World Central Kitchen pauses operations in Gaza after three aid workers killed in Israeli airstrike
Humanitarian aid organisation World Central Kitchen has said it is pausing its operation in Gaza after a number of its workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
World Central Kitchen (WCK) said it was “heartbroken to share” that a vehicle carrying its employees was hit by the strike, confirming earlier claims by both Israeli and Palestinian officials.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) earlier claimed that one of the three aid workers killed was also a “terrorist” who helped orchestrate the 7 October massacre last year.
But WCK’s statement said: “World Central Kitchen had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties to the October 7th Hamas attack.”
It added: “World Central Kitchen is pausing operations in Gaza at this time. Our hearts are with our colleagues and their families in this unimaginable moment.”
WCK’s aid deliveries in Gaza were temporarily suspended earlier this year after seven of its workers, most of them foreigners, were killed in another Israeli airstrike.
WCK is a non-profit that says it is first to frontlines to provide “fresh meals in response to crises”.
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Two others were killed in Saturday’s strike, according to an official from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry – but did not give further details.
An uncle of one of the aid workers killed said he was “driving his car… normally as usual” but was “targeted without prior warning and without any reason”.
He added that he worked “providing food and helping people and the displaced” and was “deliberately targeted”.
The deadly incident is the latest to have impacted aid workers in Gaza, who help provide food, medicine, and shelter for the millions displaced there.
In an earlier statement, the IDF said the “terrorist” killed was “monitored for a while by IDF intelligence and was struck following credible information regarding his real-time location”.
“We emphasise that it was a civilian unmarked vehicle and its movement on the route was not co-ordinated for transporting of aid,” a spokesperson added.
At least 32 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes across Gaza overnight on Friday, Reuters said, quoting medics inside the territory.
Among them were seven killed when a house was destroyed in central Gaza, the Hamas-run Gaza civil defence agency said.
The agency said one of its officers was also killed in an attack in Jabalia, northern Gaza.
Meanwhile, Hamas has released a video of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, 20, where he pleads for US President-elect Donald Trump to secure his release.
The captive’s mother Yael said the footage “gives us hope, but it also shows how difficult it is for Edan and for the other hostages, and how much they are crying out and praying for us to rescue them”.
According to the Gaza health ministry, at least 44,382 people have been killed and 105,142 injured inside the territory since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire broken in Lebanon
Elsewhere in the region, Israel broke a short-lived ceasefire with Hezbollah on Saturday when its aircraft struck the Iranian-backed group’s weapons sites along the Lebanese border.
The 60-day truce was only brokered on Tuesday, with both sides promising to withdraw from southern Lebanon.
Damage after one of the strikes that broke the ceasefire in Tyre, southern Lebanon. Pic: Reuters
Smoke rises above the skyline in southern Lebanon near the border with Lebanon. Pic: Reuters
But the IDF said in a statement on Saturday that it had “acted during the day against activities in Lebanon that posed a threat to the State of Israel, violating the ceasefire understandings”.
The IDF detailed four incidents, in which it and the Israeli air force attacked Hezbollah targets.
Israel says it acted in response to ceasefire violations by Hezbollah, which has not commented on the strikes.
Some 1.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict in southern Lebanon, which reignited on 8 October after Hezbollah began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas.
Many displaced people have tried to return to their homes, despite warnings by both Israeli and Lebanese authorities to stay away from areas prone to clashes.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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