Death on the road to Rafah: the night the IDF targeted World Central Kitchen aid workers

The Israeli army had helped plan the delivery of food aid on 1 April 2024, but things went wrong from the beginning and ended in seven deaths

• Exclusive: why seven international aid workers were killed in Israeli airstrike

On the evening of 1 April 2024, a team of aid workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK) stood on Gaza’s Mediterranean shore overseeing the unloading of a barge full of desperately needed food on a makeshift jetty made of sand and rubble.

The Gaza war had been raging for six months and Israel’s closure of land crossings had left the whole territory facing the threat of famine. WCK and local Palestinian contractors had constructed the jetty out of everything they could lay their hands on, including debris from the bombed house of one of the contractors, so that the pallets of humanitarian assistance could be delivered by boat from Cyprus.