Middle East crisis live: Israeli military investigating after foreign aid workers killed in Gaza strike | Israel-Gaza war

The White House national security council said the US was “heartbroken and deeply troubled” by the death of the aid workers in Gaza.

Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson went on to say the White House urged Israel to “swiftly investigate what happened”.

A Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic has said the aid workers killed on Monday were in a three-car convoy that was crossing out of northern Gaza when an Israeli missile hit.

Mahmoud Thabet, who was on the team that brought the bodies to hospital, told the Associated Press he was told by World Central Kitchen staff the team had been in the north coordinating distribution of the newly arrived aid and were heading back to Rafah in the south.

Three aid ships from Cyprus arrived earlier on Monday carrying some 400 tons of food and supplies organised by the charity and the United Arab Emirates – the group’s second shipment after a pilot run last month. The Israeli military was involved in coordinating both deliveries.

The US has touted the sea route as a new way to deliver desperately needed aid to northern Gaza, where the UN has said much of the population is on the brink of starvation, largely cut off from the rest of the territory by Israeli forces.

Israel has barred Unrwa, the main UN agency in Gaza, from making deliveries to the north, and other aid groups say sending truck convoys north has been too dangerous because of the military’s failure to ensure safe passage.

Tributes have been paid to Zomi Frankcom, the Australian aid worker killed in Gaza.

Karuna Bajracharya posted on Facebook:

Rest in peace our beautiful sister.

Zomi risked her life many times to help those in dire need, yet our cowardly politicians don’t even dare to risk their own careers by speaking up against Israel and the USA’s six months of genocide!

Frankcom had worked with the World Central Kitchen charity for five years, having been previously based in Bangkok and the US. She had formerly worked at Australia’s Commonwealth Bank for more than eight years.

Tim Costello, a former World Vision chief, paid tribute to aid workers who risked their lives in conflict zones:

It’s a special type of person who actually says: ‘I’m going to serve others in this way, I’m going to risk my own life to actually protect the innocent’.

Costello described the deaths of aid workers as a “bridge that we have crossed”.

We know [foreign aid] is inherently risky … we know that aid workers take risks. They don’t take rifles, they don’t take tanks. All they have is a logo, and a flag, and the confidence that the international system respects humanitarian workers.

That’s why this is utterly, utterly devastating.

The full story from Ben Doherty is here:

In late March, Zomi Frankcom, the Australian aid worker killed in the strike in Gaza, appeared in a video filmed at Deir al-Balah talking about the meals being prepared for Palestinians by World Central Kitchen.

A week later, Frankcom, along with her international and Palestinian colleagues, would die in that same besieged neighbourhood of central Gaza.

Top American and Israeli officials have held virtual talks as Washington pushes alternatives to Israeli’s anticipated ground assault in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The more than two-and-a-half-hour meeting by video conference on Monday was described by both sides as constructive and productive, as Washington encourages the Israelis to avoid an all-out assault on the city, where an estimated four battalions of Hamas fighters are dispersed among more than 1.3 million civilians, the Associated Press reports.

The potential operation against the militant group in the city has exposed one of the deepest rifts between Israel and its closest ally, funder and arms supplier. The US has already openly said Israel must do more to allow food and other goods through its blockade of Gaza to avert famine.

“They agreed that they share the objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah,” the US and Israeli teams, known as the strategic consultative group (SCG), said in a joint statement released by the White House.

The US side expressed its concerns with various courses of action in Rafah. The Israeli side agreed to take these concerns into account and to have follow-up discussions between experts overseen by the SCG. Those discussions would include an in-person SCG meeting as early as next week.

The virtual meeting came a week after planned in-person talks were nixed by Netanyahu when the US didn’t veto a United Nations resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Recapping other news, thousands of angry Israelis took to the streets on Monday for the third consecutive night to demand Benjamin Netanyahu quit as Israeli prime minister.

And, Agence France-Presse reports, the demonstrators say they are not going away.

Mass protests uniting families of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and an anti-government street movement that failed to unseat Netanyahu last year brought Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to a standstill on Saturday and Sunday.

As thousands again gathered in Tel Aviv and outside Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem on Monday, several protesters told AFP that Netanyahu had to be forced out “to save Israel”.

“This is an existential crisis for Israel,” said Einat Avni Levi, 40, whose family had to flee from the Nirim kibbutz a little over 2km (1.25 miles) from the border barrier with Gaza.

Referring to the around 250 hostages abducted by Hamas during the 7 October attack, she said:

If someone comes and takes me from my bed, and I can’t trust my army and my government to come and rescue me, I cannot live here.

The Israeli strike on a central Gaza convoy on Monday came as, separately, Israeli forces withdrew from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after a two-week raid that left most of the major medical complex in ruins, as Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem reports.

Hamas claimed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) killed 400 people in the northern Gaza compound.

The report continues:

According to the IDF, the facility – Gaza City’s main hospital before the war – was used to harbour Hamas fighters. The army described the operation as one of the most successful of the nearly six-month conflict and cited the killing of of 200 militants including senior operatives. The claim they were all militants could not be confirmed.

However, the UN health agency said several hospital patients had died and dozens were put at risk during the raid. Palestinians who fled the facility described days of heavy fighting, mass arrests and forced marches past dead people, while the Hamas-run health ministry described the scale of the destruction inside the complex as “very large”.

Footage showed widespread devastation, with the facility’s main buildings reduced to burned-out husks. The hospital was now “completely out of service”, the ministry said.

Most of Gaza’s hospitals are no longer functioning, the UN has said.

See the full story here:

We’ve launched this video report on the Gaza strike, including footage of people being transported on stretchers as ambulances flash nearby.

PM names Australian aid worker killed, demands ‘full accountability’

Josh Butler

An Australian judge on the world court has called on Israel to suspend its military operation in Gaza.

Hilary Charlesworth, a distinguished international lawyer who replaced the late Australian judge James Crawford on the international court of justice, believes a suspension is required to ensure enough aid reaches civilians.

She also cautioned that such a step “only partly addresses the risk of destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza”.

Charlesworth is the only Australian woman to have served on the ICJ. Her comments come just months after the Australian government supported her re-election to the top UN court.

See the full story from Daniel Hurst here:

Japan will lift its suspension of funding to the UN Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa, Reuters quotes its foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, as saying.

Tokyo decided in January to suspend additional funding to the agency while it conducted an investigation into an allegation that its staff were involved in Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, which triggered war in Gaza .

The accusations by Israel led 16 countries including the US to pause $450m in funding to the Unrwa, throwing its operations into turmoil. The agency is the largest relief body operating in Gaza, which has been besieged by Israel since the attack.

Countries including Australia, Canada, Finland and Sweden have since restored funding to Unrwa, while several Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia have increased funding.

Japan is the sixth-biggest donor to the agency, according to the Unrwa’s 2022 data.

A correspondent for Agence France-Presse confirmed seeing five bodies with three foreign passports lying nearby at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, the news agency reports.

Earlier, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry had said the bodies of four foreign aid workers and their Palestinian driver and translator were brought to the hospital after an Israeli strike targeted their vehicle.

The Israeli military said it was “conducting a thorough review”.

World Central Kitchen has been involved in delivering the aid arriving by boat from Cyprus, and in the construction of a temporary jetty in Gaza.

Two charities have organised aid deliveries by sea from Cyprus, with the second flotilla, setting sail on Saturday with about 400 tonnes of supplies – a fraction of Gaza’s needs.

Since Hamas’s unprecedented 7 October attack, Gaza has been under a near-complete blockade, and UN agencies have warned repeatedly that northern Gaza is on the verge of famine. Israel has denied responsibility.

Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has told national broadcaster the ABC that the country’s foreign ministry is “urgently investigating” reports of the strike on a Gaza convoy.

An Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said reports of the death of an Australian aid worker were very distressing.

“We have been clear on the need for civilian lives to be protected in this conflict,” Reuters quoted the spokesperson as saying.

We have been very clear that we expect humanitarian workers in Gaza to have safe and unimpeded access to do their lifesaving work.

World Central Kitchen founder ‘heartbroken’ at deaths

A full report on the reported Gaza strike is here – by my colleague Ben Doherty:

For some background on the World Central Kitchen (WCK), the US-based charity delivers food relief and prepares meals for people in need.

It said last month it had served more than 42m meals in Gaza over 175 days.

Reuters reports that chef José Andrés started the WCK in 2010 by sending cooks and food to Haiti after an earthquake. The organisation has since delivered food for communities hit by natural disasters, refugees at the US border, healthcare workers during the Covid pandemic and people in conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

In its most recent post from Monday on X, the WCK said its teams mobilised across Gaza daily to distribute food to displaced Palestinians.

It said:

Our 60+ kitchens in southern and central Gaza are cooking hundreds of thousands of meals each day like this mujadara, a comforting dish of rice, lentils, and caramelised onions.

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