EU awaits Israeli ‘clarification’ on killing of seven aid workers in Gaza

On Monday (1 April), an Israeli air strike killed seven aid workers from the US-based charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), the organisation said after immediately pausing its operations in the Gaza Strip — the seven killed were from Australia, Poland, the UK, a dual US-Canadian citizen and Palestine.

“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” said World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore, as WCK is one of the most prominent humanitarian organisations providing much-needed aid in the strip.

However, the European Commission is still awaiting clarification from the Israeli authorities, which it has urged to carry out a thorough investigation, stressing that humanitarian workers must always be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law.

“We are not on the ground, so we don’t know exactly how this happened,” a senior EU official told reporters on Tuesday. “We are aware of the reports coming from the region, but that’s why we are asking for clarification through a thorough investigation so that we know how it happened.”

In a video statement published later on Tuesday, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “this happens in war”, and described the incident as “a tragic event in which our forces unintentionally harmed non-combatants in the Gaza Strip,” adding that his government is looking into it and will do everything possible to ensure it does not happen again.

The charity organisation noted that its team was coordinating its movements with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and that it was travelling in two armoured vehicles with the WCK logo in a deconflicted zone in central Gaza, where it unloaded over 100 tonnes of food brought in by sea.

In response to the attack, the IDF announced an independent probe into the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza who were delivering desperately needed food through the recently established maritime corridor.