An Israeli airstrike on a car in the Gaza Strip on Saturday killed five people including employees of World Central Kitchen (WCK).
The charity said it was “urgently seeking more details” after Israel’s military said it targeted a WCK worker who had been part of the Hamas attack that sparked the war.
WCK in an email said it was “heartbroken” by the airstrike and that it had no knowledge anyone in the car had alleged ties to the October 7 2023 attack, saying it was “working with incomplete information.” It said it was pausing operations in Gaza.
The charity’s aid delivery efforts in Gaza were temporarily suspended earlier this year after an Israeli strike killed seven of its workers, most of them foreigners.
The Israeli military in a statement said the alleged October 7 attacker had taken part in the assault on the kibbutz of Nir Oz, and it asked “senior officials from the international community and the WCK administration to clarify” how he had come to work for the charity.
The family of the man named by Israel, Ahed Azmi Qdeih, rejected the allegations in a statement as “false accusations”, and confirmed he had worked with the charity. Israel named him as Hazmi Kadih.
The violence in Gaza raged even as a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to be holding, despite sporadic episodes that have tested its fragility. Israel on Saturday struck what it said were Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites along Syria’s border with Lebanon.
The strike on the vehicle was the latest in what aid agencies have described as the dangerous work of delivering aid in Gaza, where the war has sparked a humanitarian crisis that has displaced much of the territory’s 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.
World Central Kitchen provides meals to people in need following natural disasters or to those enduring conflict. Its teams have often served as a lifeline for people in Gaza who have struggled to feed themselves.
Palestinian health official Muneer Alboursh confirmed the strike, and an aid worker in Gaza confirmed that three killed were workers with the WCK.
The aid worker spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak with the media.
At Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, a woman held up an employee badge bearing the WCK logo, the word “contractor” and the name of a man said to have been killed in the strike.
Belongings: burned phones, a watch and stickers with the WCK logo; lay spread out on the hospital floor.
Nazmi Ahmed said his nephew worked for WCK for the past year. He said he was driving to the charity’s kitchens and warehouses.
“Today, he went out as usual to work … and was targeted without prior warning and without any reason,” Mr Ahmed said.
In April, a strike on a WCK aid convoy killed seven workers: three British citizens, Polish and Australian nationals, a Canadian-American dual national and a Palestinian. The Israeli military called the strike a mistake.
That strike prompted an international outcry and the brief suspension of aid to Gaza by several aid groups, including WCK.
Another Palestinian WCK worker was killed in August by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike, the group said.
Another Israeli airstrike on Saturday hit a car near a food distribution point in Khan Younis, killing 13 people including children gathering to receive aid. Nasser hospital in Khan Younis received the bodies.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’ October 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 hostage.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in their count but say more than half the dead were women and children.
