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

On the evening of April 1, 2024, World Central Kitchen aid workers stood on Gaza’s Mediterranean shore as a barge carrying urgently needed food reached a makeshift jetty. By the end of the night, seven of them were dead.

The team had come to supervise the unloading of the aid, which arrived by boat from Cyprus. WCK and local Palestinian contractors had built the jetty from whatever materials they could find, including debris from the bombed home of one of the contractors. The structure consisted of sand and rubble and was intended to help move food supplies ashore.

The Gaza war had already lasted six months. With Israel’s land crossings closed, the territory faced the threat of famine, giving the delivery an urgent purpose. The Israeli army had helped plan the operation, but the mission went wrong from the beginning, according to the Guardian’s investigation.

The report examines how the aid delivery ended with an Israeli airstrike that killed the seven international workers. It presents the incident as an account of the final journey toward Rafah and the circumstances surrounding the deaths.