Every day, volunteers risk their lives in relief efforts in Gaza.
On Monday, seven associated with the World Central Kitchen were killed, targeted by an Israeli military drone hovering above their three-car convoy.
Because the process requires coordination with Israel’s military, they were aware of World Central Kitchen’s movements that night, the charity said.
Military experts say the convoy was struck by small, “highly precise” munitions in the dark of the night.
The aid workers had just left a warehouse in Deir al Balah, a city in the central Gaza Strip, where they had unloaded food ferried across the Mediterranean from Cyprus.
By day’s end, they had unloaded about one-third of the 332 tons that had arrived earlier.
Reports say the volunteers — primarily Westerners — were jubilant over the aid. It felt like Christmas.
Members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, another humanitarian organization, responded to Monday’s attack. When they arrived, they found the three vehicles destroyed, along with the victims’ bodies. Papers identifying their affiliation with World Central Kitchen lay charred and scattered about along with their passports. Poland. The United States. Australia. The United Kingdom.
Spanish chef José Andrés founded the U.S.-based World Central Kitchen, delivering millions of meals.
After Monday’s attack, Andrés suspended the nonprofit’s relief efforts there and sent three ships loaded with hundreds of tons of food back to port in Cyprus.
Other volunteer organizations are following suit. The risk is too great.
So far, 196 volunteers have died in their efforts to help the hundreds of thousands caught in the six-month war between Israel and Hamas.
Unless a permanent ceasefire is called, more are on the horizon.
Half of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are facing “catastrophic food insecurity,” according to the United Nations. In the north, hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.
Over the course of the conflict Israel’s President Binyamin Netanyahu has refused to order the Israeli army to distribute aid in Gaza itself, preferring to allow volunteers assume the risk.
