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Israel's Chief of General Staff Herzl Halevi: "That shouldn't have happened"
Photo: Israel Defense Forces / REUTERS
Six men, one woman, all on behalf of the aid organization World Central Kitchen (WCK) in the Gaza Strip, all now dead. The employees died in an Israeli air strike, and there is great international outrage. Now Israeli Chief of General Staff Herzl Halevi has expressed regret over the tragedy and described the airstrike as a "serious mistake."
»The attack was not carried out with the intention of harming the WCK helpers. It was a mistake that followed a misidentification - at night during a war under very complex conditions. “That shouldn’t have happened,” Halevi said in a video statement on Wednesday night. This was revealed by a preliminary investigation. He did not give further details. "This incident was a serious mistake," Halevi said.
Condolences “from the bottom of my heart”
An independent committee will thoroughly investigate the incident and "conclude it in the next few days," the Israeli chief of staff continued. The army will learn from the conclusions "and implement them immediately," said Halevi. The army shares “from the bottom of our hearts” the grief of the relatives and the aid organization.
World Central Kitchen had confirmed the deaths of its seven employees in the Gaza Strip the day before.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in a video message of a "tragic case of an accidental hit by our armed forces against innocent people in the Gaza Strip." The incident is being investigated and everything will be done to ensure that something like this does not happen again.
The attack also exacerbated tensions between Israel and its actual supporter, Washington: US President Joe Biden wrote in a statement that he was “outraged and heartbroken.” The United States has repeatedly called on Israel to decouple military operations against the Islamist Hamas from humanitarian operations in order to avoid civilian casualties.
mrc/dpa