This handout picture released by the Israeli army on 23 August 2024 reportedly shows Israeli forces during an operation to dismantle a tunnel in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. (Israeli Army / AFP)
- An Israeli airstrike targeted an aid convoy bound for a
Gaza hospital, resulting in four Palestinian deaths. - The convoy was organised by the US-based aid group Anera,
which refutes Israel’s claims that the individuals killed were “armed
assailants.” - The convoy was
delivering food and fuel to the Emirati Red Crescent Hospital in Rafah,
southern Gaza.
An Israeli air strike on an aid convoy carrying food and
fuel to a Gaza hospital killed four Palestinians on Thursday, US-based aid
group Anera said as Israel claimed they were “armed assailants,”
which the group denied.
The four Palestinians were in the lead vehicle of an Anera
aid convoy bound for the Emirati Red Crescent Hospital in Rafah in southern
Gaza, the aid group said in a statement on Friday.
Soon after the convoy left the Israel-controlled Kerem
Shalom crossing into Gaza, four Palestinians from the community “took
control of the leading vehicle, citing concern that the route was unsafe and at
risk of being looted,” Anera said. “Israeli authorities allege that
the lead car was carrying numerous weapons. Every initial report from those at
the scene indicate that no weapons were present,” the organisation said.
A plan agreed with Israeli authorities called for unarmed
security guards in the convoy. The four had not been vetted nor coordinated
with Israeli authorities, but the convoy did not perceive them as a threat,
Anera said.
Anera said there was no warning or communication before the
Israeli airstrike. No Anera staff were injured. After the four were killed, the
rest of the convoy delivered the aid, it said.
In a statement quoted by multiple media outlets, the Israel
Defense Forces said: “A number of armed assailants seized control of the
vehicle in the front of the convoy… and began to lead it.”
“After the takeover and further verification that a
precise strike on the armed assailants’ vehicle could be carried out, a strike
was conducted,” the IDF said.
The Israeli military and the Israeli embassy in Washington
could not immediately be reached for further comment.
Aid and humanitarian organizations have been hit previously
in Israel’s Gaza war. In April, three Israeli strikes hit a convoy of aid
vehicles, killing seven World Central Kitchen staff. The United Nations World
Food Programme said this week that one of its vehicles was hit by 10 bullets
near an Israeli military checkpoint.
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The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian
conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked
Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli
tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave
has since killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the local health
ministry. Nearly the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been displaced
and the enclave has a hunger crisis. Israel faces genocide allegations at the
World Court that it denies.
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