Israel kills 7 World Central Kitchen staff in airstrike amid ongoing attacks on aid networks

Seven staff members of a United States organization working to provide food amid severe scarcity in Gaza were killed by an Occupation airstrike in the late hours of Monday evening, despite prior coordination with Israeli authorities about their location.

The World Central Kitchen (WCK) has been cooking and distributing meals across Gaza, taking on a larger role over recent weeks in coordinating aid delivered to the strip by sea as conditions have deteriorated over recent weeks due to targeted Israeli attacks.

Founded in 2010, the US non-profit, non-governmental organization provides food, training and support to earthquake survivors as well as survivors in areas of conflict.

WCK said on Tuesday that its team members were traveling in a “deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo” after leaving the organization’s warehouse in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid were unloaded after reaching the strip through the sea.

The vehicles were struck “despite coordinating movements with the IDF,” said WCK.

Those killed include at least one Palestinian driver for WCK, as well as foreign nationals from Poland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and a citizen with dual US-Canadian nationality.

The organization operates more than 60 kitchens in southern and central Gaza, WCK’s founder José Andrés said in a post on X hours before the targeting, adding that “hundreds of thousands of meals” are prepared on a daily basis for displaced Palestinians.

At least 40 percent of people in areas across the strip experienced acute food insecurity during February to March, according to specialized organizations.

“This is not only an attack against WCK — this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations, where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” said WCK CEO Erin Gore in the organization’s statement.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday that he had spoken with Andrés and “expressed the IDF's deepest condolences to the entire World Central Kitchen family.”

Hagari also expressed condolences to “our allied nations,” saying that the IDF is looking into “what happened and how it happened.”

Following the targeting of the WCK members, Gore announced that the organization will “pause” its operations in the region and that decisions will be made soon about their work.

The attack on WCK’s staff comes as the humanitarian situation in the strip is rapidly deteriorating. Concerns over famine in Gaza have been voiced by several humanitarian organizations over the past months, with the latest UN-backed report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warning that phase five famine, the severest classification for food scarcity, is already the case in northern and central Gaza and is on track to spread further by May this year.

The Occupation contested the report, describing it as containing “multiple factual and methodological flaws.”

Meanwhile, Israel has been ongoing in its obstruction of food aid delivery to Palestinians in the besieged strip. In a pattern of attacks over recent months, the Occupation military targeted aid warehouses, denied the entry of aid to areas in northern Gaza, killed Palestinians waiting for aid to be distributed in the strip, and killed individuals responsible for securing and overseeing the delivery and distribution of aid in targeted attacks.

With aid deliveries via the two land border crossings to Gaza hampered by extensive Israeli security checks, WCK, which was also working in Israel in October, began in March to send ships loaded with food, water and other supplies from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip via sea, with reports on Sunday announcing the arrival of the second shipment.