The Israeli military has killed a charity worker employed by the World Central Kitchen in Gaza, saying the person targeted in the attack was a Hamas militant involved in the 7 October attacks.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that three employees of World Central Kitchen were killed when an Israeli strike targeted a civilian vehicle in southern Gaza.
The Israeli military did not offer any evidence and Reuters could not independently verify the man’s identity or whether he took part in the attack on Israel last year.
Responding to the attacks, World Central Kitchen released a statement saying it was “heartbroken” to learn of the charity worker’s death, adding that it will be pausing its operations in Gaza.
“Our hearts are with our colleagues and their families in this unimaginable moment,” a statement on X read. The charity claimed it had no knowledge that the victim in the vehicle had links to the attacks on October 7.
Hamas has not responded. Medics in the territory said five people were killed in the strike, which they said targeted a vehicle east of Khan Younis.
At Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, a woman allegedly held up an employee badge bearing the WCK logo, the word “contractor” and the name of one of the men said to have been killed in the strike. A heap of belongings – burnt phones, a watch and stickers with the WCK logo – lay on the hospital floor.
In a later attack in Khan Younis, medics said at least nine Palestinians were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a car near a crowd receiving flour. They said it was a vehicle used by security personnel tasked with overseeing aid deliveries into Gaza.
An Israeli strike in April on a WCK convoy killed seven of its workers, most of them foreigners. The Israeli military said that was a mistake.
The Israeli military rejects allegations that it deliberately targets civilians in its Gaza campaign, accusing Hamas of operating from civilian facilities and using civilians as shields, which the group denies.
Overall, at least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across the territory overnight and into Saturday, Gaza medics said. Among those, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City, according to a statement from the Gaza Civil Defense and Wafa early on Saturday.
News of the attack came after an Israeli aircraft struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites along Syria’s border with Lebanon, testing a fragile, days-old ceasefire that halted months of fighting in Lebanon.
Israel said it hit sites used to smuggle weapons from Syria to Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect, which the military said was a violation of its terms.
There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or activists monitoring the conflict in that country. Hezbollah also did not immediately comment. Israeli aircraft have struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, citing ceasefire violations, several times since the truce began on Wednesday.
The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah does not address the war in Gaza, where fighting rages on.
The truce between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, brokered by the US and France, calls for an initial two-month ceasefire in which the militants are to withdraw north of Lebanon’s Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border.
The repeated bursts of violence – with no reports of serious casualties – reflected the uneasy nature of the ceasefire that has otherwise appeared to hold. While Israel has accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire, Lebanon has also accused Israel of the same in the days since it took effect.
Many of the 1.2 million people in Lebanon displaced by the conflict have been returning south to their homes, despite warnings by the Israeli and Lebanese militaries to stay away from certain areas.