April 5, 2024 Israel-Gaza updates

Our live coverage of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza has moved here.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed concerns over reports of Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

“I am deeply troubled by reports that the Israeli military’s bombing campaign includes AI as a tool in the identification of targets, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties. AI should be used as a force for good to benefit the world; not to contribute to waging war on an industrial level, blurring accountability,” Guterres said in a post he shared on X late Friday.

His words come amid intensifying international scrutiny of Israel’s military campaign, after targeted airstrikes killed several foreign aid workers delivering food in the Palestinian enclave.

A recent investigation by online news publication +972 Magazine also revealed that Israel’s military has been using artificial intelligence to help identify bombing targets in Gaza, and cited Israeli intelligence officials who had been involved in the alleged program.

When asked about the allegations, a spokesperson for the Israeli military did not dispute the existence of the tool but denied AI was being used to identify suspected terrorists.

Salah al-Deen road south of the Erez border crossing on April 5.

Israel has authorized the Erez crossing to be temporarily reopened, but aid shipments are likely to face significant logistical challenges because of just how much destruction there is in northern Gaza, especially to the road infrastructure, according to a CNN analysis of recent satellite imagery.

For the border crossing to be truly functional, authorities or aid agencies will likely need to clear and repair northern Gaza’s roads or pave new ones, beyond the immediate crossing complex. 

Several roadways in the crossing complex were bombed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the weeks after the attack. The new satellite images from Maxar Technologies show that further destruction by bombing and bulldozing occurred after the IDF ground invasion began in late October.

Some major roadways in the four towns closest to the crossing — Beit Lahia, Jabalya, Izbat Beit Hanoun and Beit Hanoun — have large craters that span the entirety of their surface. Others, including many side streets, are covered in debris and the remains of large residential buildings. 

The Erez border crossing has been closed since Hamas militants stormed it – and took a number of prisoners from it – during the October 7 attack.

 Israel has yet to say when and what kind of aid it will allow through the crossing. It’s also unclear whether the DF will allow for aid distribution in northern Gaza, where they have been ordering all Palestinians to leave for months. 

Oxfam and the United Nations estimate that well over a million Palestinians fled the north to the South, and only about 300,000 Palestinians remain in northern Gaza despite those IDF orders.  

The American founder of a humanitarian aid organization assisting displaced people in Gaza said the situation for humanitarian workers in the enclave is “very unnerving” following the Israeli airstrike that killed seven World Central Kitchen staffers.

“To have that pit in your stomach of, ‘Am I going to be targeted because I am part of an aid organization, or because this whole deconfliction process isn’t working properly?’” said Arwa Damon, the founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance (INARA).

Damon, a former CNN correspondent, described the humanitarian situation as “inexplicably desperate” for the people of Gaza as organizations struggle to safely distribute aid. 

“The minute you are out of your vehicle and they see that you’re an aid organization, people swarm you because they have so little and they have zero faith as to whether or not aid is actually going to reach them. So it’s complete chaos,” said Damon, speaking from Rafah in southern Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a report Friday saying the deadly strike on the WCK aid convoy on Monday was carried out in “serious violation of the commands” and procedures, and “should not have happened.”

WCK responded saying the IDF “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza” and urged for systemic change. WCK also said the IDF acknowledged that the team ” followed all proper communications procedures,” but were attacked regardless. 

CNN’s Niamh Kennedy and Vasco Cotovio contributed reporting to this post.

The United States has warned Iran not to use the Israeli strike in Damascus earlier this week as “a pretext to attack US personnel and facilities,” a State Department spokesperson told CNN on Friday.

The warning was sent in response to a message from Iran, the spokesperson said, without providing details about the contents of the Iranian message.

“As Iran noted publicly, we received a message from them,” the spokesperson said. “We responded by warning Iran not to use this as a pretext to attack US personnel and facilities. We did not ‘ask.’” 

The spokesperson did not provide further information about the US response or how it was conveyed to Iran.

A senior administration official described the US’ warning to Iran as: “Don’t think about coming after us.”

That official told CNN that the US is on high alert and actively preparing for a “significant” attack by Iran that could come as soon as within the next week, targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Monday’s strike that killed top Iranian commanders.

People inspect the site where World Central Kitchen workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. The photo was taken on Tuesday, April 2, a day after the strike.

The US received Israel’s report on the deadly strike on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy in Gaza and is “reviewing it very carefully,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday.

There are “no plans” for the US to conduct an independent or separate investigation, according to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.

The Israel Defense Forces fired two of its officers and reprimanded others for their involvement in the strikes, but the WCK charity said Israel could not be trusted to investigate its own errors in Gaza.

Here are other headlines you should know:

US President Biden waves to the press before departing from the White House on April 5.

US President Joe Biden wrote letters to the President of Egypt and the Emir of Qatar on Friday on the state of hostage talks between Israel and Hamas. He asked the leaders to “secure commitments from Hamas to agree to and abide by a deal,” a senior administration official says. 

The letters come as hostage negotiations are set to resume in Egypt this weekend and will include US and Israeli officials. 

“This basic fact remains true: There would be a ceasefire in Gaza today had Hamas simply agreed to release this vulnerable category of hostages – the sick, wounded, elderly, and young women,” the official said. “Holding these innocent people is outrageous and a reminder as to how this war started in the first place. The onus is on Hamas to release the hostages and bring relief to the people of Gaza through a prolonged ceasefire.” 

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with the families of the hostages at the White House on Monday, the senior official added.

The status of hostage negotiations came up during Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. On the call, Biden “made clear that everything must be done to secure the release of hostages, including American citizens, now held by Hamas terrorists for nearly six months.” 

Biden and Netanyahu also discussed the importance of “fully empowering Israeli negotiators to reach a deal.” 

CIA Director William Burns, Israel’s Mossad Director David Barnea and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar will meet in Cairo this weekend, a source familiar with the talks and an Israeli government official source previously told CNN.

Rescue workers search in the rubble of a building a day after an air strike in Damascus on April 2, 2024.

The US is on high alert and actively preparing for a “significant” attack within the next week by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Monday’s Israeli strike in Damascus that killed top Iranian commanders, a senior administration official tells CNN.

Senior US officials currently believe that an attack by Iran is “inevitable” – a view shared by their Israeli counterparts, that official said.

The two governments are furiously working to get in position ahead of what is to come, as they anticipate that Iran’s attack could unfold in a number of different ways – and that both US and Israeli assets and personnel are at risk of being targeted.

A forthcoming Iranian attack was a major topic of discussion on President Joe Biden’s phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

As of Friday, the two governments did not know when or how Iran planned to strike back, the official said.

A direct strike on Israel by Iran is one of the worst-case scenarios that the Biden administration is bracing for, as it would guarantee rapid escalation of an already tumultuous situation in the Middle East.

Such a strike could lead to the Israel-Hamas war broadening into a wider, regional conflict – something Biden has long sought to avoid.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide speaks to the press after his arrival at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on April 4.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told CNN of the “frustration” felt within NATO that Israel is “going too far” in Gaza after this week’s attack on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy that killed seven aid workers.

“Yesterday I was together with most of my Western foreign minister colleagues at the NATO meeting in Brussels and I could really feel that the frustration, even among those who have been most supportive of Israel until now, is that this is really going too far,” he told CNN’s Isa Soares on Friday.

Israel’s internal report into the aid convoy strikes that was published Friday, “brought home to us how easy it is for the Israeli forces to fire at people they believe to be or think are terrorists on what seems to be not very convincing evidence, to put it mildly,” the foreign minister said.

“The only good thing about this tragic situation [is that] it seems that the level of critique and messaging from the entire world, including some of Israel’s closest allies, is now being stepped up, that you cannot continue to behave like this,” Barth Eide said. 

He went on to call for a ceasefire. “And from there on humanitarian aid and eventually a political solution,” the minister said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) completed a “highly complex mission” delivering medical aid to hospitals in northern Gaza on Thursday.

Despite “ongoing hostilities” in Gaza City, the supplies were delivered to around 1,000 patients at both Al Sahaba and Al Ahli hospitals, WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X Friday. 

Al Sahaba hospital also received one pallet of canned food, and a patient with complex lower limb injuries was successfully moved from Al Ahli to a field hospital in Rafah, Tedros said.

“On the way to the north, some medical supplies and food were self-distributed by desperate, starving communities,” Tedros added, but urged that more medical supplies and food are needed to serve “hundreds of patients.”

Tedros concluded by repeating calls for a “sustained and safe passage for humanitarian aid” and appealed for an immediate ceasefire.

Some context: The successful delivery of much-needed medical supplies follows several months of difficulty getting aid where it is needed most in Gaza. The UN agency reported that heavy bombardment, movement restrictions and interrupted communications were making it nearly impossible to deliver medical supplies regularly and safely.  

Medical aid relief teams were forced to call off repeated delivery missions in January after failing to receive security guarantees, WHO said at the time.

Israeli authorities denied 30% of humanitarian aid missions to northern Gaza in March, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.

The vehicle where employees from the World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli airstrike is seen in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on April 2.

The Israel Defense Forces findings on the deadly strike on World Central Kitchen aid workers were shared Thursday after the call between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a US official told CNN. 

Officials were also briefed from a number of other countries, including those that had nationals killed in the strike, the official said. They were shown IDF video of the strike during the briefing.

The US official echoed National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby’s comments, saying Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s remarks Friday were not calling for a separate investigation, but rather a reiteration of past comments about the probe that was already being worked on. The official, like Kirby, said the IDF report was not public, so Blinken could not speak to it yet.

World Central Kitchen has called for further independent investigations into the strike, saying Israel cannot be trusted to “investigate its own failure in Gaza.”

From top left, World Central Kitchen aid workers Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, Laizawmi "Zomi" Frankcom, Damian Soból, Jacob Flinkinger, John Chapman, James "Jim" Henderson and James Kirby were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Friday that there are “no plans” for the United States to conduct an independent or separate investigation into the Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen in Gaza.

Kirby made the comments as the White House looked to clarify Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s remarks earlier Friday calling for an “independent, thorough, and fully publicized investigation” into the strike. The White House said he was referring to the Israeli report on the strike that was later released.

“Secretary Blinken did refer to an independent investigation but that was before, he was referring to the one that they were working on. And he said that before Israel came out with a report that we are now examining,” Kirby told reporters on Friday. 

Before leaving Belgium and after the Israeli report on the strike had been released, Blinken added that the US is reviewing the report on the deadly strike “very carefully.”

“It’s very important that Israel is taking full responsibility for this incident. It’s also important that it appears to be taking steps to hold those responsible accountable,” Blinken said in remarks before departing Belgium.

World Central Kitchen has called for further independent investigations into the strike, saying Israel cannot be trusted to investigate its own errors in Gaza.

Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks with the media in New York City, on March 25.

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations has accused Israel of deliberately targeting the World Central Kitchen staff killed by a strike in Gaza this week.

“The killing of the aid workers from the World Central Kitchen is not an isolated incident,” the ambassador, Riyad Mansour, said at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday.

“Israel knew very well who it was targeting, hitting three cars in three locations, despite the fact that they were identifiable and had gotten coordinated with Israel,” Mansour added.

The ambassador said “it took the deaths of foreigners” for the international community to acknowledge the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza over the past 180 days. The strike killed one Palestinian, three Britons, a US-Canadian dual citizen, an Australian and a Pole, according to the organization.

Israeli report: On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces published a report into the killings, which it said violated its own protocols and should not have happened.

The report found that IDF forces “mistakenly assumed” there were Hamas gunmen traveling in the aid convoy and opened fire on the vehicles.

The WCK has called for further independent investigations, saying the IDF cannot be trusted to “investigate its own failure in Gaza.”

Read more about the IDF report.

John Kelly, the appointed US representative to the UN, highlighted the urgent need for the protection of humanitarian personnel in conflict zones in the wake of the Israeli drone strikes on a World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza.

“We are deeply concerned Israel has not done enough to protect humanitarian aid workers or civilians,” Kelly told a UN Security Council meeting Friday.

“An incident such as this should never have happened and must never happen again. We all know moreover, this was not a stand-alone incident,” Kelly added.

His comments come as Israel’s military fired two senior officers after a report released Friday concluded that the attack that killed seven food aid workers in Gaza was a result of “mistaken identification” and “serious violations” of standard procedure.

People look at memorabilia and pictures of hostages kidnapped by Hamas, displayed at a public square in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 31.

Hamas has turned down Israel’s latest counterproposal from earlier this week, a diplomat familiar with the discussions said.

“They refused and asserted it doesn’t include any reply to their asks,” the diplomat said. Hamas believes “that Israeli proposal includes nothing new so they see no need to change their proposal,” the official added.

Earlier this week an Israeli proposal had been sent to Hamas which the diplomat said did not accept two key Hamas demands: that there be unrestricted return of Gazans to the north and the pullback of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan on Thursday said their position has not changed since delivering these two key demands to mediators on March 14. Hamdan said the last round of talks held in Egypt this week have not yielded “any progress.”

The diplomat says Israel continued to insist that inspections of those moving north be allowed and that the IDF not redeploy away from central Gaza.

CIA Director William Burns, Israel’s Mossad Director David Barnea and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar will meet in Egypt this weekend to continue ceasefire talks, according to a source familiar with the talks and an Israeli government official source. Barnea, Bar and Burns met last month in Doha for talks with mediators, but no clear breakthrough was reached.

Hamas and Israel have for months failed to agree over a three-phased framework seeking the release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a six-week ceasefire, the release of Palestinian prisoners and an increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Mostafa Salem contributed reporting to this post.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock speaks to the media at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, Germany, on January 30.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock urged Israel’s government on Friday to “quickly implement” its plans to reopen the Erez land crossing and port of Ashdod to allow more aid into Gaza, saying there are “no more excuses.”

Both crossings are expected to reopen this weekend, CNN earlier reported. US President Joe Biden pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu to allow more aid into Gaza in a phone call on Thursday.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that while the Israeli government has admitted mistakes in the killing of seven aid workers earlier this week, there must be independent investigations and “meaningful” change on the ground.

In remarks delivered Friday in New York, Guterres said that “the essential problem is not who made the mistakes” in the killing of the World Central Kitchen staff, but the “military procedures in place that allow for those mistakes to multiply time and time again.”

Guterres also said that he was “deeply troubled” by reports that the Israeli military’s bombing campaign involved Artificial Intelligence as a tool in the identification of targets.

“No part of life and death decisions which impact entire families should be delegated to the cold calculation of algorithms. I have warned for many years of the dangers of weaponizing Artificial Intelligence and reducing the essential role of human agency. AI should be used as a force for good to benefit the world; not to contribute to waging war on an industrial level, blurring accountability,” the UN chief said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem, on February 18.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s week began with the chants of thousands of protesters demanding a hostage deal and early elections outside the Knesset and his official residence. It ended with a scolding from US President Joe Biden over the Israeli military’s killing of seven humanitarian aid workers and the rapidly spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

In between, the Israeli prime minister’s chief political rival and war cabinet member raised his voice in support of early elections for the first time, ratcheting up the political pressure. And yet, Netanyahu’s grip on power doesn’t appear to be in any imminent danger of slipping away.

Even as the walls appear to be closing in and a majority of Israelis continue to disapprove of Netanyahu’s performance, the mounting international and domestic political pressure has yet to fundamentally change the dynamics of his governing coalition – whose collapse would trigger new elections – nor his willingness to remain in office.

“I don’t think that there’s any leader in the world that faces so many fronts – has to cope with so many fronts – internal and external,” said Aviv Bushinsky, a former adviser to Netanyahu. “(But in Israel), we don’t talk about approval rating, we talk about the coalition.”

Read more about Netanyahu’s grip on power despite obstacles.

People inspect the damage caused by an artillery shell that hit the maternity hospital inside the Nasser Medical Complex, on December 17, in Khan Younis, Gaza.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has issued a warning about the grim situation pregnant women and mothers face in Gaza, amid the collapse of health care in the territory.

With nearly six months of ongoing conflict, these vulnerable groups are struggling to survive, confronting acute shortages of food, water, and medical care, along with the looming threat of famine.

According to the IRC since October 7:

Arvind Das, IRC’s team lead for the Gaza crisis, said women are now forced to give birth in makeshift conditions, among ruins or in overcrowded shelters, due to the unavailability of medical care. The shortage of electricity, medication, medical equipment, and personnel, compounded by Israeli restrictions on aid, has critically undermined healthcare delivery in Gaza, Das said.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken addresses a media conference after a joint EU-US-Armenia high-level meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on April 4.

The US received Israel’s report on the deadly strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza and is “reviewing it very carefully,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday.

“It’s very important that Israel is taking full responsibility for this incident. It’s also important that it appears to be taking steps to hold those responsible accountable,” he said in remarks before departing Belgium.

“We’ll be discussing its conclusions with Israeli officials and with humanitarian organizations in the days to come,” Blinken added. The top US diplomat noted that “even more important is making sure that steps are taken going forward to ensure that something like this can never happen again.”

Blinken earlier Friday called for an “independent, thorough, and fully publicized investigation” into the Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers. Blinken reiterated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated to President Joe Biden that Israel would be “making further changes to its procedures to make sure that those who are providing assistance to people who so desperately need it in Gaza are protected.” 

“So we’re going to be looking very carefully at what those steps are, how it achieves better deconfliction, better coordination, so that aid workers are protected,” he added.

Efrat Katz, kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

An Israeli hostage on October 7 was likely killed by fire from an Israeli combat helicopter that was firing at a vehicle with militants, an Israeli Air Force investigation has found.

Israeli Efrat Katz was likely killed when an Israeli helicopter struck the vehicle that the 67-year-old was in together with other hostages and militants. The Israeli military fired at the vehicle without knowing that hostages were in the vehicle alongside the militants, according to the Air Force investigation. The findings were presented to Katz’s family and the families of the hostages involved in the incident Friday.

Katz was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, southern Israel by militants from Gaza. Nir Oz is roughly 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the Gaza border. The investigation into her death was carried out by an air force team and was based on witness testimony and video footage. It was conducted alongside “in-depth examinations of all the combat incidents” on October 7.

“As a result of the fire, most of the terrorists manning the vehicle were killed, and most likely, Efrat Katz was killed as well,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Friday. The investigation found that the Israeli hostages in the vehicle “could not be distinguished by the existing surveillance systems, and the shooting was defined as shooting at a vehicle with terrorists.”

The IDF called the incident a “tragic and unfortunate event that took place in the midst of fighting and conditions of uncertainty.” The commander of the air force “did not find fault in the operation by the helicopter crew, who operated in compliance with the orders in a complex reality of war,” the IDF added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza on Monday, sparking international outrage.

On Friday, the IDF published a report into the killings, which it said violated its own protocols and should not have happened. The WCK has called for further independent investigations, saying the IDF cannot be trusted to “investigate its own failure in Gaza.”

Here’s what we know.

What the IDF said happened: The IDF has been trying to track down and kill Hamas militants in Gaza for nearly six months, and has long accused Hamas of embedding itself with civilians. It said its forces identified a gunman in an aid truck on Monday, and then identified an additional gunman.

“After the vehicles left the warehouse where the aid had been unloaded, one of the commanders mistakenly assumed the gunmen were located inside the accompanying vehicles and that these were Hamas terrorists,” it said.

The IDF said it did not identify the vehicles as belonging to WCK and so proceeded to target the three vehicles, leading to the deaths of the seven workers.

Separately, an IDF spokesperson told CNN that the unit responsible mistook “something slung over one of the passenger’s shoulders as a weapon,” when in fact it was a bag.

The official also confirmed that some of the aid workers who survived the first Israeli strike on their vehicle then fled to other vehicles, before being struck again.

The spokesperson said the surveillance drones could not see the WCK logo on the vehicles at night, and so are considering “distributing thermal stickers for aid vehicles” to prevent such attacks from happening again.

Who the IDF dismissed and punished: The IDF dismissed two senior officers over the strikes: The brigade fire support commander and the brigade chief of staff.

Others were formally reprimanded: The brigade commander and the 162nd Division commander. It said the strikes seriously violated the IDF’s Standard Operating Procedures and sent its condolences to the families of the victims and the WCK organization.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir criticized the decision to dismiss two military personnel over the deadly strike, saying it “is the abandonment of the soldiers in the middle of a war and a grave mistake that conveys weakness.”

How the WCK has responded: The WCK slammed Israel for not following its own protocols.

It said firing the officers was an “important step,” but warned, “without systemic change, there will be more military failures, more apologies and more grieving families.”

This post has been updated with additional reactions to the IDF report.

Palestinians stand next to a vehicle in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza, on April 2, where employees from the World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Some of the World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers who survived the first Israeli strike on their vehicle then fled to other vehicles, before being struck again, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson told CNN.

The IDF on Friday published its report into the strikes that killed seven WCK aid workers in Gaza this week.

An IDF spokesperson shared more details with CNN, confirming some of the aid workers in the first vehicle to be struck survived and fled to the next vehicle in the convoy.

The IDF said it targeted three vehicles in total, “leading to the deaths of seven innocent humanitarian workers.”

White House national security communications adviser John Kirby speaks during a press briefing at the White House, on April 4.

The White House will “reserve judgment” on Israel’s investigation into the strike that killed aid workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Gaza until it works through the report, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Friday.

“We’re going to work our way through that investigation ourselves and take a look and see what we think of their findings and their conclusions before we make any kind of judgment going forward,” Kirby told NBC. “We’ll reserve judgment until we have a chance to go through those findings.”

Israel dismissed two military officers as a just-released internal report finds “mistaken identification” and “errors in decision-making” led to the deadly attack on World Central Kitchen staff in Gaza on Monday.

President Joe Biden also “urged” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their Thursday phone call to attend hostage deal negotiations in Cairo this weekend. The US will participate in those “conversations” in Cairo, Kirby told ABC.

“Nothing’s changed about the president’s desire – an immediate ceasefire in exchange for getting those hostages out and for getting all that extra aid in. that’s what negotiators are meeting this weekend to talk about in Cairo,” Kirby said.

A view of the destroyed roof of a vehicle where employees from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza, on April 2.

The Israeli forces involved in the strikes in Gaza that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) staff earlier this week mistook a bag for a weapon, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN.

The IDF misidentified something slung over one of the passenger’s shoulders as a weapon. Israeli military officials now assess it was likely a bag, the spokesperson said.

In addition, the spokesperson added that surveillance drones could not see the WCK logo on the vehicles at night. The IDF is considering distributing thermal stickers for aid vehicles to prevent this in the future, he added.

The spokesperson confirmed that some of the aid workers in the first vehicle to be struck survived and fled to the next vehicle in the convoy after the first vehicle was struck.

CIA director William Burns attends a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, Washington D.C., on March 11.

CIA Director William Burns, Israel’s Mossad Director David Barnea and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar will meet in Egypt this weekend to continue ceasefire talks, according to a source familiar with the talks and an Israeli government official source.

Barnea, Bar and Burns met last month in Doha for talks with mediators, but no clear breakthrough was reached. US officials said although progress was made, talks have been “complex and slow.”

Hamas and Israel have for months failed to agree over a three-phased framework seeking the release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a six-week ceasefire, the release of Palestinian prisoners and an increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Among the unresolved issues is the return of displaced Gazans to their homes in the north; Hamas wants a larger number of people to return to their homes in northern Gaza than what Israel has proposed.

Hamas also wants a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Israel’s top political and military officials called Hamas’ demands “delusional” and stated that the elimination of the group remains the permanent goal of the Gaza offensive.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dismissed two senior officers and reprimanded others over the deadly strikes on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy that killed seven aid workers in Gaza this week.

The IDF on Friday published a report into the attack, saying the strikes violated its own procedures and should not have happened.

Two senior officers were dismissed: The brigade fire support commander, an officer with the rank of major, and the brigade chief of staff, an officer with the rank of colonel.

“Additionally, the brigade commander and the 162nd Division commander will be formally reprimanded,” the IDF said.

“The IDF Chief of Staff decided to formally reprimand the commander of the Southern Command for his overall responsibility for the incident.”

Members of the World Central Kitchen aid group transports the body of one of the staff members killed in an Israeli air strike out of the morgue of Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, Gaza, on April 3.

The World Central Kitchen (WCK) has criticized the Israeli military for not following its own procedures during strikes that killed seven of its aid workers in Gaza on Monday.

“The IDF’s own video fails to show any cause to fire on our personnel convoy, which carried no weapons and posed no threat,” WCK said in a statement after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published its own report into how the strike happened.

The IDF said it believed it was targeting Hamas operatives when they attacked and killed the aid workers in the WCK convoy, according to an internal inquest that led to the dismissal of two senior officers.

WCK acknowledged that Israel had taken “important steps” in dismissing the officers, but said the investigation showed that “deadly force” was used by the IDF “without regard to its own protocols.”

It called for an independent commission to be set up to investigate the killings further, saying: “The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza.”

People inspect the site where World Central Kitchen workers were killed in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on April 2.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its strike which killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers was carried out in “serious violation of the commands” and procedures, and “should not have happened.”

In a statement released Friday, the IDF detailed how the “grave incident” happened.

The IDF said its forces “identified a gunman on one of the aid trucks, following which they identified an additional gunman.”

“After the vehicles left the warehouse where the aid had been unloaded, one of the commanders mistakenly assumed that the gunmen were located inside the accompanying vehicles and that these were Hamas terrorists,” the report said. “The forces did not identify the vehicles in question as being associated with WCK.”

The IDF said its forces then targeted the three WCK vehicles based on “the misclassification of the event and misidentification of the vehicles as having Hamas operatives inside them.”

“The strike on the aid vehicles is a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the Standard Operating Procedures,” the IDF said.

Undercover Israeli border police killed a Palestinian man in the Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm in the northwest part of the occupied West Bank on Friday morning.

A police spokesperson said that undercover Border Police forces, working with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), had arrested three men suspected of “involvement in terrorist activities.”

“During the departure of the forces, riots began on the spot in which a terrorist was eliminated by the undercover force after he threw an explosive device in their direction,” the spokesperson said in a statement. 

In the early morning raid, Israeli forces entered the Nour Shams refugee camp from multiple directions and “besieged” a house in the Jabal al-Nasr neighborhood, sparking confrontations in which a young man was critically injured by Israeli gunfire, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

The man was rushed by ambulance to the Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital but was later pronounced dead, according to WAFA. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement that 31-year-old Sa’id Nazmi Khudair Al-Awawi was killed after being struck by Israeli fire in the Nour Shams camp.

The Israeli military believed they were targeting Hamas operatives when they attacked and killed seven food aid workers in Gaza on Monday, according to an internal inquest that led to the dismissal of two officers.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Friday that “those who approved the strike were convinced that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives,” calling the attack “a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification.”

Seven aid workers – three Britons, a Palestinian, a US-Canadian dual citizen, an Australian and a Pole – were killed in Monday’s strikes, setting off fury in those countries and sparking even greater scrutiny of Israel’s conduct in Gaza since it launched its war against Hamas in October.

WCK and the heads of many Western nations have called for an independent, third party investigation into the strikes, but Israel has committed only to the internal inquiry released Friday.

CNN’s Benjamin Brown contributed reporting.

Buildings destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in Gaza City on October 11.

The cost of damage to critical infrastructure in Gaza is estimated at around $18.5 billion, according to a report released Friday by the World Bank and United Nations.

The sum is equivalent to 97% of the combined GDP of the West Bank and Gaza from 2022, it added.

The assessment was based on data collected between October 2023 and January 2024. It found that every sector of the economy had been affected, with housing the hardest hit, accounting for 72% of the costs.

The report said 92% of primary roads have been destroyed or damaged, and that 75% of the population has been displaced.

“Catastrophic cumulative impacts on physical and mental health have hit women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities the hardest, with the youngest children anticipated to be facing life-long consequences to their development,” it warned.

Palestinian children wait to receive food distributed by charity organizations in Deir Al Balah, Gaza, on April 1.

The crossings set to be opened to allow aid to reach Gaza offer a “glimmer of hope” amid a humanitarian catastrophe, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said.

“Finally, we see a glimmer of hope in the opening of border crossings, and the use of the port of Ashdod for essential supplies for the people of Gaza,” it said in a statement Friday.

Israel’s security cabinet on Thursday approved the opening of the Erez crossing in the north of Gaza. CNN has reported that the first deliveries through the crossing are expected Sunday.

But NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland stressed Israel needed to show “tangible improvement in the situation for civilians on the ground.”

“The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached catastrophic levels, with nearly the entire population forcibly displaced and facing dire shortages of essential goods and services for survival,” Egeland said.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak looks on during a media visit to Harlow Police Station on February 16.

Pressure is mounting on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to suspend the sale of arms to Israel following the deadly attack on a convoy of aid workers in Gaza.

Calls for Sunak to stop supplying Israel with weapons grew after an Israeli airstrike on Monday killed seven members of staff from World Central Kitchen, three of whom were British citizens.

The government is still waiting for legal advice from its lawyers on whether or not selling arms to Israel is in breach of international law. Sunak is also under pressure to publish any legal advice he has been provided with on whether or not the Israeli government has breached international law through its actions in Gaza.

A recording emerged at the weekend of Alicia Kearns, who chairs the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, saying she is convinced the government has already received advice that Israel’s actions are illegal and has declined to publish it.

Following the leak, Kearns stood by the report and said in a statement: “I remain convinced the government has completed its updated assessment on whether Israel is demonstrating a commitment to international humanitarian law, and that it has concluded that Israel is not demonstrating this commitment, which is the legal determination it has to make.”

The governing Conservative Party is historically supportive of Israel, but the killing of British citizens has shifted the domestic debate.

Read McGee’s full analysis on calls for the UK to stop arms sales to Israel.

A view of the ID cards belonging to volunteers of the US-based international volunteer aid organization World Central Kitchen (WCK) who were killed in an Israeli attack in Rafah, Gaza, on April 3.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called for an independent investigation into the killing of World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers by an Israeli strike in Gaza earlier this week.

Speaking to reporters in Leuven, Belgium on Friday, Blinken paid tribute to the aid workers who were “performing heroic work under the most difficult circumstances.”

His remarks came ahead of the expected release of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) report into the incident, which has sparked fury among many of Israel’s allies.

Blinken said attacking an enemy like Hamas, which embeds itself within a civilian population, a “unique challenge,” but Israel nonetheless had a “responsibility to maximize protection for civilians.”

“That, too, is a critical test… We just can’t have so many people caught in that crossfire killed [and] injured going forward.”

Member of the United Nations Human Rights Council are on Friday debating a draft text calling for the total halt of weapons trade with Israel.

The draft calls for countries to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel,” in order to prevent further violations of international law.

The draft resolution is brought forward by Pakistan, on behalf of members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, with the exception of Albania.

The draft text does not mention Hamas by name but does condemn firing of missiles on Israeli civilians and demand the immediate release of all remaining hostages.

The UN Human Rights Council describes itself as “an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe.”

United Nations staff members inspect the carcass of a car used by aid group World Central Kitchen that was hit by an Israeli strike the previous day in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, on April 2.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, has dismissed Israel’s claims that the strikes that killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity in Gaza on Monday was a “regrettable incident,” saying aid workers have been targeted before.

“We do not accept it because what has happened to World Central Kitchen and MSF’s convoys and shelters is part of the same pattern of deliberate attacks on humanitarians, health workers, journalists, UN personnel, schools and homes,” Christopher Lockyear, Secretary General of MSF, wrote on X. 

WCK founder Jose Andreas accused Israel of “systematically” targeting his aid workers.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israeli forces “unintentionally struck innocent people.”

A general view of the Erez Crossing with the Gaza Strip in the background, as seen from southern Israel, on April 5.

The Erez crossing into northern Gaza is expected to receive the first humanitarian aid shipments into the enclave on Sunday, Israeli officials told CNN.

Israel’s security cabinet on Thursday approved reopening the crossing for the first time since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Aid shipments will also begin flowing into Ashdod port on Sunday, the officials said.

The security cabinet decision came amid ramped-up pressure from the United States and others in the wake of Israel’s deadly strikes on the World Central Kitchen convoy.

Some 100 Jordanian aid trucks are also set to travel directly from Jordan to Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south on Saturday, in another sign of increased efforts to get desperately needed aid into the strip.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is expected in the next hour to release the findings of its initial investigation into the deadly strikes on the World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy.

The strikes killed seven people on Monday and sparked international fury, further straining Western support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

In a Reuters interview, the celebrity chef Jose Andres – who founded WCK in 2010 – accused Israel of “systematically” targeting the seven aid workers.

The IDF has previously said that the strike was a “grave mistake” and that it did not intend to harm the workers.

Alicia Kearns MP attends the Conservative Party Conference at Manchester Central Convention Complex, Manchester, England, on Monday October 2.

The United Kingdom has “no choice” but to halt weapons sales to Israel, a Conservative Member of Parliament has said, amid an outcry over the killing of World Central Kitchen workers, including three British nationals, in Gaza by Israeli forces.

“I believe we have no choice but to suspend arm sales… UK arm export licenses require a recipient to comply with international humanitarian law,” Alicia Kearns, a Conservative Member of Parliament and Chair of the UK’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told BBC Radio 4 Friday.

Some 600 legal experts and lawyers signed an open letter to Sunak on Thursday asking the UK to stop selling arms to Israel, citing the risk of breaking international law.

In a phone call on Thursday, US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is unacceptable and warned Israel to take steps to address the crisis or face consequences.

Kearns said Biden’s phone call felt like a “tipping point” in the conflict, but told the BBC it is “devastating that it’s taken six months for us to get to a point where it appears that the international community is able to influence Israel’s perpetration of this war.”

Families of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who were killed in the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy complex in the Syrian capital Damascus, attend a funeral ceremony in Tehran, Iran, on April 4.

The funeral procession for victims of an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, earlier this week has begun in Tehran.

At least seven officials including Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and senior commander Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, were killed in the attack, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

At least six Syrian citizens were also killed, Iranian state television reported on Tuesday.

Iran and Syria accused Israel of authoring the attack, with Tehran warning of a “serious response.”

The Israeli military told CNN it does not comment on foreign reports. However, a military spokesperson said Israel believes the target struck was a “military building of Quds forces” — a unit of the IRGC responsible for foreign operations.

A view of Ashdod port after the Israeli cabinet approved the temporary use of the port for aid deliveries into Gaza, in Ashdod, Israel, on April 5.

The Israeli cabinet approved three measures to increase aid into Gaza, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Friday.

“Israel will enable temporary supplying of humanitarian assistance through Ashdod and Erez crossing, and an increase of the Jordanian assistance through Kerem Shalom crossing,” the statement said.

The announcement comes after an Israel official told CNN on Thursday that the security cabinet had approved the reopening of the Erez crossing and use of the port of Ashdod.

The Erez crossing, between Israel and northern Gaza, has been closed since the October 7 Hamas attack.

The White House on Thursday welcomed Israel’s decision to open the new entry points, saying the move came at the request of President Joe Biden following a call with Netanyahu.

The United Nations described the development as “positive news” but added it would “have to see how this is implemented.”

With previous reporting from CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, Nikki Carvajal and Caitlin Hu

From left, Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden.

US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a call Thursday that the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the deaths of aid workers due to Israeli strikes were “unacceptable.” Biden warned Israel to take steps to address the crisis or face consequences.

Hours after the call, Israel approved the reopening of the Erez crossing into Gaza, closed since the October 7 Hamas attacks, as well as the Port of Ashdod to allow more aid into the enclave, an Israeli official told CNN.

Speaker Mike Johnson is giving remarks in Washington DC, on March 21.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson criticized President Joe Biden following Biden’s warning to Israel to take steps to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza or face consequences.

“The president’s ultimatums should be going to Hamas, not Israel,” Johnson said in a post on X.

“Hamas resisted a ceasefire, brought about needless bloodshed, and refuses to release Israeli and American hostages. Biden should not undercut our ally amidst an existential threat by conditioning our support,” he continued.

U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden attend a reception in the East Room of the White House on March 18, in Washington, DC. 

When US President Joe Biden met with a group of Muslim community leaders this week, he recounted a recent conversation he had with First Lady Jill Biden relating to the conflict in Gaza, two participants have told CNN.

One of the attendees told the president that the decision to take part in the gathering had been a cause of concern for his wife, given the fierce backlash Joe Biden has drawn for his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, according to two people present at the meeting.

Those attendees tell CNN that Biden brought up his own wife and closest confidant.

“It’s got to stop,” he recounted the first lady had said to him recently, according to the recollection of Nahreen Ahmed, who was in the room.

Another participant, who declined to be named, told CNN they remembered the president saying that the first lady had used these words: “Stop it. Stop it now.”

While that attendee said they believed the suggestion was that the first lady was calling for the war to end, Ahmed said it was unclear to her whether the first lady’s comment was directed at the Israel-Hamas war at large, or the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza.

Asked about the president’s remarks, a White House official said there is “no daylight” between the couple on the issue, with both sharing outrage over civilian deaths. The official added that Jill Biden was not calling for Israel to end its efforts against Hamas.

The New York Times first reported on the president’s comments referencing the first lady.

Read more on this story here.

Palestinians stand next to a vehicle in Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, on Tuesday, April 2, where employees from the World Central Kitchenwere killed in an Israeli airstrike.

In his phone call with President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to his US counterpart that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were to blame for the deaths of the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers this week – and assured Biden that his government planned to announce measures to prevent such a mistake from happening again, according to a senior administration official.  

Netanyahu told Biden on Thursday that Israel was set on improving the tracking of non-profit workers inside Gaza and the US president affirmed that such steps were necessary, according to the official. 

The White House has previously said that the two leaders did not go into details of the investigation into the incident that killed the workers, including a dual American-Canadian citizen, which has drawn wide condemnation and angered the White House.

In a half-hour call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Joe Biden did not lay out the specifics of how he would consider shifting US policy if Israel doesn’t make changes in its handling of the war in Gaza, according to a senior administration official.

He instead spoke in the same broad strokes reflected in the White House readout of the call that concrete changes needed to be made, according to the official. 

“He made clear US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” the official statement said. But Biden didn’t outline specific threats or consequences for the Mideast ally if it did not make changes to improve the civilian and humanitarian situation in Gaza.  
Asked how Netanyahu responded, the senior US official tells CNN: “He understood.” 

Netanyahu pledged during the call that Israel will soon announce new openings of humanitarian crossings, as well as procedural changes to limit civilian harm, according to the official. 

Hours later, an Israeli official told CNN that the security cabinet has approved the reopening of the Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza.

While there were moments of disagreement between Biden and Netanyahu on the call — typical among the two leaders who have known each other for decades — there was no “sparring,” the official said, describing the conversation as “direct.” There is no follow-up call currently planned between the two leaders, the official says.

Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday that “everybody has failed” when it comes to securing the release of hostages held in Gaza, including their son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old American, was wounded and kidnapped by Hamas at an Israeli music festival.

“Our leaders, all of them, have failed to make this suffering on all sides stop,” Rachel Goldberg told CNN.

“We feel that we as parents have failed ‘cause, as a parent your job is to keep your children safe and, if they get into trouble, to save them,” she added.

It has been 181 days since Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped by Hamas. His parents wear a badge that is updated daily to represent the days since Hersh was taken into Gaza.

Jon Polin said he couldn’t help but feel that day 181 would become 281, 381, and even 581.

“We can’t allow that to happen, but world leaders don’t seem to have that sense of urgency,” Polin said.

Goldberg said she often feels she is not “living on the same planet as ‘normal’ people,” as she and her husband are constantly strategizing on how to best bring their son home.

A video of Goldberg-Polin being kidnapped, which his parents have seen, shows his left hand and part of his arm either blown or shot off.

When asked by Cooper if they had received any word about their son’s condition, Goldberg said there has been none, but there is an assumption, based on information from hostages who have been released, that Goldberg-Polin received medical treatment on October 7.

“The assumption is that he is alive,” Goldberg added.

Smoke rises from Gaza amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, March 17

Journalist Yuval Abraham produced an investigation by +972 Magazine into the Israeli military’s alleged use of artificial intelligence to help identify bombing targets in Gaza.

The AI-based tool called “Lavender” collects information on “almost everybody” in the Gaza Strip, Abraham said, adding that one source told him it’s nearly 90%. The machine is then meant to identify how probable the targeted individuals are connected to Hamas or Islamic Jihad military wings.

“This AI-based warfare, I think it’s completely dehumanizing. I think it allows militaries to bomb and maintain this aesthetics of international law, when in fact it’s not abiding by international law,” he said Thursday.

In the first few weeks of the war, his sources said they were not forced to apply “any thorough supervision over the results,” Abraham told CNN. “One source told me he would spend roughly 20 seconds before authorizing each target, and the only supervision he needed to do was check if the targets the machine marked was a male or a female.”

Abraham noted that the machine would sometimes mark individuals with either a loose connection to Hamas or none at all. The forces received “sweeping predetermined authorization” to kill between 15 and 20 Palestinian civilians per junior Hamas targets, he added. 

“After talking to all these Israeli intelligence officers, the general feeling that I got from them really is, trigger happy would be an understatement. They were using these systems in an almost automatic way and authorizing strikes that killed entire Palestinian families,” Abraham told CNN in an interview Thursday, adding that he believed the use of the AI system was “partially motivated by revenge.”

The Israel Defense Forces has repeatedly said it does not use AI for “designating persons as targets.” When asked about the +972 Magazine’s report, the IDF did not dispute the existence of the tool but denied AI was being used to identify suspected terrorists.

The Israeli military has temporarily suspended leave for its combat units, a day after announcing it would increase recruitment and call up air defense reserves.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday that the decision to pause leave was made following a “situational assessment.”

“The IDF is at war and the deployment of forces is under continuous assessment according to requirements,” the Israeli military said in a statement. 

Some context: On Wednesday, the IDF said it would increase recruitment and call up reservists for its air defense.

It comes as Iran has vowed to retaliate after it accused Israel of bombing its embassy complex in Syria on Monday, in a deadly escalation of regional tensions over the war in Gaza that once again appeared to raise the risk of a wider Middle Eastern conflict.

A child walks past a pile of household refuse as he transports objects, in a street in Gaza on March 28.

Gaza municipality warned on Thursday that diseases are spreading due to waste pile-up and sewage overflow as a result of Israel’s bombardment.

In a statement on X, Gaza municipality called on local and international institutions “to help improve the health and environmental conditions in Gaza and enable the municipality to provide services that the aggression has caused near complete paralysis in.”

Health officials in Gaza have been warning of the increasing threat of infectious diseases, as access to food and medicine remains impeded.

Gaza’s public health crisis: The United Nations, international aid agencies and non-governmental organizations have also been sounding the alarm about the catastrophic impact of poor sanitation and the health care system collapse in Gaza. 

Last month, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that “catastrophic healthcare conditions are impeding the disease management of thousands of chronically ill patients in Gaza.”

Displaced Palestinians are collecting food donated by a charity before an iftar meal, the breaking of the fast, on the twelfth day of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on March 22.

The plight of starving Palestinians in Gaza is worsening as Israel’s actions have deterred critical aid agencies and imposed severe constraints on essential humanitarian efforts in the enclave.

As famine looms and cases of death by starvation emerge, at least three aid providers are suspending operations in Gaza after Israeli airstrikes this week killed seven workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK), an aid group that was central to a much-touted new sea corridor from Cyprus. The killings, which included six foreign victims, caused an international uproar against Israel.

WCK and Anera, another aid group, have said they will pause operations in Gaza following the incident. The United Arab Emirates is reportedly also suspending operations.

Israel has taken responsibility for the killings, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Tuesday that Israeli forces had “unintentionally struck innocent people in the Gaza Strip.” Imagery of three destroyed vehicles analyzed by CNN however showed that the first vehicle was 2.4 kilometers (about 1.49 miles) apart from the third, indicating that they were hit by separate strikes.

“It is a huge blow to the humanitarian operation in Gaza,” said Juliette Touma, spokesperson at the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the principal aid agency in Gaza that has itself been sidelined by Israel.

Read more about the impacts the strike could have on aid across the region here.