World Central Kitchen suspends work in Gaza after a vehicle is hit by an Israeli airstrike

An Israeli airstrike on a car in the southern Gaza Strip killed five people on Saturday, a senior Palestinian health official said. Three of them are believed to be employees of World Central Kitchen.

The US-based charity said it is pausing activities in the area as it tries to get more information.

Aid in the war-torn area was previously suspended last April after an Israeli attack killed seven of its workers, most of them foreigners.

“We are heartbroken to share that a vehicle carrying colleagues from World Central Kitchen was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza,” the charity said in its statement issued on Saturday.

The Israeli military said it had struck a wanted militant involved in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that sparked the war.

A later statement said the alleged attacker had collaborated with WCK and asked “senior officials of the international community and the WCK government for clarification” on how that had come about.

WCK said in its statement that it was not aware that anyone in the vehicle had ties to the Oct. 7 attacks.

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that three World Central Kitchen employees were killed in the strike in Khan Younis.

Violence in Gaza continues to rage even as there appears to be a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, despite sporadic episodes that have tested the country's vulnerability. Israel on Saturday attacked Hezbollah arms smuggling sites along Syria's border with Lebanon.

Hezbollah began attacking Israel the day after the October 7 attacks, in support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The fighting escalated in September, with massive Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon and an Israeli ground invasion in the south of the country.

An earlier attack on the WCK convoy left seven people dead

The attack on the vehicle in Gaza was the latest in what aid groups have described as the dangerous work of delivering aid in Gaza, where the war has created a humanitarian crisis that has affected much of the territory's 2.3 million residents. displaced people and caused widespread hunger.

World Central Kitchen provides freshly prepared meals to those in need after natural disasters or to those experiencing conflict. The teams have spread in Gaza and throughout Israel and Lebanon since the war began, often serving as a lifeline for people in Gaza struggling to feed themselves and their families.

Palestinian health official Muneer Alboursh confirmed the strike, and an aid worker in Gaza confirmed that three of the dead were WCK workers. The aid worker spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

At the Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, a woman held up an employee badge bearing the WCK logo, the word “contractor” and the name of a man reportedly killed in the strike. A pile of belongings — burned phones, a watch and stickers with the WCK logo — were scattered on the hospital floor.

Nazmi Ahmed said his cousin has been working for WCK for the past year. He said he drove to the charity's kitchens and warehouses.

“Today he went to work as usual… and was targeted without any prior warning and without any reason,” Ahmed said.

In April, an attack on a WCK aid convoy killed seven workers: three British nationals, Polish and Australian nationals, a Canadian-American dual national and a Palestinian. The Israeli military said the attack was a mistake.

LOOK | Israeli drone killed aid workers in April:

Israel says the slain aid worker was mistaken for a Hamas militant

Israel says it has fired two military officers and reprimanded others after an Israeli drone killed a group of aid workers in Gaza. It released details of how the drone strikes unfolded, with one of the aid workers mistaken for a Hamas militant. Critics say Israel is not doing enough to protect innocent lives.

The strike sparked international outrage and the suspension of aid to Gaza for a short period by several aid groups, including WCK. Another Palestinian WCK worker was killed by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike in August, the group said.

The war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, when militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 hostage, according to Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. They make no distinction between civilians and combatants in their count, but say more than half of the dead were women and children.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appears to be holding

Attempts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly failed. But the US-French-brokered deal for Lebanon appears set to hold after it came into effect on Wednesday. Yet Israel has accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire and Lebanon has accused Israel of the same.

On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had hit sites used to smuggle weapons from Syria to Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect, which the army called a violation of its terms. There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or activists monitoring the conflict in that country. Hezbollah did not immediately comment. Israeli aircraft have struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon several times since the ceasefire began, citing ceasefire violations.

The Israeli attack in Syria came as insurgents there pushed into the country's largest city, Aleppo, in a shock offensive that added new uncertainty to a region reeling from multiple wars.

The ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah calls for an initial two-month ceasefire, during which the militants must withdraw north of Lebanon's Litani River and Israeli forces must return to their side of the border.

Many Lebanese, some of the 1.2 million displaced in the conflict, flocked south to their homes despite warnings from the Israeli and Lebanese armies to stay away from certain areas.

Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire to address any alleged violation. Israel has made the return of tens of thousands of displaced Israelis a target of its war with Hezbollah, but Israelis, concerned that Hezbollah has not been deterred and could still attack northern communities, are anxious about their return home.