UPDATE – Bodies of foreign aid workers killed in Israeli attack in Gaza reach Egypt

UPDATES WITH DETAILS

By Halime Afra Aksoy

ISTANBUL (AA) – The bodies of World Central Kitchen (WCK) employees killed in an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip reached the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Wednesday, according to the Al-Qahera News television channel.

The international charity organization confirmed that seven of its humanitarian aid workers were killed Monday in an Israeli strike.

"The WCK team was traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle," it said in a statement.

Despite coordinating movements with the Israeli army, the charity said the convoy was hit as it was leaving the group's warehouse in the central city of Deir al-Balah, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on a maritime route.

"This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable," said CEO Erin Gore.

Gaza’s government media office said early Wednesday that the bodies of the aid workers had been handed over to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to be transported to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing.

The seven aid workers were nationals from Australia, Poland, the UK and Palestine, as well as a US-Canada dual citizen.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed around 1,200 people.

At least 32,975 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,577 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which last week asked it to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.

*Mohammad Sio in Istanbul contributed to this story