Seven aid workers who were working for the World Central Kitchen, a charity delivering food to besieged Palestinians, were killed in the Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Tuesday. The victims comprised three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national, an American-Canadian dual citizen and a Palestinian
In a statement on Tuesday, Biden said he is "outraged and heartbroken" by the tragic incident
"They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war. They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy. Israel has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into why the aid workers' vehicles were hit by airstrikes. That investigation must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public," he said
"Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident. This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed. This is a major reason why distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has been so difficult because Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians," Biden said
Noting that incidents like this simply should not happen, the president said Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians. The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to deconflict their military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties, he said
Biden said the US will continue to do all "we can to deliver humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, through all available means. I will continue to press Israel to do more to facilitate that aid. And we are pushing hard for an immediate ceasefire as part of a hostage deal. I have a team in Cairo working on this right now"
Earlier in the day, Biden spoke with Chef José Andrés, the founder of World Central Kitchen, to convey his deepest condolences for the deaths of these courageous aid workers and to express my continued support for his and his team's relentless and heroic efforts to get food to hungry people around the globe
White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters that the US has seen the comments from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and from the Israeli defence forces about their commitment to conduct an investigation
"As we understand it, a preliminary investigation has been completed today and presented to the army chief of staff and we'll obviously look to see what they discover in this preliminary one, but we expect the broader investigation to be conducted and to be done so in a swift and comprehensive manner," he said
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