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Ismael Abu Dayyah/AP
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s military says its investigation into airstrikes Tuesday that killed seven aid workers in Gaza, concluded that the strikes were carried out “in serious violation” of military operating procedures, and that senior military officers would be dismissed and reprimanded.
The deadly Israeli strikes on a three-car convoy of the food charity World Central Kitchen — running one of the most prominent aid operations in Gaza to address a dire shortage of food — mark the first time international aid workers, including one U.S. citizen, have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s ongoing offensive.
The incident marks a turning point in the war, with President Biden saying he would condition U.S. policy in Gaza on Israel taking steps to protect civilians and aid workers.
In a briefing to journalists, the Israeli military said it had coordinated the aid group’s movements, but that the aid operation had not been communicated down the chain of command to the soldiers on the ground who carried out the strikes.
It said soldiers identified two gunmen near the trucks as workers were unloading aid in the World Central Kitchen warehouse but that the military did not open fire on them because they were in an aid warehouse.
When a three-car convoy left the warehouse, soldiers thought a man entering a vehicle was carrying a rifle which was subsequently identified as a backpack, a military spokesman said.
Israel’s aerial surveillance cameras could not identify World Central Kitchen’s logos on the roofs of the vehicles because it was nighttime, past 10 p.m., the military said.
Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
A commander “mistakenly assumed that the gunmen were located inside the accompanying vehicles and that these were Hamas terrorists,” the military said in a written statement Friday. “The forces did not identify the vehicles in question as being associated with WCK.”
The military did not explain how soldiers initially held their fire because the vehicles were unloading at an aid warehouse, but then did not identify the departing convoy as belonging to the aid group.
The statement said two officers were dismissed over the incident, the brigade fire support commander – a major, and the brigade chief of staff – a reserve colonel. Two others will be formally reprimanded, the brigade and division commanders. The statement did not identify those officers by rank. None was named in that statement.
The statement added that the military chief of staff also formally reprimanded the commander of Israel’s Southern Command “for his overall responsibility for the incident.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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