The Israeli military likely had advance notice of the names and nationalities of each of the aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes while travelling in a three-car charity convoy in Gaza this week, according to humanitarian organisations.
As Anthony Albanese toughened his language over the killing of the Australian citizen Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, saying “this is against humanitarian law”, the aid sector stated the seven workers were there “with the full awareness” of the Israeli military.
The three vehicles, marked clearly as belonging to the charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), were struck by Israeli drones on Monday when they travelled along a route south of Deir al-Balah pre-approved and coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces.
The IDF chief of the general staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, has apologised for what he labelled “a grave mistake” that “followed a misidentification at night, during a war, in very complex conditions”.
He has yet to provide a detailed explanation about how this misidentification could have happened.
The chief executive of the Australian Council for International Development, Marc Purcell, told Guardian Australia it would be “extraordinary if the IDF” hadn’t known the “identities” of the workers “because they were there with the full awareness of the IDF”.
Purcell said “intense coordination and negotiation” routinely occurred with the IDF about “the movement of aid and who would be travelling”.
The communications director for the United Nations aid agency Unrwa, Juliette Touma, also shed light on the “intense” coordination that routinely occurred with Israeli authorities prior to aid deliveries. The process is known as “deconfliction”.
“Only when they give us the approval do we move – and before we move we provide the Israeli authorities with quite a lot of detail,” Touma told ABC Radio National.
“We include the names and nationalities of the team that is travelling on the convoy, the content of the convoy, the number of vehicles that we are sending on that convoy, the route of that convoy including GPS coordinates with the Israeli authorities.”
Guardian Australia on Wednesday asked WCK, the Israeli embassy in Canberra and the Australian government whether the names and nationalities of the convoy were notified to the IDF in advance of the attack. They have yet to respond.
WCK’s founder, the chef José Andrés, told Reuters the vehicles were travelling “in an area controlled by the IDF”, which had known that the team was “moving on that route with three cars”.
Andrés said he believed the charity was “targeted, deliberately, non-stop, until everybody was dead in this convoy”.
After the first car was attacked, people “were able to move in the second one” but that was then hit, too, Andrés told Reuters. Then people moved into the third vehicle.
“Then they hit the third one and we saw the consequences of that continuous targeting attack – seven people dead, but they are seven on top of a list of more than another 190 humanitarian workers that [have] been killed over the last six months,” he said, referring to figures compiled by the UN humanitarian office.
An Israeli government spokesperson, Avi Hyman, disputed those figures. He said the charity workers from WCK “were actually the good guys” and that made the fatal incident “all the more painful”.
“I mean, obviously, we know that this isn’t something that the IDF would do or the Israeli air force would do on purpose,” Hyman said.
Hyman was pressed by the ABC’s Sally Sara to explain why the IDF had struck the vehicles “when you had clear and direct information about the vehicles, their path and who was inside those vehicles, that these were aid workers”.
“It appears have been a grave, regrettable mistake, and we will do our utmost to look into it, to find out exactly what happened, and make sure that nothing like this happens again,” Hyman replied.
Hyman said war was “hell” and “foggy” and Hamas had previously used ambulances and aid work “as a cover for their activities”.
Albanese said on Thursday he “certainly” agreed with the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, that Israel’s explanations were insufficient and unacceptable.
The Australian prime minister hit back at the assertion by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that “this happens in wartime”.
“What isn’t good enough is the statements that have been made, including that this is ‘just a product of war’. This is against humanitarian law,” Albanese said.
The opposition’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Simon Birmingham, said it was a “tragic reality … that mistakes do happen in war”.
“I’m not going to leap to prejudge what should be a full and thorough investigation,” Birmingham told Sky News.
The deputy leader of the Greens, Mehreen Faruqi, said an independent body – such as the international criminal court – should investigate and the Australian government “must respond with actions, not words”.
“Israel’s targeting of a clearly identified convoy of aid workers is just one example of their attacks and undermining of aid agencies and workers,” she said.
