Aid Workers Killed in Strike on Gaza

A food aid organization said an Israeli strike killed several of its workers in the besieged Gaza Strip on Monday, with the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory reporting that four of them were foreigners.
"Today, World Central Kitchen lost several of its sisters and brothers in an Israeli army strike in Gaza," said the NGO's founder, chef Jose Andres.
World Central Kitchen, a US-headquartered organization, called the incident a "tragedy" and reiterated that "humanitarian aid workers and civilians should never be a target", AFP said.
According to the health ministry in Gaza, the bodies of four foreign aid workers and their Palestinian driver were brought to a hospital in the town of Deir el-Balah after an Israeli strike targeted their vehicle.
Hamas said the aid workers included "British, Australian and Polish nationalities, with the fourth nationality not known".
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed one of his country's citizens, volunteer Zomi Frankcom, was among those killed.
World Central Kitchen is one of two international NGOs spearheading efforts to deliver aid to Gaza by boat from Cyprus.
It is also involved in the construction of a temporary jetty in the coastal territory.
At the Al-Aqsa Hospital, an AFP correspondent saw five bodies with three foreign passports lying nearby.
"We are heartbroken and deeply troubled by the strike that... killed @WCKitchen aid workers in Gaza," White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson posted on social media platform X.
"Humanitarian aid workers must be protected as they deliver aid that is desperately needed, and we urge Israel to swiftly investigate what happened."
The Israeli military said it was "conducting a thorough review at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident".
Israel has come under immense pressure to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the strip after six months of war and stark warnings from the United Nations about the dire levels of hunger stalking all 2.4 million Gazans.
A UN-backed report warned on March 19 that half of Gazans were feeling "catastrophic" hunger and projected imminent famine in the territory's north.
Near-total blockade
Since Hamas's October 7 attacks triggered the war, Gaza has been under a near-complete blockade, with the United Nations accusing Israel of preventing deliveries of humanitarian aid.
The world's top court has ordered Israel to "ensure urgent humanitarian assistance" in Gaza without delay, saying "famine is setting in".
Foreign powers have ramped up deliveries by air and sea, although UN agencies and charities warn this falls far short of what is desperately needed, with trucks still the most efficient way of delivering aid.
The airdrops have also proved deadly in some cases, leading to chaotic stampedes for food.
After the UN-backed report last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was the first time an entire population had been classified at severe levels of "acute" food insecurity.
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war erupted with Hamas's unprecedented October attack, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel's retaliatory campaign, aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed at least 32,845 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the ministry said 70 people had been killed across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours.
Al-Shifa hospital in ruins
On Monday, the Israeli army pulled out of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after an intensive, two-week military operation against Hamas transformed the territory's largest medical complex into charred ruins.
"There are more terrorists in the hospital than patients or medical staff," Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said, adding that 900 people had been apprehended at the sprawling complex, with over 500 of them "definitely" militants.
A spokesman for Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli forces had killed about 300 people in and around the hospital during the two-week operation.
"People trapped in Al-Shifa hospital died of hunger. Some drank water from bathroom drains," Palestinian Anwar el Jondi said.
Medics carting patients and bodies from the destroyed site had to maneuver stretchers between mounds of rubble.
Several doctors and civilians at the damaged complex told AFP that at least 20 bodies had been found, some of which appeared to have been driven over by military vehicles.
An AFP correspondent saw one badly decomposed body bearing tyre marks, although it was not known when it was driven over.
'Dangerous lie'
The Israeli military said Monday that 600 soldiers had been killed since the start of the war.
During their attack on Israel, Hamas also seized around 250 hostages. Israel believes about 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 presumed dead.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under rising pressure from the families of hostages as well as anti-government protesters, whose nightly rallies have drawn thousands onto the streets.
The war in Gaza has raised fears of a wider regional conflagration, with repeated violence linked to the conflict in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
Those fears intensified on Monday with strikes in Damascus on the consular annex of Israel's arch-foe Iran, according to Damascus and Tehran.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor based in Britain, said 11 people were killed.
Israel did not comment, but Iran's foreign minister blamed the United States for the attack.
"The Americans must take responsibility," Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, according to state news agency IRNA.
The UN Security Council will on Tuesday hold a public meeting, requested by Russia, on the strike, according to Russian representative Dmitry Polyansky.

Israeli troops battled Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza and destroyed tunnels and other infrastructure, as they sought to suppress small militant units that have continued to hit troops with mortar fire, the military said on Friday.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said troops had killed around 100 Palestinian fighters since Israeli troops began their latest operation in Khan Younis on Monday, which continued as pressure mounted for a deal to halt the fighting.

It said seven small units that had been firing mortars at the troops were hit in an air strike, while further south, in Rafah, four fighters were also killed in air strikes.

The Islamic Jihad armed wing said it fired rockets toward the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and other Israeli towns near Gaza. No casualties were reported, the Israeli ambulance service said.

The continued fighting, more than nine months since the start of Israel's invasion of Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack, underlined the difficulty the IDF has had in eliminating fighters who have reverted to a form of guerrilla warfare in the ruins of the coastal strip.

A Telegram channel operated by the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main militant groups in Gaza, said fighters had been waging fierce battles with Israeli troops east of Khan Younis with machine guns, mortars and anti-tank weapons.

Medics said at least six Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes in eastern Khan Younis.

US PRESSURE

US President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, both urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a proposed ceasefire deal as soon as possible.

However there has been no clear sign of movement in talks to end the fighting and bring home some 115 Israeli and foreign hostages still being held in Gaza. Public statements from Israel and Hamas appear to indicate that serious differences remain between the two sides.

Local residents contacted by messenger app, said Israeli tanks had pushed into three towns to the east of Khan Younis, Bani Suhaila, Al-Zanna and Al-Karara and blew up several houses in some residential districts.

The military said air force jets hit around 45 targets, including tunnels and two launch pads from which rockets were fired into Beersheba in southern Israel.

Even while the fighting continued around Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, in the northern part of the enclave, Israeli tanks pushed into the Tel Al-Hawa suburb west of Gaza city, residents said.

A Hamas Telegram channel said fighters targeted an Israeli tank in Tal Al-Hawa and shot an Israeli soldier.

Medics said two Palestinians were also killed in an air strike in western Gaza city.

More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish between fighters and non-combatants.

Israeli officials estimate that some 14,000 fighters from armed groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have been killed or taken prisoner, out of a force they estimated to number more than 25,000 at the start of the war.

Aid Workers Killed in Strike on Gaza