Tel Aviv:

Israel said Friday it was targeting a “Hamas gunman” when it killed in Gaza seven aid workers whose deaths caused an international outcry, with its military admitting a series of “grave mistakes” and violations of its own rules of engagement.

The victims — an Australian, Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole — were killed in three air strikes over four minutes by an Israeli drone as they ran for their lives between their three vehicles, the military said.

Poland’s foreign ministry said it still cannot understand how such an incident could have occurred. It demanded a “criminal inquiry” into Monday’s events.

The drone team who killed the aid workers made an “operational misjudgement of the situation” after spotting a suspected Hamas gunman shooting from the top of one of the aid trucks they were escorting, an internal Israeli military inquiry found.

The two brigade officers who ordered the strikes, a colonel and a major, are being fired.

Senior Israeli officers showed reporters clips from drone footage of what they said was a “Hamas operative” joining the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy. 

Although the roofs of the three aid workers’ vehicles were emblazoned with large WCK logos, retired Israeli general Yoav Har-Even, who is leading the investigation, said the drone’s camera could not see them in the dark.

“This was a key factor in the chain of events,” he said.

The aid group has said its team was travelling in a “de-conflicted” area in a convoy of “two armoured cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle” at the time of the strike.

“Despite coordinating movements with the (Israeli army), the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route,” WCK said.

The army said aid was moved at night to avoid the potential of deadly stampedes by hungry Gazans.

The aid workers’ deaths “outraged” US President Joe Biden who demanded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu order steps toward an “immediate ceasefire” in a tense telephone call late Thursday.

Israel later said it would allow “temporary” aid deliveries into northern Gaza, where the United Nations has warned of imminent famine.

Har-Even admitted that “the three air strikes were in violation of standard operating procedures”. 

But he argued that “the state of mind” of the Israeli drone commanders “was that they were striking cars that had been seized by Hamas” after they confused a bag for a gun.

The aid workers were killed after they had overseen the unloading of a ship carrying 300 tonnes of food aid from Cyprus to a warehouse inland.

But as they drove south at 11:09 pm on April 1 the drone “struck one car, and identified people running out of the car and entering the second car,” said General Har-Even. 

“They decided to hit it, which was against standard operating procedures. Then they struck the third car,” he said.

Asked by AFP, the general was not able to explain what happened to the “Hamas gunman”.

“It is a tragedy. It is a serious mistake that we are responsible for,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters. “A mega event… that shouldn’t have happened. We will make sure it won’t happen again.”

Har-Even said it was a breakdown in communication and coordination about the convoy in the chain of military command which may have led to the strikes.

He said that WCK had provided all the information necessary, but it was not passed down. 

“The biggest mistake was that (the drone team) didn’t have the coordination plan,” he said. “Their belief was the vehicles were Hamas based on operational misjudgement and misclassification.” 

The general briefed WFK founder, Spanish-born celebrity chef Jose Andres, early Friday before information on the circumstances of the strikes were released. Andres had called the attack a “targeted Israeli strike” on his staff.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war erupted with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign, aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed at least 33,091 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

Major international aid groups warned Thursday it was now almost impossible to work in Gaza, as one accused countries supplying arms to Israel of being complicit in what “amounts to genocide”.

Isabelle Defourny, president of Doctors Without Borders NGO, spoke out about the risk of genocide as 13 major humanitarian groups blasted Israel for restricting aid getting into the Gaza Strip.

The killing of seven aid workers from the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) by Israeli air strikes Monday has sparked an outcry.

US President Joe Biden said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the attack.

But Defourny, president of MSF France, said the United States, Britain, France and other nations were “morally and politically complicit with what to our eyes amounts to genocide” by providing military support to Israel.

The aid groups also demanded that Israel abandon its plans to launch a ground offensive on Rafah in the south of Gaza, where well over one million civilians are sheltering.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war erupted with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians,  according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign, aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed at least 33,037 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

– ‘Absolute horror’ –

While WCK has suspended its operations in Gaza, none of the 13 groups including Oxfam and Save the Children who made the joint call said they were pulling out.

Defourny, who said MSF had lost five of its 300 staff in Gaza, said the killing of the seven WCK employees was no surprise.

She said the “conditions today to deliver humanitarian assistance are not there (in Gaza).

“Because for the last six months we have witnessed the choices which Israel makes in waging war on an entire population, a population that is trapped, deprived of food and massively bombed.

“Gaza is progressively being made unfit for human life,” she added, it “has passed the threshold of absolute horror”.

Defourny said the International Court of Justice ordered “measures to prevent a genocide” in January and again last week.

But “Israel has so far done the exact opposite, continuing to block humanitarian aid and destroy vital civilian infrastructure as illustrated by the attack on WCK and the Al-Shifa hospital destruction”, she added.

Israel has fiercely pushed back against accusations it is blocking aid, alleging instead that humanitarian groups have failed to distribute it.

In war-torn Gaza, where vast areas have been reduced to rubble, 2.4 million Palestinians have been under bombardment for six months while enduring dire shortages of food, water, fuel and other basic supplies.

After the ICJ’s January ruling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the charge against Israel “is not only false, it’s outrageous, and decent people everywhere should reject it”.

– ‘War against civilians’ –

The charity Oxfam said that people in starving northern Gaza have been forced to survive on an average of 245 calories a day — less than a can of beans, and a fraction of the recommended average daily 2,100 calorie intake per person.

Scott Paul of Oxfam said almost half of people in the north are actually “living on less”.

“Is it any wonder that there is either an imminent famine or a famine that is actually taking place” there, he added.

The charities called for an immediate ceasefire, saying Israel and the countries supplying it with arms “have the obligation (in international law) to protect populations from atrocity crimes”.

Doctor Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American paediatric intensive care doctor, who has been working in Gaza hospitals, said “everybody’s a target” in Gaza.

“Evidence on the ground does not suggest that this is a war against Hamas, but a war against civilians.

“When you are in the operating theatre, you do not see Hamas, you see entire families wiped off the civil registry.

“I saw (in theatre) direct sniper shooting of children in the head and elderly people.”

She said she noticed a “consistent pattern of targeting particular groups (by Israeli forces) — health care workers, press and humanitarian aid workers.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)