Seoul Gazette - Israel says to up Gaza aid, admits 'mistakes' in aid worker deaths

US-based charity World Central Kitchen, whose workers were killed in Monday night's drone strike, demanded that an independent commission investigate the killings.

Poland said it had demanded a "criminal inquiry" by Israel after what it called the "murder" of the charity workers, one of whom was Polish.

Israel said Friday it had been targeting a "Hamas gunman" in the strike, with its military admitting a series of "grave mistakes" and violations of its own rules of engagement.

Israel had announced earlier on Friday it would allow "temporary" aid deliveries into famine-threatened northern Gaza, hours after Washington warned of a sharp shift in its policy over Israel's war against Hamas.

Germany said Israel had "no more excuses" to delay the entry of aid, after nearly six months of war.

The toughened US position followed the killing of the World Central Kitchen workers -- an Australian, three Britons, a Canadian-US dual national, a Palestinian and a Pole.

World Central Kitchen said Friday the charity wanted an "independent commission to investigate the killings".

An internal Israeli military inquiry found that the drone team had made an "operational misjudgement of the situation" after spotting a suspected Hamas gunman shooting from the top of an aid truck.

In a tense, 30-minute phone call on Thursday, US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that United States policy on Israel was dependent on the protection of civilians and aid workers in Gaza, the first hint of possible conditions to Washington's military support.

Just hours later, overnight in Jerusalem, Israel announced it would open more aid routes into the coastal Palestinian territory which Israel placed under total siege after the war began.

"Israel will allow the temporary delivery of humanitarian aid" through the Ashdod Port and the Erez land crossing, as well as increased deliveries from Jordan at the Kerem Shalom crossing, Netanyahu's office said.

A European Commission statement said these steps "should be implemented swiftly and fully".

The bloodiest-ever Gaza war began with Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Palestinian militants also took around 250 hostages, about 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 whom the army says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 33,091 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, while the United Nations has warned of "catastrophic" hunger.

- 'Insensitive' -

Palestinians in northern Gaza have eaten an average of just 245 calories per day -- less than a can of beans -- since January, according to Oxfam.

Charities have accused Israel of blocking aid, but Israel had defended its efforts and blamed shortages on groups' inability to distribute aid once it gets in.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong told Britain's The Guardian newspaper, in comments published Friday, that Netanyahu's initial comment on the deaths of the aid workers was "deeply insensitive".

Netanyahu had said: "It happens in war" and said the killings were unintentional. He pledged an investigation "right to the end".

In his call with Netanyahu, Biden "made clear that US policy regarding Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel's immediate action" to improve the humanitarian situation, the White House said.

Allies have been pressing Biden to leverage the billions of dollars in US military aid.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on X that Gazans "need every aid package now... We expect the Israeli government to implement its announcements quickly."

US top diplomat Antony Blinken told reporters after the Biden-Netanyahu call: "If we don't see the changes that we need to see, there'll be changes in our own policy."

- Wider tensions -

Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, including in the southern city of Rafah, an aid entry point on the border with Egypt, where most of Gaza's population are sheltering.

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said the strike on the aid workers had "reinforced the expressed concern over a potential Israeli military operation in Rafah".

In a call with his Israeli counterpart, Austin also "discussed the threat posed by Iran and its proxy activities", Israel's army said.

Iran blamed Israel for an air strike Monday on its consulate in Damascus that killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and has vowed retaliation.

Thousands of people called for "death" to Israel and the United States at the funeral in Tehran on Friday.

Analysts saw the consulate strike as part of stepped-up Israeli actions against Iranian and pro-Iran commanders in Syria and Lebanon, which they said could spiral into wider war.

"The wider Mideast tensions stemming from the Gaza war are probably at the highest in months," said Vandana Hari, of Vanda Insights, with stocks lower and oil prices extending gains on such concerns.

Israel's military said that after a "situational assessment, it was decided to increase manpower and draft reserve soldiers".

Netanyahu faces intense domestic pressure from the families of the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, and a resurgent anti-government protest movement.

War cabinet member Benny Gantz, a centrist political rival of Netanyahu, has demanded a snap election in September, a call the premier's right-wing Likud party rejected.

- Malnutrition -

Relentless Israeli bombardment has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, collapsed the hospital system and spawned a humanitarian crisis, with all of the 2.4 million Palestinians "experiencing acute food insecurity and malnutrition," the World Bank has said.

Relief work has become almost impossible in Gaza, top global aid groups including Oxfam and Save the Children said after Israel killed the WCK staff.

Spanish NGO Open Arms, which along with World Central Kitchen was working to establish a maritime aid corridor, said it was suspending operations after the strike.

Isabelle Defourny, president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) France, said that by providing military support to Israel countries including the United States were "complicit with what to our eyes amounts to genocide".

The UN Security Council is set to discuss humanitarian workers' safety and Gaza's looming famine later Friday.

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A.Byun--SG