Three British aid workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) has said.
Nationals from Poland and Australia were also killed, as well as a dual citizen of the US and Canada – and a Palestinian who was driving the car they were all travelling in.
The volunteers were employed by WCK, a non-governmental organisation which provides food for displaced Palestinians.
The workers’ car was hit by an airstrike just after crossing from northern Gaza – and it is believed they were helping to deliver aid that had arrived hours earlier on a ship from Cyprus.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged that Israeli forces were responsible for the airstrike, saying there was a “tragic incident of an unintended strike of our forces on innocent people in the Gaza Strip”.
He added: “It happens in war, we check it to the end, we are in contact with the governments, and we will do everything so that this thing does not happen again.”
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1:14
What happened to killed aid workers?
His comments came after Lord Cameron said news of the airstrike on the WCK aid workers is “deeply distressing”.
Writing on the X social media platform, he added: “British Nationals are reported to have been killed, we are urgently working to verify this information and will provide full support to their families.
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“These were people who were working to deliver life-saving aid to those who desperately need it.
“It is essential that humanitarian workers are protected and able to carry out their work.
“We have called on Israel to immediately investigate and provide a full, transparent explanation of what happened.”
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Meanwhile, WCK chief executive Erin Gore said the team of volunteers was “travelling in a deconflicted zone in two armoured cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle” when it was hit.
Despite coordinating movements with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), the convoy was hit as it was leaving a warehouse in the central Gazan town of Deir al Balah, the charity said.
It added it is pausing its operations immediately in the region.
“This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. EVER,” the charity said in a statement.
Ms Gore added: “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable.”
Geolocated footage sheds further light on deaths of aid workers
Geolocated footage and information from individuals with knowledge from the ground provides further insight into events surrounding the recent deaths of aid workers in central Gaza.
World Central Kitchen said their staff were travelling in three vehicles from the charity’s Deir Al Balah warehouse.
Geolocated photographs show a burnt-out car on the side of the Al Rashid coastal road to the southwest of the city. Materials marked with World Central Kitchen’s branding can be seen in the back of the vehicle.
Photographs and footage of a second vehicle, with the charity’s logo painted on its roof, place it around 810 metres southeast along the road. The roof appears to have been punctured by some kind of munition, and the interior is visibly damaged.
A third car appears to have been similarly destroyed. Geolocated footage posted to Instagram shows a white burnt-out vehicle in a field a further 1.6km southeast along the road. A high-visibility vest with World Central Kitchen branding is on the back seat.
Social media posts first mention the strikes at around 10.52pm local time. This fits with information provided to Sky News, which placed the attacks between 10.30 and 11pm.
Footage filmed shortly after shows that bodies were taken from The Al Rashid coastal road to Al Aqsa Hospital in the northeast of Deir Al Balah.
The IDF said it is carrying out a “thorough review at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident”.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, Israel’s chief military spokesperson, said he had expressed “the deepest condolences of the Israel Defense Forces to the families and the entire World Central Kitchen family”.
He said the IDF will be examining the “serious incident further” to “help us reduce the risk of such an event from occurring again”.
Two people have died after a plane crashed into vehicles on a busy road in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo.
A fire department spokesperson confirmed the deaths to local media.
The plane crashed on Marques de Sao Vicente Avenue in Barra Funda at around 7.20am local time.
Images and video footage showing a bus on fire in the aftermath.
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Two people – a motorcyclist and a woman who was on the bus – were injured after they were struck by debris from the explosion, CNN Brasil reported.
The aircraft – a small twin-engine King Air – had left Campo de Marte Airport, the Brazilian television news channel reported. The control tower lost contact with the plane minutes later.
The cause of the crash is being investigated.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
An Australian politician has legally changed his name to Austin Trump in a move inspired by Donald Trump – in what he said was a protest against the country’s ruling centre-left Labor Party.
Ben Dawkins – who is an independent MP in Western Australia’s upper house of parliament where Labor holds a majority – is now listed as “Aussie Trump” on the WA parliamentary website.
He has also changed his username to “Hon. Aussie Trump MLC” on his X account.
“I’ve launched a political protest against the tyranny and systematic corruption of the Labor government in WA,” he wrote, in a post on the social media platform, signing off as “Aussie”.
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“Vote Labor Out! & Drill Baby Drill!,” he wrote in a second post, appearing to echo the US president’s plan to increase the extraction of oil and gas in the United States.
He also posted a photo showing legal confirmation of the name change from Western Australia’s Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
“I want to be like Trump in the sense of calling out woke leftist nonsense,” he told 9News.
“I would love you to reach out Donald, just ring the office here.”
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“This is simply attention-seeking stuff,” said Western Australia’s Premier Roger Cook, the state’s Labor leader, at a news conference on Thursday.
“I’m not sure how much lower he can go.”
Western Australia state elections are due to take place in March, before the country goes to the polls in a nationwide vote that must be held before 17 May.
A woman walks up to the security guards outside a shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg’s inner-city district.
She looks around with confusion as they let her know the clinic is closed.
She tells us it has only been two months since she came here to receive her usual care.
Now, she must scramble to find another safe place for her sexual health screenings and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) – her regular defence against rampant HIV.
On the day he was sworn in as US president for a second time, Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing foreign aid for a 90-day period.
That is being challenged by federal employee unions in court over what it says are “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that have created a “global humanitarian crisis”.
However the order is already having an immediate impact on South Africa’s most vulnerable.
More on South Africa
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Her eyes tear up as she processes the news. Like many sex workers in town, free sexual health clinics are her lifeline.
An HIV-positive sex worker shared her patient transfer letter from the same closed clinic with Sky News and told us with panic that she is still waiting to be registered at an alternative facility.
South Africa is home to one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics. At least 8.5 million people here are living with HIV – a quarter of all cases worldwide.
Widespread, free access to antiretroviral treatment in southern Africa was propelled by the introduction of George W. Bush’s US President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003.
PEPFAR is considered one of the most successful foreign aid programmes in history, and South Africa is the largest recipient of its funds.
Image: A sign for USAID on the clinic’s window
Image: A shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg
The programme has now been halted by President Trump’s foreign aid funding freeze – plunging those who survived South Africa’s HIV epidemic and AIDS denialism in the early 2000s back to a time of scarcity and fear.
“That time, there was no medication. The government would tell us to take beetroot and garlic. It was very difficult for the government to give us treatment but we fought very hard to win this battle. Now, the challenge is that we are going back to the struggle,” says Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV in Soweto.
Nelly says access to free treatment has saved her and her 21-year-old son, who tested positive for HIV at four years old.
“It helped me so much because if I didn’t get the treatment, I don’t think I would be alive – even my son.
“My concern is for pregnant women. I don’t want them to go through what I went through – the life I was facing before. I’m scared we will go back to that crisis.”
Image: Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV
South African civil society organisations have written a joint open letter calling for their government to provide a coordinated response to address the healthcare emergency created by the US foreign aid freeze.
The letter states that close to a million patients living with HIV have been directly impacted by stop-work orders and that a recent waiver by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio continuing life-saving assistance explicitly excludes “activities that involve abortions, family planning, gender or diversity, equality and inclusion ideology programmes, transgender surgeries or other non-life saving assistance”.
The shuttered clinic we saw in Johannesburg’s central business district (CBD) comes under these categories – built by Witwatersrand University to research reproductive health and cater to vulnerable and marginalised communities.
An activist and healthcare worker at a transgender clinic tells us everyone she knows is utterly afraid.
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3:48
USAID in turmoil: What you need to know
“Corner to corner, you hear people talking about this. There are people living with chronic diseases who don’t have faith anymore because they don’t know where they are ending up,” says Ambrose, a healthcare worker and activist.
“People keep asking corner to corner – ‘why don’t you go here, why don’t you go there?’ People are crying – they want to be assisted.”
South Africa’s ministry of health insists that only 17% of all HIV/AIDs funding comes from PEPFAR but that statistic is offset by the palpable disruption.
On Monday, minister of health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi met to discuss bilateral health cooperation and new US policy for assistance with US charge d’affaires for South Africa, Dana Brown.
A statement following the meeting says: “Communication channels are open between the Ministry and the Embassy, and we continue to discuss our life-saving health partnership moving forward.
“Until details are available the minister called on all persons on antiretrovirals (ARVs) to under no circumstances stop this life-saving treatment.”
A demand much harder to execute than declare.
“There is already a shortage of the medication – even if you ask for three months’ treatment, they will give you one or two months worth then you have to go back,” says Nelly.
“Now, it is worse because you can see the funding has been cut off.”