Canadian PM flays Netanyahu over remarks on airstrike that killed 7 aid workers
GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, GERMANY - JUNE 26: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listens to other G7 leaders speaking at the „Global Infrastructure“ side event during the G7 summit at Schloss Elmau on June 26, 2022 near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Leaders of the G7 group of nations are officially coming together under the motto: "progress towards an equitable world" and will discuss global issues including war, climate change, hunger, poverty and health. Overshadowing this year’s summit is the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has denounced comments by his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, saying an airstrike on aid workers “doesn’t just happen,” CBC News reported.
The Israeli PM in a video said the airstrike that killed seven aid workers of World Central Aid Kitchen (WCK) NGO earlier this week was a “tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip.”
“This happens in wartime,” he added.
The victims included a dual Canadian-US citizen.
While reacting, Trudeau said: “No, it doesn’t just happen,” he said during an event in Winnipeg. “And it shouldn’t just happen when you have aid workers for an extraordinary organization like World Central Kitchen risking their lives every day in an incredibly dangerous place to deliver food to people who are experiencing a horrific humanitarian catastrophe.”
No fewer than 33,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which claimed about 1,200.
He called for an immediate probe into the incident in his initial comment on the killing.
“We need a fully open, transparent, independent and rapid investigation into what happened,” he said. “The reality is we need much more humanitarian support to flow into Gaza, much more protection of civilians, of innocents and of aid workers.
“That’s why we need a humanitarian cease-fire. We need for Hamas to lay down its arms. We need for the hostages to be released, and we need a ceasefire to allow this humanitarian catastrophe to end as quickly as possible.”
Meanwhile, the nonprofit organization that feeds communities in times of catastrophe or conflict and has demanded an impartial inquiry into the death of one of its employees has described the Israeli operation on Monday as “a military attack that involved multiple strikes and targeted three WCK vehicles.”
