Unlock the Publisher’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The Israeli army said on Friday that its soldiers made mistakes and violated operational procedures during an attack on an aid convoy this week that killed seven aid workers.
Officials said the attack on workers at World Central Kitchen, a major supplier of food to Gaza’s besieged population, came after Israeli forces mistakenly identified as a gunman one of the WCK staff members who he was carrying a bag.
The Israeli military said it fired two officers during the attack and formally reprimanded two others, including the commander of the Southern Command, for his overall responsibility in the incident.
The killings of the workers – including three Britons, an Australian, a Pole, a Palestinian and a US-Canadian citizen – triggered a wave of international condemnation.
They also renewed scrutiny over the conduct of Israeli forces in the Palestinian enclave, where aid groups have warned a famine is approaching.
Yoav Har-Even, a retired military officer who led an investigation, confirmed Friday that the WCK had correctly provided the Israeli army with advance information about its convoy and that the roofs of the vehicles were decorated with the WCK logo.
However, he said information about the convoy was not passed along the entire chain of command, while cameras on Israeli army drones could not see WCK logos at night.
Israeli forces killed aid workers in three attacks on WCK vehicles. The attacks targeted survivors of each previous attack until all members of the convoy were killed.
In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, US President Joe Biden, who has been the Jewish state’s staunchest ally in the war against Hamas, warned that continued US support will depend on adopting part of Israel of “specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of humanitarian workers”.
Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, said Tuesday that the Israeli attack on the WCK convoy was “not an isolated incident,” adding that at least 196 aid workers have been killed in Gaza and the occupied West . Bank since the beginning of the war in October.
“This is almost three times the death toll recorded in a single conflict in a year,” he said.
According to Har-Even, the WCK convoy left the pier in central Gaza, where marine aid was docked, at around 10pm local time on Monday before heading south along the Gaza coast.
At 10.20pm, the convoy was “joined” by three more vehicles, including a truck on which Israeli forces later identified an armed man. The military contacted WCK for information on what was happening but were unable to reach the convoy.
The convoy and other vehicles headed towards a hangar, where more armed men, who Israeli forces identified as belonging to Hamas, were seen.
At around 10.55pm the vehicles began to leave the hangar. A car with “two to four” armed men headed north, while three vehicles headed south. Har-Even said Israeli forces began preparing to target the vehicle after mistakenly identifying one of the WCK personnel as an armed man.
“The forces that conducted the attack did not know that they were hitting WCK vehicles,” Har-Even said. “They were convinced they were targeting Hamas agents in vehicles.”
At 11.09pm an Israeli drone hit the first car. When the survivors of the attack got out of the car and got into the second car, Israeli forces targeted that car too, at 11.11pm. After the survivors of the second attack boarded the third WCK car, Israeli forces struck that one too two minutes later.
Har-Even said this sequence of attacks was a “serious mistake” and a “violation of the Army’s standard operating procedures.”
He said the findings had been passed on to the military attorney general, who will now decide whether to open a criminal investigation.
According to Palestinian officials, the Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed around 33,000 people, as well as displacing 1.7 million residents of the enclave and reducing large swaths of the territory to rubble.
Last month the United Nations warned that 1.1 million people in Gaza face “catastrophic levels of food insecurity” and warned of a “shocking escalation” in the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition.
Israel launched its assault in response to a Hamas attack on the country on October 7, in which the militants killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage, according to Israeli officials.