US defence secretary rebukes Israel over killing of aid workers in Gaza

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US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has rebuked Israel over the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza, warning it highlighted the dangers of Israel’s intention to attack the town of Rafah, where more than 1mn civilians are sheltering.

The Pentagon description of Wednesday’s call between Austin and his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant said that the deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers “reinforced the expressed concern over a potential Israeli military operation in Rafah, specifically focusing on the need to ensure the evacuation of Palestinian civilians and the flow of humanitarian aid”.

Israel has faced widespread international condemnation over the deaths of the humanitarian workers, with US President Joe Biden saying he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the killings. Israel has described it as a “tragic incident”, which was “unintentional”.

One of the victims was a dual US-Canadian citizen, while the others were British, Polish, Australian and Palestinian.

Austin is the first senior western official to make a connection between the strike on the WCK convoy and Israel’s plans to attack Rafah, despite US and UN pleas not to mount a major offensive on the town.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel can’t achieve its goal of eliminating Hamas unless it tackles the four remaining Hamas battalions believed to be in Rafah. He has told his military to draw up a “combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions”.

But US and UN officials have warned that a major offensive in the south Gazan town would be a “disaster”. More than 1mn people are sheltering in often abject conditions in Rafah, having been forced from their homes in other parts of the enclave by Israeli military action.

A Pentagon statement said that in his call with Gallant, Austin “expressed his outrage” at the Israeli strike on the WCK convoy, placing it in the context of “repeated co-ordination failures with foreign aid groups”.

He “stressed the need to immediately take concrete steps to protect aid workers and Palestinian civilians in Gaza” and urged Gallant to conduct a “swift and transparent investigation” and to “hold those responsible to account”.

He also said the “tragedy makes it more difficult to flood the zone with humanitarian assistance, as Israeli officials have stated they seek to do”. He called for a rapid increase of aid into Gaza, particularly to communities in the north of the strip “that are at risk of famine”.

The WCK workers were killed when their convoy was hit shortly after they oversaw the unloading of 100 tonnes of food brought to Gaza by sea. José Andrés, the celebrity chef who founded and runs WCK, told Reuters in an interview that the Israeli attack had targeted them “systematically, car by car”.

He said WCK had clear communication with the Israeli military, which he said knew his aid workers’ movements. “This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place,” Andres said. 

“Even if we were not in co-ordination with the (Israel Defense Forces), no democratic country and no military can be targeting civilians and humanitarians,” he added. 

According to an Israeli statement, Gallant expressed “sorrow and condolences” to all those affected by the strike, and “emphasised his commitment to working closely with partner countries and organisations to facilitate the distribution of humanitarian aid”.

He assured Austin that Israel was conducting a “thorough and transparent investigation” into the strike, and said “lessons will be implemented by the defence establishment”.

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas militants stormed into Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage, according to Israeli officials. 

Israeli’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 32,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, as well as displacing about 1.7mn of the enclave’s 2.3mn population. Israeli bombardments have rendered huge swaths of the enclave uninhabitable.

A number of international aid agencies, including American Near East Refugee Aid or Anera, have joined WCK in suspending their humanitarian operations in Gaza in the wake of the Israeli strike. 

The pullback is a further blow to Gaza’s 2.2mn people, who have relied solely on aid for more than six months in conditions that humanitarian organisations describe as catastrophic.