Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday admitted that its armed forces “unintentionally” killed seven aid workers in an airstrike in Gaza.
“Unfortunately, in the last day there was a tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” he said as he left hospital in Jerusalem after a hernia operation.
“It happens in war, we will investigate it right to the end... We are in contact with the governments, and we will do everything so that this thing does not happen again,” he said.
Photo: AP
The seven victims worked for the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK), which has been delivering food aid to war-torn Gaza by sea from Cyprus.
It paused its Gaza operations after what it called the “targeted Israeli strike” on Monday.
“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. This is unforgivable,” WCK chief executive officer Erin Gore said.
The seven killed are from “Australia, Poland, United Kingdom, a dual citizen of the US and Canada, and Palestine,” the group said in a statement.
“I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family,” WCK founder celebrity chef Jose Andres wrote on X. “The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.”
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari earlier said that he had talked to Andres to express their “deepest condolences.”
He said the probe would be carried out by the Israeli military’s Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism, and “we will share our findings transparently.”
Israeli Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi will “personally review the findings of the initial inquiry tonight,” an army spokesman said.
The US is “heartbroken and deeply troubled” by the strike, White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said, calling on Israel to investigate quickly.
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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