World Central Kitchen said on Sunday it would resume operations in Gaza with a local team of Palestinian aid workers nearly a month after the Israeli military killed seven of the organisation’s staff in drone strikes on their convoy.
The charity’s chief executive officer, Erin Gore, said on Sunday in a statement:
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire. We are restarting our operation with the same energy, dignity, and focus on feeding as many people as possible.”
The WCK will continue to deliver as much food as possible to Gaza, including northern Gaza, by land, air or sea, he added. Gore also said:
“We have 276 trucks, with the equivalent of almost 8 million meals, ready to enter through the Rafah crossing. We’ll also send trucks from Jordan. We’re exploring the maritime corridor and utilising the Ashdod Port. In addition to 68 community kitchens, we’re building a third high production kitchen in Mawasi (the other two are in Rafah and Deir al-Balah).”
The Israeli attack on 1 April killed seven aid workers – three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national, a dual US and Canadian citizen and a Palestinian.
It drew sharp worldwide condemnation and calls for accountability, with many, The Israeli military said the attack was a “grave mistake” and cited a series of failures, including communication breakdowns and breaches of military operational procedures.
The Washington-based aid group said it was still calling for an independent international investigation into the 1 April attack and that it had received “no concrete assurances” that the Israeli military’s operational procedures had changed.
Israel launched a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip after an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on 7 October that killed about 1,200 people. Since then, more than 34,400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured amid widespread destruction and severe shortages of basic necessities.
According to the UN, more than six months into Israel’s war, vast swathes of Gaza lie in ruins, with 85 per cent of the enclave’s population displaced amid a brutal blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel is accused of genocide in the UN International Court of Justice. An interim judgement issued in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop the genocide and take measures to guarantee humanitarian aid to the civilian population of Gaza.
