02 April 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | Deir al Balah, Gaza
Following the offloading of a desperately needed 100+ tons of humanitarian aid into a Deir al Balah aid storage warehouse, a seven-person, three-vehicle World Central Kitchen convoy was traveling a deconflicted coastal road when the first Israeli army targeted strike hit one of their vehicles. As the surviving injured desperately scrambled into the two other vehicles in the convoy, occupation forces fired again, and again until each of the three clearly marked aid transports were destroyed and all seven foreign aid workers dead.
News began flashing across global media as World Central Kitchen confirmed the occupation forces’ precision attack on their volunteer aid workers of which included foreign nationals of the U.K.,Poland, Australia, a Canadian/American dual-citizen, as well as their Palestinian driver; 26 year old Seif Issam Abu Taha. They had been coordinating all movements on the ground with Israeli occupation forces, including the movement of their convoy from Deir al Balah which was almost immediately pursued and horrifically attacked again and again by the IOF to ensure the destruction in-totality of all life inside the three vehicles.
In a statement on its massacre of the aid workers’ convoy which was unarmed, emblazoned with the World Central Kitchen logo on all sides and on the top of their vehicle and posing no threat who had communicated this movement with the IOF, Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the “tragic mistake” which killed “innocent people” and stated that “such things happen in war.” The killings of clearly marked humanitarian aid workers has been a routine strategy of the IOF who has, to date, murdered 196 volunteers doing critical aid work on the ground in Gaza as genocide, famine and ethnic cleansing across the strip move unabated across the threshold into its seventh month.
World Central Kitchen, who had been serving over 10,000 life-sustaining meals in Gaza daily, have now ceased all operations in the area as occupation forces continue the daily murder of unarmed Palestinian civilians, journalists, medical staff and aid workers. A large portion of the humanitarian supplies shipment WCK volunteers were preparing to receive through established maritime aid channels is now headed back to Cyprus from where it shipped and was due to be supplied to Palestinians who are currently, and purposefully, being starved to death by Israeli forces.