times,” she said.
in a Washington Monument “There are still many unanswered questions about what happened and why,” the aid group’s founder, celebrity chef José Andrés, told World Central Kitchen staff on Thursday. Demands remain for an independent investigation into the conduct of the Israeli military. action.
Mr Andrés said the seven aid workers “risked everything to feed people they did not know and would never meet”. “They are the best of mankind.”
