A senior adviser for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called claims that an Israeli strike on World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza was intentional “absurd,” after the organization’s founder said the deadly attack was targeted.
Seven WCK aid workers were killed during an Israel Defense Forces attack in central Gaza Monday night while traveling in a three-vehicle caravan branded with the WCK logo, the food relief organization said. The team had coordinated its movements with the IDF but was hit as it was leaving a warehouse after helping unload more than 100 tons of humanitarian aid, WCK said.
In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, WCK founder Jose Andres claimed that Israel targeted his aid workers “systematically, car by car.”
Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser, Ophir Falk, pushed back against claims that the attack on the WCK-branded vehicles was intentional.
“That’s absurd,” Falk told ABC News on Wednesday. “The last thing we would want in the world is to endanger civilian lives.”
Falk said the seven workers died due to “friendly fire in the middle of the night” and called the deaths a “tragic event.”
“This war is a complex war,” he said. “The incident happened in the middle of the night. It should not have happened. And we’ll do everything possible that it doesn’t happen again.”