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Israel strikes aid convoy organized by U.S. humanitarian group, killing 5
The Anera convoy was carrying medical supplies and fuel to a hospital in Rafah, and its route was coordinated in advance with the IDF.August 30, 2024 at 6:54 a.m. EDT
The Israeli military fired a missile killing five people in the lead vehicle of an aid convoy organized by a U.S.-based humanitarian group, which it claimed had been hijacked by militants.
The D.C.-based nonprofit, American Near East Refugee Aid, known as Anera, described it as a “shocking incident” in a statement on Friday and said that those killed were from a local transportation company. It was urgently seeking more details about the incident.
The convoy had been delivering medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah, Palestine Country Director Sandra Rasheed said in the statement to The Washington Post, and its route was coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces.
“The convoy included an Anera employee who was fortunately unharmed,” she added.
The deadly strike in southern Gaza on Thursday comes just days after a World Food Program truck was fired on in the enclave and amid an increasingly strained environment in which humanitarian organizations are operating.
In its account of the incident, the IDF said the gunmen had seized the lead vehicle of the convoy, prompting the attack.
“During the convoy’s journey, armed militants took control of a vehicle at the front of the convoy,” the IDF said. “An attack was carried out against them. No other vehicles in the convoy were harmed, and it reached its destination as planned.”
The IDF said the “attack on the militants removed the threat to the humanitarian convoy,” adding that “the presence of armed militants within a humanitarian convoy without coordination is against regulations, complicates the security of the convoys and their personnel, and thus undermines the humanitarian effort in Gaza.”
Humanitarian groups providing desperately needed aid in Gaza have repeatedly come under attack during the war, raising concerns about the system used to coordinate routes and the IDF’s approach to the conflict. According to the United Nations, more than 280 humanitarian workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in October.
Seven World Central Kitchen aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in April, making global headlines. Israeli forces at the time also believed, incorrectly, that militants were present in the convoy.
An Anera employee, Mousa Shawwa, a logistics coordinator in Gaza, was killed on March 8 by an Israeli airstrike while he was in a deconflicted shelter, the charity’s CEO Sean Carroll told The Washington Post at the time. The relief worker’s 6-year-old son, Karim, also died 10 days later from injuries suffered during the attack, he said.
Thursday’s incident is one of several such attacks this week. In remarks to the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, the U.S. representative, Robert Wood, referred to an incident that occurred on Sunday, according to U.N. officials, in which he said the IDF fired toward a UNICEF vehicle.
On Tuesday, at least 10 bullets were fired into a World Food Program vehicle, which the United Nations blamed on Israel and prompted WFP to temporarily suspend staff movement across Gaza. Wood said the Biden administration was “deeply alarmed” by Tuesday’s shooting and urged Israel to “immediately rectify the issues within their system that allowed this to happen.”
Mercy Corps vice president of global policy and advocacy, Kate Phillips-Barrasso, said in a statement that Tuesday’s attack “underscores the dangerous reality that aid workers are not safe in Gaza.”
This week, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs known said in an update that almost 90 percent of Gaza’s population has been placed under evacuation orders from Israel’s military, squeezing Palestinians into overcrowded areas “lacking critical infrastructure and basic services.” OCHA added that “delivering fuel and medical supplies to health facilities is extremely challenging in the context of repeated evacuation orders.”
Palestine Red Crescent Society responders retrieve the body of a man found dead at the Nur a-Shams refugee camp during an IDF operation in Tulkarm in the northern West Bank on Thursday. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
