Eight of 9 victims of Israeli attack on Beit Lahiya were aid workers

Eight of the nine victims of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip's northern city of Beit Lahiya have been aid workers.

Two back-to-back Israeli airstrikes on Saturday killed at least nine people in Beit Lahiya, according to Gaza's civil defense. 

A UK-based aid organization confirmed eight of the nine victims of Israel’s attack were staff members who were carrying out charity work.

Several people were also critically injured as the strike hit a car, with casualties inside and outside the vehicle, health officials told Reuters.

The Israeli forces claimed they were targeting "terrorists" operating drones "under the cover of journalists" in an area under the control of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement.

However, the head of Gaza's civil defense, Mahmoud Basal, said they were aid workers from Al Khair Foundation, along with two journalists working with the group.

"They had wanted to build some tents for the displaced people in the area, and they had been using the drone to shoot and take coordinates of the place," Basal says.

Shuaib Yusaf, the CEO of the Al Khair Foundation, confirmed that eight of the victims of Israel’s attack on Beit Lahiya were aid workers.

“It is with great sadness and regret that we announce the demise in Gaza of eight of our team’s dedicated humanitarian aid workers. They were killed in violation of the agreed ceasefire in a drone airstrike,” Yusaf said.

“The exact circumstances are still being established but we refute utterly any suggestion that those who were killed were militant or in any way connected with Hamas.”

The founder of Al-Khair Foundation, Qasim Rashid Ahmad, said in a video statement on the group's Facebook page that the victims were documenting how to add an additional 1,000 tents to the area.

Some of them were staff, while others were volunteers, including cameramen for filming, and local journalists, he added.

"They were filming for a humanitarian purpose. They were not filming in a military zone. They were not filming in a public area," he said. "All of them were purely on humanitarian missions."

The area where the strike happened is designated as a 'free movement area' by the Israeli military, far from the "buffer zone" along the outer edges of Gaza where movement is restricted.

Ahmad went on to explain that the workers had been carrying out the project specifically as it is the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is also a month of charity.

Israeli airstrike kills 9 Palestinians in northern Gaza

An Israeli airstrike on the northern Gaza Strip has killed at least nine Palestinians, including three local journalists, medics say.

Hamas called the strikes an "escalation" and a "deliberate sabotage of any opportunity to complete the [ceasefire] agreement's implementation."

The attack comes as negotiations for the continuation of the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which began on January 19, have stalled.

The first phase of the deal expired earlier this month, and Hamas has been pushing for the second phase to begin. Israel is refusing, and calling for a new plan, which does not have a provision for a long-term end to the conflict — something Hamas is adamant about.

Arrest warrants were issued in November by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Israelis also face a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

Despite the ceasefire between the Israelis and Hamas, Gaza’s local authorities have recorded almost daily ceasefire violations by the Israeli forces.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry said on Sunday that 15 more bodies were retrieved from the rubble in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll since October 2023 to 48,572,

“Many victims are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” the ministry said.

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