An in­ter­na­tion­al char­i­ty sus­pend­ed de­liv­ery of food to starv­ing Pales­tini­ans on Tues­day, a day af­ter an Is­raeli airstrike killed sev­en aid work­ers from World Cen­tral Kitchen who were try­ing to ease the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Gaza.

Ships still laden with some 240 tons of aid from the char­i­ty that ar­rived Mon­day turned back from Gaza, ac­cord­ing to Cyprus, which has played a key role in try­ing to es­tab­lish a sea route to bring food to the ter­ri­to­ry. Is­rael has al­lowed on­ly a trick­le of aid in­to dev­as­tat­ed north­ern Gaza, where ex­perts say famine is im­mi­nent.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try’s forces had car­ried out the “un­in­tend­ed strike … on in­no­cent peo­ple.” He said of­fi­cials were look­ing in­to the strike and would work to en­sure it did not hap­pen again.

World Cen­tral Kitchen said it had co­or­di­nat­ed with the Is­raeli mil­i­tary over the move­ment of the cars car­ry­ing the work­ers as they left north­ern Gaza late Mon­day. Footage of the af­ter­math showed a ve­hi­cle with the char­i­ty’s lo­go print­ed across its roof to make it iden­ti­fi­able from the air. The pro­jec­tile punched a large hole through the roof. Two oth­er ve­hi­cles in the con­voy were in­cin­er­at­ed and man­gled, in­di­cat­ing mul­ti­ple hits.

Oth­er footage showed the bod­ies, sev­er­al wear­ing pro­tec­tive gear with the char­i­ty’s lo­go, at a hos­pi­tal in the cen­tral Gaza town of Deir al-Bal­ah. Those killed in­clude three British na­tion­als, an Aus­tralian, a Pol­ish na­tion­al, an Amer­i­can-Cana­di­an dual cit­i­zen and a Pales­tin­ian, ac­cord­ing to hos­pi­tal records.

The killings threat­ened to bring reper­cus­sions on mul­ti­ple lev­els. The dead were cit­i­zens of some of Is­rael’s clos­est al­lies, which could an­tag­o­nize them at a time when the coun­try has few friends amid mount­ing in­ter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism of its near­ly 6-month-old of­fen­sive in Gaza.

The strike could al­so set back ef­forts by the U.S. and oth­er coun­tries to open a mar­itime cor­ri­dor for aid from Cyprus. World Cen­tral Kitchen, a food char­i­ty found­ed by celebri­ty chef José An­drés, was key to the new route.

Cypri­ot Pres­i­dent Nikos Christodoulides said Tues­day that ship de­liv­er­ies would con­tin­ue. Is­rael has barred UN­R­WA, the main U.N. agency in Gaza, from mak­ing de­liv­er­ies to the north, and oth­er aid groups say send­ing truck con­voys north has been ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult be­cause of the mil­i­tary’s fail­ure to ei­ther grant per­mis­sion or en­sure safe pas­sage.

The strike al­so un­der­scored what crit­ics have called the Is­raeli mil­i­tary’s dis­re­gard for civil­ian ca­su­al­ties in its Gaza cam­paign, which it says is aimed at de­stroy­ing Hamas af­ter its Oct. 7 at­tacks on Is­rael.

Through­out the war, Is­raeli forces have shown readi­ness to in­flict wide­spread de­struc­tion when they be­lieve a sus­pect­ed mil­i­tant is present or when ground troops see a tac­ti­cal need to strike.

Homes with fam­i­lies shel­ter­ing in­side are lev­eled by strikes al­most dai­ly. The mil­i­tary has struck am­bu­lances and aid ve­hi­cles, say­ing that armed fight­ers were in them.

In Feb­ru­ary, troops and a tank opened fire when they felt threat­ened as thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans crowd­ed to take aid off trucks, and more than 100 peo­ple were killed. The mil­i­tary said it did not fire at the con­voy and that some vic­tims died in stam­ped­ing.

More than 32,900 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in the war, around two-thirds of them women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which does not dis­tin­guish be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its count. Is­rael blames Hamas for civil­ian deaths, say­ing it op­er­ates in pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas.

The U.S., Britain, Poland and Aus­tralia called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion or an ex­pla­na­tion from Is­rael over the aid work­ers’ deaths. Is­raeli De­fense Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant or­dered the form­ing of a “pro­fes­sion team” to in­ves­ti­gate the strike and the open­ing of a joint sit­u­a­tion room en­abling co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the mil­i­tary and aid groups.

An­drés — whose char­i­ty op­er­ates in sev­er­al coun­tries wracked by wars or nat­ur­al dis­as­ters — said he was “heart­bro­ken” by the deaths of the staffers.

“The Is­raeli gov­ern­ment needs to stop this in­dis­crim­i­nate killing. It needs to stop re­strict­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, stop killing civil­ians and aid work­ers, and stop us­ing food as a weapon,” he wrote on X.

An­era, a Wash­ing­ton-based aid group that has been op­er­at­ing in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries for decades, said that in the wake of the strike it was tak­ing the “un­prece­dent­ed” step of paus­ing its own op­er­a­tions in Gaza, where it had been help­ing to pro­vide around 150,000 meals dai­ly.

“The es­ca­lat­ing risks as­so­ci­at­ed with aid de­liv­ery leave us with no choice,” it said in a state­ment.

Jamie Mc­Goldrick, the Unit­ed Na­tions hu­man­i­tar­i­an co­or­di­na­tor for the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries, said the strike was “not an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent,” not­ing that around 200 hu­man­i­tar­i­an work­ers have been killed in the war.

“This is near­ly three times the death toll record­ed in any sin­gle con­flict in a year,” he said.

The war be­gan when Hamas-led mil­i­tants stormed in­to south­ern Is­rael in a sur­prise at­tack on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 peo­ple and tak­ing around 250 hostage. Is­rael re­spond­ed with one of the dead­liest and most de­struc­tive of­fen­sives in re­cent his­to­ry.

Ten­sions have soared across the Mid­dle East, and an ap­par­ent Is­raeli strike on Iran’s con­sulate in the Syr­i­an cap­i­tal, Dam­as­cus, on Mon­day has ratch­eted them up even fur­ther. Iran and its al­lies have vowed to re­spond to the strike, which killed two Iran­ian gen­er­als.

Mon­day’s strike on the aid work­ers came hours af­ter a new de­liv­ery with some 400 tons of food and sup­plies or­ga­nized by World Cen­tral Kitchen and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates ar­rived in three ships from Cyprus, fol­low­ing a pi­lot run last month.

Around 100 tons were un­loaded be­fore the char­i­ty sus­pend­ed op­er­a­tions, and the rest was be­ing tak­en back to Cyprus, Cypri­ot For­eign Min­istry spokesman Theodor­os Got­sis said.

The dead in the strike in­clud­ed Zo­mi Frankcom, 44, of Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, and Dami­an Soból of Poland, the two coun­tries’ gov­ern­ments con­firmed.

Two oth­er Is­raeli strikes late Mon­day killed at least 16 Pales­tini­ans, in­clud­ing eight chil­dren, in Rafah, where Is­rael has vowed to ex­pand its ground op­er­a­tion de­spite the pres­ence of some 1.4 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans, most of whom have sought refuge from fight­ing else­where.

One strike hit a fam­i­ly home, killing 10 peo­ple, in­clud­ing five chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to hos­pi­tal records. An­oth­er hit a gath­er­ing near a mosque, killing at least six peo­ple, in­clud­ing three chil­dren.

Aid groups have re­peat­ed­ly called for a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cease-fire, say­ing it’s the on­ly way to reach peo­ple in need. The Unit­ed States, Qatar and Egypt have spent months try­ing to bro­ker such a pause and a hostage re­lease, but the in­di­rect talks be­tween Is­rael and Hamas re­main bogged down.

Hamas is be­lieved to be hold­ing some 100 hostages and the re­mains of 30 oth­ers af­ter free­ing most of the rest dur­ing a cease-fire in No­vem­ber in ex­change for the re­lease of Pales­tini­ans im­pris­oned by Is­rael.