An Israeli airstrike Saturday on a car in the Gaza Strip killed five people, including employees of World Central Kitchen. The charity said it was "urgently seeking more details" after Israel's military said it targeted one of its workers who Israel said was part of the Hamas attack that sparked the war.
WCK said it was heartbroken and had no knowledge of any alleged ties to the October 7, 2023, attack. It said it was pausing operations in Gaza. It had suspended work earlier this year after an Israeli strike killed seven of its workers.
The Israeli military in a statement said the alleged October 7 attacker took part in the assault on the kibbutz of Nir Oz, and it asked "senior officials from the international community" and the WCK to clarify how he had come to work for the charity.
The family of the man named by Israel, Ahed Azmi Qdeih, rejected the allegations as "false accusations," and confirmed in a statement he had worked with the charity. Israel named him as Hazmi Kadih.
The strike highlighted the dangerous work of delivering aid in Gaza, where the war has displaced much of the 2.3 million population and caused widespread hunger.
In April, a strike on a WCK aid convoy killed seven workers — three British citizens, Polish and Australian nationals, a Canadian American dual national and a Palestinian. The Israeli military called it a mistake. Another Palestinian WCK worker was killed in August by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike, the group said.
A separate Israeli airstrike Saturday hit a car near a food distribution point in Khan Younis, killing 13 people, including children. Nasser hospital in Khan Younis received the bodies.
"They were distributing aid, vegetables, and we saw the missile landing," witness Rami Al-Sori said.
Save the Children said a local employee was killed in one of the Khan Younis airstrikes while returning from a mosque.
And the director of Kamal Adwan hospital reported a strike in Tal al Zaatar in Beit Lahiya in the north where Israeli forces are operating. He estimated based on witness accounts that more than 100 dead were under the rubble. He said the area remained inaccessible.
Hostage video released
On Saturday, Hamas released a video of Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander. Speaking under duress, Alexander referred to being held for 420 days and mentioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent $5 million offer for the hostages' return.
"The prime minister is supposed to protect his soldiers and citizens, and you abandoned us," Alexander said.
Netanyahu's office said that he spoke with Alexander's family after the release of the "brutal psychological warfare video" that held "an important and exciting sign of life."
"(Netanyahu) reassured me and promised that now, after reaching an arrangement in Lebanon, conditions are right to free you all and bring you home," Alexander's mother, Yael, told demonstrators in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening.
A statement from U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett called the hostage video "a cruel reminder of Hamas's terror against citizens of multiple countries, including our own."
"The war in Gaza would stop tomorrow and the suffering of Gazans would end immediately — and would have ended months ago — if Hamas agreed to release the hostages," it said.
Hamas militants sparked the war on October 7, 2023, when they attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and capturing about 250 hostages. Israel says Hamas is holding about 100 hostages, including about 35 the military says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who don't distinguish between civilians and combatants in their count but say over half the dead were women and children.
Ceasefire appears to hold
Efforts for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have faltered. But the U.S.- and France-brokered deal for Lebanon appears to be holding since Wednesday.
On Saturday, Israel's military said that it struck sites used to smuggle weapons from Syria to Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect. There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or Hezbollah. Israeli aircraft have struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon several times, citing truce violations.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel on October 8, 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, both of which have been as designated terror group by the United States, the U.K. and other Western countries.
More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel, over half of them civilians, as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.
