WASHINGTON (AP) – A memorial will be erected Thursday at Washington's National Cathedral to honor the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip earlier this month.
Jose Andrés, the celebrity chef and philanthropist behind the Washington-based disaster relief organization World Central Kitchen, will speak at the lifesaving gala, organizers said. Liszt's Yo-Yo Ma is also scheduled to perform.
The Biden administration announced Thursday that Vice President Kamala Harris' husband Douglas Emhoff and Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell will be among the top government officials in attendance.
Aid workers were killed on April 1 when armed Israeli drones destroyed one of their convoys as they departed from one of World Central Kitchen's warehouses on a food delivery mission. The person who died was Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, a Palestinian. British John Chapman, James Kirby and James Henderson. Jacob Flickinger is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Larzaumi Francome from Australia. and Damiam Sobol, a Polish national.
After an unusually rapid investigation, Israel claimed – erroneously – that military officials involved in the strike showed that one in seven personnel was armed. It said it acted on the grainy photo and violated policy. The Israeli military dismissed two officers and reprimanded three others.
The trip was coordinated by Israeli authorities and the aid workers were among more than 220 humanitarian workers killed in the six-month Israeli-Hamas war, according to the United Nations. At least 30 of them died in the line of duty.
The international fame and popularity of Mr. Andres and his nonprofit work sparked widespread outrage over the killing of the World Central Kitchen employee. In response to this massacre, the Biden administration and others have made efforts to save aid workers and Palestinian civilians in general, who are facing a humanitarian crisis and are in dire need of assistance from relief organizations, as the United Nations warns of impending famine. , there were growing calls for the Israeli military to change the way it operates in Gaza.
World Central Kitchen, along with several other humanitarian agencies, suspended operations in Gaza following the attack. “We are not giving up,” World Central Kitchen spokeswoman Linda Ross said last week. “We're in funeral mode right now.”
Religious leaders from various faiths are scheduled to participate in Thursday's service. The funeral was held early in the worker's home country.
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Associated Press writer Menelaos Hadjikostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.
