String of Israeli errors led to fatal attack on aid convoy, military says

TEL AVIV, Israel — A series of Israeli failures, including a breakdown in communication and violations of the military’s own rules of engagement, led to the deadly airstrikes that killed seven humanitarian aid workers in the Gaza Strip this week, senior Israeli military officials said Friday.

The military officials said the officers who ordered the strikes on the aid convoy had violated the army’s protocols, in part by opening fire on the basis of insufficient and erroneous evidence that a passenger in one of the cars was armed.

The attack prompted a wave of international outrage and renewed questions about whether Israeli forces on the ground in Gaza properly vet targets before unleashing deadly force. Israel has come under increasing pressure over the high civilian death toll in its six-month war in Gaza. The strikes on the aid workers prompted President Joe Biden for the first time to say he would leverage U.S. aid to influence the conduct of the war against Hamas.

On Friday, the Israeli military announced that two officers — a reserve colonel and a major — would be dismissed from their positions. Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, had also decided to formally reprimand the head of Israel’s southern command, as well as two other senior officers, the military said in a statement.

The military said the “grave mistake” had stemmed from “a serious failure due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the standard operating procedures.”

“It’s a tragedy,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesperson, told reporters in a briefing Thursday night. “It’s a serious event that we’re responsible for, and it shouldn’t have happened.”

World Central Kitchen, the relief group whose aid workers were killed, called the Israeli military’s statements “cold comfort” and reiterated its call for an independent inquiry. The aid organization’s operations — which have distributed millions of meals to Palestinians in Gaza — remained suspended, the group said.

“It’s not enough to simply try to avoid further humanitarian deaths, which have now approached close to 200,” the group’s founder, José Andrés, said in a statement. “All civilians need to be protected, and all innocent people in Gaza need to be fed and safe. And all hostages must be released.”

Critics have said that the Israeli military has shown a disregard for Palestinian civilians in its campaign to root out Hamas, the militant group whose attack on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.

The army said its findings on Monday’s strikes would be sent to military prosecutors to assess whether anyone should face criminal charges. The army is also assessing whether the two officers stripped of their posts should be moved to other roles or be fired entirely.

Although the Israeli military has assigned a special committee to investigate allegations of misconduct during several conflicts over the past decade, rights campaigners have said the military justice system has historically been slow to charge, let alone convict, soldiers accused of crimes against Palestinians.

For Abdu Rahman Mohammad, an accountant from Khan Younis who has lost eight cousins in the war, the Israeli military’s apology for the aid workers’ deaths felt like “a slap in the face” that further demonstrated Palestinian lives were of lesser value.

According to the military, Israeli forces began striking the World Central Kitchen convoy at 10:09 p.m. Monday, as the vehicles made their way along Gaza’s coast. The attack killed six foreign nationals and a Palestinian, all of whom had handled the food aid that had arrived in Gaza by sea.

Like many aid groups, the World Central Kitchen had sought to ensure its workers’ safety in Gaza, where, according to local health officials, Israel’s campaign against Hamas has killed more than 32,000 people.

The workers had coordinated their mission in advance with the Israeli military, and the roofs of the vehicles had been marked with the World Central Kitchen’s logo.

Despite those safeguards, a series of critical errors led the troops to open fire on the convoy, according to the results of the military’s preliminary inquiry. Drone footage, the inquiry found, had not captured the organization’s logo in the dark; some officers did not review documentation showing that the convoy included civilian cars; and a drone operator had identified incorrectly an aid worker, who was most likely carrying a bag, as a member of an armed Palestinian group with a gun.

The seven aid workers had arrived in northern Gaza earlier Monday to help deliver more than 100 tons of food aid, according to World Central Kitchen. Their trucks left around 9 p.m. and headed south for the group’s warehouse, according to the Israeli military.

Along the coastal road, the trucks met with cars who joined their convoy, according to the military. Shortly after, a gunman appeared to fire a single round from the roof of one of the trucks, according to Maj. Gen. Yoav Har-Even, a reserve officer who oversees the military’s investigations into potential cases of wartime misconduct.

The drone operator and his commanding officers were unaware that the cars were part of the approved humanitarian convoy and wrongly assumed they were carrying armed Palestinians, Israeli officials said.

Asked why the soldiers were out of the loop, Har-Even said that certain officers had not seen the coordination documentation. “No excuses,” Har-Even said, describing the communications failure.

After the convoy arrived at the warehouse, Israeli drone footage captured what officials said were believed to be more gunmen at the scene. The Israeli military screened videos for reporters at the briefing Thursday. The New York Times could not independently verify the military’s video.

The officers were convinced that the scene they had witnessed resembled what they said were previous attempts by Hamas militants to seize humanitarian aid in Gaza, the officials said. Basem Naim, a Hamas spokesman, denied that Hamas stole aid, calling the accusation “Israeli propaganda.”

The cars then left the warehouse — three cars went south and one went north, the military officials said. Before they left, a drone operator spotted what he believed — wrongly, Har-Even said — was a figure bearing a weapon entering one of the three southbound cars.

Within four minutes, at least one Israeli drone struck each of the three vehicles in the convoy as they traveled south one behind the other, killing all seven passengers, the Israeli officials said. Israeli officers fired on the first car without “enough to say this is a legitimate target,” said Benny Gal, one of the Israeli generals who briefed reporters.

Some aid workers in the first vehicle struck fled to the next vehicle for protection, the officials said. That vehicle was hit, too.

The soldiers’ decision to fire on the second and third car, assuming wrongly that they were also harboring militants, failed to meet the Israeli military’s open-fire protocols, the officials said. The Israeli military’s rules of engagement are classified, making it difficult to know what the standard for using deadly force was Monday night. But Har-Even indicated the attack categorically broke them.

“This was against the rules of engagement,” he said.

The Israeli military also failed to convey key information about the aid workers’ plans to lower-ranking soldiers operating in the area, Har-Even said.

Aid agencies had begged Israeli authorities for months to open a direct line between them and Israeli military forces to avoid disastrous misfires, Jamie McGoldrick, a senior U.N. relief official, said. But those pleas had mostly fallen on deaf ears, he said, contributing to “a lot of near misses.”

Asked whether the military was concerned that more cases of indiscriminate fire had occurred over months of intensive Israeli fire across Gaza, Hagari didn’t provide a substantive answer.

Referring to the strikes on the aid convoy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “deeply regrets the tragic incident.”

During a phone call with Netanyahu on Thursday, the White House said, Biden described the attack on the aid convoy and the overall humanitarian situation in Gaza as “unacceptable.”

Biden threatened to condition future support for Israel on how it addresses his concerns about civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, prompting Israel to say it would open up more routes for aid into the besieged enclave.