Seven foreign aid workers from World Central Kitchen have died in the Gaza Strip. Other aid organizations are not drawing any conclusions from this for the time being – but they say: the situation is dangerous.
The death of foreign aid workers in the Gaza Strip in an Israeli airstrike has sparked widespread international outrage. The aid organization World Central Kitchen (WCK) confirmed the deaths of seven of its employees. According to the organization, the victims came from Australia, Poland, Great Britain and the Palestinian territories – and one of the victims also had American and Canadian citizenship. Here you can read more about it.
World Central Kitchen wants to immediately stop its operations in the region in light of the fatal incident. A decision will be made soon about future work on site.
Other aid organizations operating in the Gaza Strip, such as the German Red Cross (DRK) and Unicef, are initially not drawing any conclusions from the incident. “This is not a new level of escalation,” said Christof Johnen, head of international cooperation at the German Red Cross (DRK), in an interview with t-online.
Previously only local workers were killed
“The incident shows how dangerous it is in Gaza and that there is no security, not even for humanitarian workers,” said Johnen. The Red Cross discusses every operation in advance with all parties to the conflict, but 15 employees of the partner organization the Palestinian Red Crescent have already been killed.
All of them were local workers who themselves came from Gaza. Johnen suspects that “the attention is greater now because these are international aid workers.”
Unicef spokeswoman Tess Ingram sees it similarly. She has recently been in Gaza to see for herself the situation there. Shortly after her arrival, she learned of the WCK employees who had been killed. “The fact that humanitarian workers were killed is simply shocking,” she said. The incident is representative of the 32,000 deaths that the conflict has already caused, including 174 UN employees.
The people in Gaza continue to need help
The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is repeatedly asked by Israel to move to certain areas. As a result, more and more people are in ever smaller spaces.
“Of course, distinguishing and separating military and civilian targets is incredibly difficult,” Johnen said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in a video message of a “tragic case of an accidental hit by our armed forces against innocent people in the Gaza Strip.”
According to Ingram, it is understandable that World Central Churches now want to stop their mission in Gaza, but it is a great loss for the civilian population. “World Central Kitchen is a substantial part of the food supply in Gaza that is now paused,” said the Unicef spokeswoman. This will exacerbate the already extreme food shortage in the area.
Humanitarian aid is still urgently needed. Aid has decreased by 70 percent while need has increased, Ingram said. “Humanitarian workers must be respected and protected,” demanded the Unicef spokeswoman.
