The Israeli Defense Forces reportedly launched three separate drone strikes on an aid convoy in the town of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip yesterday, killing seven World Central Kitchen aid workers.
“The Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in the Gaza Strip on Monday night was launched because of suspicion that a terrorist was travelling with the convoy.
An Israeli drone fired three missiles one after the other at a World Central Kitchen aid convoy, that left Monday night to escort an aid truck to a food warehouse in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, according to defense sources familiar with the details.
According to the defense sources, the cars were clearly marked on the roof and sides as belonging to the organization, but the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route that the convoy travelled identified an armed man on the truck and suspected that he was a terrorist.
Until the actions that preceded the strike, carried out by a Hermes 450 drone, were completed, the truck reached the warehouse with the World Central Kitchen's three cars, with seven volunteers in them – two dual-national Palestinians (U.S. and Canada) and five citizens of Australia, the UK, and Poland.
A few minutes later, the three cars left the warehouse without the truck, on which the ostensibly armed man was located. According to the defense sources, that armed man did not leave the warehouse. The cars traveled along a route preapproved and coordinated with the IDF.
At some point, when the convoy was driving along the approved route, the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route ordered the drone operators to attack one of the cars with a missile.
Some of the passengers were seen leaving the car after it was hit and switching to one of the other two cars. They continued to drive and even notified the people responsible that they were attacked, but, seconds later, another missile hit their car.
The third car in the convoy approached, and the passengers began to transfer to it the wounded who had survived the second strike – in order to get them out of danger. But then a third missile struck them. All seven World Central Kitchen volunteers were killed in the strike”. -Yaniv Kubovich, Haaretz
While the international community is expected to impose more punitive measures against Israel in the wake of the killing of seven aid workers in central Gaza, the U.S. government is reportedly finalizing the sale of $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to the Israeli armed forces despite growing calls to enforce Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits the United States from providing security assistance to any government “when it is made known to the President” that the country “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”.