Israel strikes aid convoy organized by U.S. nonprofit, killing 4 Palestinians

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military fired a missile at the lead vehicle of an aid convoy in Gaza, killing four Palestinians, the convoy’s organizers said. The military said it struck after identifying weapons aboard one of the trucks, adding that the four Palestinians were armed and hadn’t been included in the coordinated travel plan. Advertisement In a separate statement, Anera said the Palestinians joined the convoy out of concern that the route ahead was dangerous, and were not viewed as a threat. The nonprofit added that Israel did not communicate its plans to strike the vehicle to Anera, and described the dead as “community members” with security experience. “According to all the information we have, this is a case of partners on the ground endeavoring to deliver aid successfully,” said Anera president and CEO Sean Carroll. In an earlier statement to The Washington Post, Anera said five people had been killed in Israel’s strike. In an email, Anera said its initial assessment of the death toll was based on a U.N. incident report. 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. Advertisement An Anera employee, Mousa Shawwa, a logistics coordinator in Gaza, was killed 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, died 10 days later from injuries suffered during the attack, he said. In remarks to the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, the U.S. representative, Robert Wood, referred to an incident that occurred Sunday, according to U.N. officials, in which he said the IDF fired toward a UNICEF vehicle. On Tuesday, at least 10 rounds 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.” Advertisement In the West Bank, the IDF said its forces killed Wesam Khazem, the head of Hamas activities in Jenin, in a brief firefight. The 28-year-old was the senior Hamas operative in the city, according to the IDF and people in Jenin familiar with Khazem’s role in the militant group. Israel said Khazem had played a direct role in multiple shooting and bomb attacks in the West Bank, and described him as one of the IDF’s top targets. Khazem’s uncle, Abu Nidal Al Khazem, said he had urged the young man to take his wife and two young daughters out of the West Bank earlier this year as IDF raids were intensifying. Both of Khazem’s parents are in Norway, the uncle said, and Khazem has a Norwegian passport. Advertisement “He is very much connected to the camp and to his cousins, they were very close to each other,” Abu Nidal al Khazem said. Khazem’s killing follows the death Thursday of another prominent Palestinian militant commander, Mohamed Jaber, also known as Abu Shuja’a. Jaber, 26, who headed the Tulkarm Battalion, an umbrella group led by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was killed when IDF forces raided the mosque where he was hiding in the Nur al-Shams camp. The IDF said Friday that Israeli forces have killed 20 people — whom they described as “terrorists” — in airstrikes and “exchanges of fire” since the incursion began early Tuesday in multiple West Bank locations, including sites in Jenin, Tulkarm and the al-Fara’a refugee camp. Advertisement In its largest actions in the Palestinian territory since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, hundreds of Israeli troops moved on the areas, sometimes with air cover. The IDF said it concluded operations in al-Fara’a on Thursday, while reports from Tulkarm’s two refugee camps said the scene was quiet. “Tens of thousands of people in four refugee camps have been impacted by this operation, including through destruction of public and private infrastructure,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, said in a tweet Friday. Here’s what to know The World Health Organization said Israel has agreed to successive “humanitarian pauses” in military operations in Gaza, beginning Sunday, to allow more than 640,000 children to be given oral polio vaccinations after an outbreak of the virus. The pauses, from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., will last for at least three days in three separate zones, beginning in central Gaza and then moving to the south and the north, according to the WHO. In her first major interview since she rose to the top of the Democratic ticket, she did not fully answer whether she would be open to withholding U.S. weapons shipments to Israel should she be elected president, instead pointing to her work with President Joe Biden to secure a cease-fire and hostage deal. At least 40,602 ​​people have been killed and 93,855 injured in Gaza since the war started, according to the Gaza Health Ministry on Thursday. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 339 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/30/anera-aid-convoy-israel-strike/