US wants to Israel to wrap up investigation into killing of charity aid workers 'as soon as possible'

By Iclal Turan

WASHINGTON (AA) - The US on Wednesday said it wants to see an Israeli investigation on the killing of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in the Gaza Strip finished as quickly as possible.

“The Israelis have said to us and they've said publicly that they intend to conduct this investigation swiftly. We want to see it wrapped up as soon as possible,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

Miller said the US wants to see Israel put measures in place to prevent such incidents from happening again.

“They need to put in place better deconfliction and better coordination measures to protect humanitarian workers and to protect all the civilians on the ground,” he said.

“And it is something that we have consistently said to them over the past few months that they need to improve their deconfliction measures and they need to improve their coordination measures,” he added.

WCK said seven of its humanitarian aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The workers were nationals of Australia, Poland, the UK, Palestine, as well as US-Canadian dual citizens.

Despite coordinating movements with the Israeli army, the humanitarian organization said the convoy was hit as it was leaving a warehouse in the southern Gaza 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.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the attack as “tragic,” and said it was “unintentional” and pledged an independent inquiry.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas, which killed less than 1,200 people.

Nearly 33,000 Palestinians have been killed and 75,577 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.