Israeli forces have carried out at least eight strikes on humanitarian convoys and their facilities in Gaza since October, even after aid organisations provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
HRW said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not issue warnings to the aid organisations before the strikes, which killed or injured at least 31 people.
In one incident, on 1 April, seven aid workers were killed in drone strikes in the city of Deir al-Balah. Missiles hit a convoy of three World Central Kitchen (WCK) vehicles, two marked with the organisation’s logo on the roof and all carrying civilians. HRW said the convoy “was travelling a route that the organisation said they had agreed upon with the Israeli military”.
The IDF chief of general staff, Herzi Halevi, who attributed the strike to “misidentification”, said it “was not carried out with the intention of harming WCK aid workers” and called it a mistake that should not have happened.
On 9 December, the Israeli navy fired 20mm cannon rounds at an Unrwa guesthouse consisting of two buildings in Rafah, the UN relief agency told HRW.
The attack occurred late in the evening while 10 staff were asleep inside. The agency said it had shared the coordinates of the guesthouse with Israeli authorities on a regular basis before the attack, including on the date of the attack, and was not aware of any military targets in the area at the time. Unrwa told HRW it received no warning of the attack.
In a third incident, on 8 January, an Israeli projectile pierced the side of a building in which more than 100 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff and their families were sheltering in Khan Younis. The five-year-old daughter of an MSF worker was killed and four people were injured.
HRW said MSF had told it that its staff saw no military targets in the area and received no warning of the attack.
HRW detailed a further five attacks: on an MSF convoy on 18 November, a guesthouse for workers from the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine on 18 January, an Unrwa convoy on 5 February, an MSF guesthouse on 20 February, and a home sheltering an American Near East Refugee Aid employee on 8 March.
The report comes as a UN vehicle on Monday came under fire in Rafah, resulting in the death of a member of the organisation’s Department of Safety and Security and the injury of another as they were travelling to the European hospital in the embattled city.
A spokesperson for the UN said the secretary general, António Guterres, was “deeply saddened” and “condemns all attacks on UN personnel and calls for a full investigation”.
HRW said that in every case in the report aid groups had provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities .
Belkis Wille, a director at HRW, said: “On one hand Israel is blocking access to critical life-saving humanitarian provisions, and on the other attacking convoys that are delivering some of the small amount that they are allowing in. Israeli forces should immediately end their attacks on aid organisations, and there should be accountability for these crimes.”
HRW said Israel had not responded to a letter sent on 1 May requesting specific information about the attacks documented in the report. The IDF did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.
A senior employee from one of the organisations whose guesthouse was attacked told HRW: “I can’t risk sending more staff into Gaza because I cannot rely on deconfliction as a way of keeping them safe.”
He said this was a key factor in limiting the organisation’s ability to provide medical services. “You can build docks and send shipments, but without a safe operating environment you will have a pile-up of shipments that people aren’t able to deploy safely to help people.”
More than 34,500 Palestinians have died during the Israeli offensive, which has caused massive destruction of housing, hospitals, mosques and schools. The war began on 7 October when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people.
The UN has reported that 254 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October. Unrwa personnel account for 188 of these fatalities. According to Unrwa, 169 of its facilities have been affected by the hostilities and at least 429 displaced people have been killed in its shelters.
“These attacks are having a chilling effect on efforts to provide life-saving aid in Gaza,” the HRW report concluded.
Attacks perpetrated by Israeli forces against aid groups have elicited widespread condemnation, including from leaders of countries whose citizens were killed in the strikes.
After the deaths of seven aid workers from WCK, Joe Biden led a chorus of international anger over the attack and urged Benjamin Netanyahu to take immediate actions to protect civilians and allow food aid into Gaza, or else he would reduce American support for the military campaign against Hamas.
Biden described the incident and the overall situation faced by civilians in Gaza as “unacceptable”, and it marked the first diplomatic crisis between the two countries since the beginning of the war.
As a result of the international pressure to explain the circumstances of the attack, early in April an IDF colonel and major were sacked after an internal investigation into the deaths of the WCK workers.
• This article was amended on 14 May 2024. Due to information provided, a previous version said that 254 UN aid workers had been killed in Gaza. The figure refers to all aid workers, not only UN.
