An Israeli airstrike on a humanitarian convoy in Gaza has raised fresh questions about the safety of aid operations, after the charity that organised the shipment said several transport workers were killed while the Israeli military said it was targeting armed assailants.
The convoy was arranged by the US-based NGO Anera and was carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah on Thursday evening. According to the charity, the route had been coordinated in advance with the Israel Defense Forces under the deconfliction process meant to protect humanitarian movements from attack.
Anera said the convoy reached its destination, but that several people travelling in the first vehicle were killed. The organisation’s Palestine country director, Sandra Rasheed, said the dead were employees of the transport company working with Anera, not Anera staff. One Anera employee was in the convoy and was unharmed, she said. The charity said it was still seeking more details about what had happened.
The IDF offered a different account. In a statement, it said “armed assailants” had seized control of the vehicle in the front of the convoy and were using it to lead the procession. The military said it then carried out a precise strike against that vehicle after verifying the threat. It added that the other vehicles were not damaged and that the aid reached its destination as planned.
What both sides agreed on is that the convoy had been cleared in advance, and that the strike happened despite that prior coordination. That fact alone underscores the fragility of the current system for protecting relief deliveries inside Gaza. Aid groups depend on coordination to move food, fuel and medicine through an active war zone, but those arrangements can unravel in seconds if a vehicle is misidentified, diverted or caught in a contested security situation.
The Anera case came only hours after a separate incident involving a World Food Programme vehicle clearly marked with UN insignia. The WFP said the armoured vehicle was struck by at least 10 bullets near an Israeli checkpoint at Wadi Gaza, prompting the agency to temporarily suspend movements of its staff around the territory. Cindy McCain, the head of the WFP, called the shooting unacceptable and said the deconfliction system was failing.
The aid convoy strike also follows earlier deadlier episodes in the war. In April, the IDF killed seven aid workers in a drone attack on a World Central Kitchen convoy and later said grave errors had been made by its officers. That incident intensified scrutiny of Israeli military conduct around humanitarian operations and raised the bar for any subsequent explanations offered after attacks on relief vehicles.
For Palestinians in Gaza, the immediate concern is not the argument over terminology but the practical result: food, medicine and fuel are still moving through a battlefield, and the people tasked with transporting them remain exposed. The latest strike suggests the mechanisms meant to keep that work safe are still failing under the strain of war.
