One of the seven aid workers killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza was 33-year-old Jacob Flickinger, a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces who grew up in Quebec’s Beauce region and was the father of an 18-month-old boy.
Flickinger, a dual Canadian and United States citizen, had been in Gaza volunteering for World Central Kitchen since early March, his family said in an interview Wednesday.
Aid workers have been racing to distribute food as famine looms in Gaza, six months after Israel’s invasion.
But delivering aid has proven deadly. More than 196 humanitarian workers, many of them Palestinians working for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), have been killed since the invasion’s start in October, according to Aid Worker Security Database, a U.S.-funded group recording major incidents of violence against aid personnel.
Flickinger’s parents, Sylvie Labrecque and John Flickinger, say the attack on Flickinger and six of his colleagues was a clear targeted attack by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) because of how obviously marked the World Central Kitchen convoy was. It was also travelling on a well-used humanitarian route and the group had co-ordinated its movements in advance with the IDF, they said.
“In my mind, this was a targeted killing of aid workers who happened to be foreign,” Flickinger’s father said in an interview with CBC News Wednesday afternoon.
“Most of the aid workers killed to date have been from Gaza. And it’s part of an attempt to — I don’t know whether what they’re thinking of starving the population in Palestine, I don’t know. Punishment, revenge and war. This war is senseless. All wars are senseless,” Flickinger said, sitting alongside his ex-wife, Labrecque, in her home in Saint-Georges, about 200 kilometres northeast of Montreal.
Jacob Flickinger, a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces who grew up in Quebec, was one of seven World Central Kitchen workers killed in a strike Israel has called unintentional. ‘Their convoy was marked, clearly marked, and they are on a well-used humanitarian route. So in my opinion, it was a targeted kill,’ his father, John Flickinger, told CBC News.
Flickinger and six other World Central Kitchen workers had been travelling back to their base Monday after unloading 90 tonnes of food aid at the Deir al-Balah…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CBC | Top Stories News…