Rip sea route
Spanish NGO working with WCK stops using sea route to Gaza
NGO Open Arms said it and US charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) are suspending attempts to get aid to Gaza via sea after seven WCK workers were killed in an Israeli air raid on Monday.
The two charities had worked together in launching a maritime corridor of humanitarian aid to Gaza from Cyprus in March and had just completed unloading about a third of the shipped cargo when the convoy of WCK workers was attacked on April 1.
“This attack, perpetrated by the [Israeli military] last Monday, marks a painful turning point in our efforts to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Open Arms said in a written statement.
“With the arrival yesterday of the Open Arms ship in Larnaca, Cyprus, the mission in alliance with WCK in the humanitarian corridor to the Gaza Strip is suspended,” Open Arms said.
It quoted Open Arms director Oscar Camps calling Gaza a “dystopian laboratory where people’s blood flows while war technologies are tested and perfected, directed by increasingly automated algorithms that allow all human responsibility to be diluted, using technology and trivializing evil.”
“Now states are rushing to extend their condolences to the families, but they are not showing the same rush to stop the shipment of weapons to this laboratory of destruction,” Camps said.
“How much more humanity must be lost in this genocide?”
US approved more weapons to Israel on the same day of WCK attack: Report
The United States approved the transfer of more than 1,000 MK82 500-pound bombs, more than 1,000 small-diameter bombs, and fuses for MK80 bombs on April 1 – the same day Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed seven aid workers from the charity group World Central Kitchen, three US officials told The Washington Post.
Congress granted authorisation for their transfer several years before the start of the war on October 7, the sources told the Post. But the US government has the power to suspend arms packages any time before delivery and it has not done so in this case, added the report.
US President Joe Biden is said to be “outraged and heartbroken” by the killing of the humanitarian workers, though he has drawn criticism for failing to turn his rage into concrete action to change Israel’s war conduct in Gaza.
MSF dismisses Israeli claim aid worker killings were a ‘regrettable incident’
“We do not accept it because what has happened to World Central Kitchen and MSF’s convoys and shelters is part of the same pattern of deliberate attacks on humanitarians, health workers, journalists, UN personnel, schools and homes”, Christopher Lockyear, secretary-general of MSF International, said at a news conference in Geneva.
He added, “We have been saying it for weeks now: this pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence.”
He said the killings of the World Central Kitchen workers showed that measures to ease the conflict were futile “in a war fought with no rules”.
“Our movements and locations are shared, coordinated and identified already. This is about impunity, a total disregard for the laws of war. And now it must become about accountability.”
“I have received no explanation for any of the incidents,” Lockyear said.
Israeli strike targets rescue team, killing four
At least four people, including a paramedic, have been killed in an Israeli air strike that hit a rescue team in Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza, a health official says.
The emergency director at Kamal Adwan Hospital, Fares Afaneh, said the attack targeted a medical team rescuing injured people. He identified one of the victims as Hussein Matar.
“Our crew moved to rescue [people] wounded by Israeli shelling, and upon its arrival, it was subjected to another bombardment. Our crew was bombed while working,” Afaneh said.
Videos obtained by Al Jazeera show injured people arriving at the hospital.
“These are Biden and America missiles that target medical staff, children, women and those safe in their homes,” Afaneh added.
The Elders group urges nations to stop arms sales to Israel
All states providing arms to Israel must suspend arms transfers, The Elders said in a statement, in response to “systematic violations” of international humanitarian law in Gaza and across the occupied West Bank.
Members of The Elders, a group founded by South Africa’s Nelson Mandela in 2007, have included global leaders such as Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu, working for peace and human rights.
“Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian assistance into Gaza is unlawful and is causing unprecedented levels of catastrophic hunger, with famine in northern Gaza now imminent,” the group said.
It added that the US, as Israel’s closest ally and its biggest arms provider, should be leading the way.
“We are deeply concerned that the [US] Biden administration continues to approve arms transfers, appearing to accept Israel’s assurances on compliance with its legal obligations as credible, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,” read the statement from The Elders.
