A pre-inquest review opened today into the killing of three British citizens working as security consultants for World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Gaza.
James ‘Jim’ Henderson, 33, James Kirby, 47, and John Chapman, 57, were among seven aid workers killed in a series of Israeli drone strikes on 1 April 2024.
Then UK prime minister Rishi Sunak told Benjamin Netanyahu he was “appalled” by the incident while current foreign secretary Ed Miliband described the killings as “cold-blooded”.
Nochi Mendel, the colonel who ordered the strike, said he is “not sorry” and the Israeli military recently announced it would not pursue any criminal investigations.
At Avon Coroner’s Court in Bristol, lawyers for the aid workers’ families demanded a full investigation into the incident including the actions and policies of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) as well as the munitions used.
They want the inquest to establish whether the aid workers were unlawfully killed and whether the strikes were conducted in accordance with Israel’s targeting and deconfliction policies, with the coroner already indicating she will include the IDF and Mendel as interested persons.
The families have also requested that enquiries be made to Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) amid questions about intelligence sharing with Israel, with a view to also including that department as an interested person.
This comes after Declassified revealed a British surveillance aircraft overflew Gaza shortly before the attack, with the UK government refusing to release the footage or even disclose the aircraft’s flight path.
In a statement outside the court, the Kirby family said: “The coroner told us today that Colonel Mendel, the Israeli military and the Israeli government are going to be made interested persons in this inquest.
“We also have questions for the British government. An RAF surveillance plane was flying over Gaza on the day James died. The Ministry of Defence has the footage from that flight but will not tell us whether it shows the area where the convoy was hit. We think the coroner should be given it.
“We are now asking the Government to give the Coroner whatever it has, and to keep pressing Israel for the drone footage and the other evidence. If Israel says no, people should be told that.
“There is no other independent investigation into James’ death. This inquest is all we have, and we are going to see it through”.
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The massacre
Over the past two years, an Australian government investigation alongside various media and firsthand accounts have shed light on what happened the night of the attack.
Shortly after 11pm local time, the aid workers were targeted by three Israeli drone strikes launched roughly four minutes apart while travelling in a WCK convoy towards Rafah.
Earlier that evening, the convoy had escorted aid trucks from a makeshift pier to the WCK welcome centre in Deir el-Balah, where locally contracted security guards boarded the vehicles, according to the Australian investigation .
Some of those local guards were armed, according to IDF officers who were monitoring the operation from above with surveillance drones, with one allegedly firing a gun into the air.
The IDF claimed the presence of the local guards indicated a hijacking by Hamas, despite the convoy continuing along its planned route and unloading the aid at a WCK warehouse some three miles south.
After unloading the aid, IDF drones continued to watch from the skies as the WCK convoy departed west towards the coastal road while a car carrying the local guards drove north.
The WCK convoy was supposed to return via the welcome centre, but a decision was made to travel directly to the accommodation in Rafah due to the operation being delayed, according to the Australian investigation .
While this amounted to a modification in the route, it did not impact the decision to target the convoy because the IDF only became aware of this diversion later on.
The IDF says it then “mistakenly believed that the vehicles” travelling south “contained Hamas military operatives and therefore struck the vehicles”, with one account suggesting a bag put into one of the WCK vehicles was erroneously thought to be a weapon.
When the airstrikes were launched, the WCK convoy was nowhere near any Israeli troops and posed no reasonable threat to the IDF.
In written submissions to the coroner’s court, lawyers for the Henderson family argued the IDF’s narrative is “contradicted by all of the available evidence”.
“At its highest”, they wrote, “there was an alleged mistaken identification of a bag being placed into one of the cars being a gun or containing a gun”.
Pete Weatherby, representing the Henderson family, noted how the lawyers were “piecing together from open source material either from Mendel or the Israeli official position different and not entirely consistent narratives”.
He said it would therefore be useful for the Israeli government to finally outline “what they say actually happened factually as a starting point for the investigation”.
The strikes were “intentionally lethal”, lawyers added in written submissions, “and the postmortem finding shows that Jim’s injuries were so severe they resulted in his immediate death”.
When asked about WCK, Mendel previously said : “Unfortunately, they aren’t really a neutral organisation. Not really an organisation you can say is innocent and completely clean… It has ties to Hamas”.
Scope of the inquest
Given Israel’s failure to provide a full account of the incident or pursue a criminal investigation, lawyers for the families have requested that the coroner launch a thorough and independent investigation into how the deaths came about.
The investigation, they contend, should go beyond the immediate circumstances of the incident to the IDF’s policies on targeting and deconfliction with the goal of determining whether the aid workers were killed unlawfully.
This is particularly important within the context of the IDF carrying out a pattern of strikes on aid convoys and premises during the six months prior to the WCK massacre.
“It appears prima facie that this is a case where three British citizens (and others) were unlawfully killed by the military of an allied nation”, the Hendersons’ lawyers argued in written submissions.
They pointed to a recent investigation in the Guardian which found the WCK strikes were “in line with a general policy employed by the Israeli military of… ‘incrimination’, which gives commanders in the field wide discretion on designating someone as a ‘terrorist’.”
The coroner’s court also heard that the strikes were launched with a Hermes 450 drone, alleged by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) to be powered by UK-made engines.
“There has been a great deal of public concern around the possibility that UK manufactured components or UK based research and development contributed to the killing of Jim and his colleagues”, the lawyers submitted.
Establishing the source of weaponry used in the attack is therefore “central” to understanding how the aid workers came to their death and “should be investigated”.
The lawyers also pointed to how an inquest jury previously found Tom Hurndall, another British national who died in Gaza in 2006, had been “unlawfully and intentionally killed” by the IDF.
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Surveillance footage
The lawyers also requested that Britain’s MoD disclose whether it holds relevant surveillance or intelligence data relating to the incident.
The MoD previously informed Declassified that it holds video surveillance footage of Gaza from the day of the aid worker massacre but is refusing to publish the tape.
The footage was taken by a RAF surveillance plane which spent approximately five hours above the strip that day, returning to base shortly before the airstrikes took place.
The MoD may therefore have collected footage of events leading up to the tragedy, which could provide clarity over Israeli claims regarding Hamas “gunmen” near the convoy.
To this end, lawyers submitted that “the British Ministry of Defence… should be given the opportunity to be interested persons in these inquest proceedings”.
The lawyers specifically noted how any footage taken over Gaza that day “is obviously potentially relevant, and may show the progress and actions of the convoy”.
The coroner suggested that initial questions will be put to the MoD before deciding whether to include the department as an interested person.
Further information was requested from the Foreign Office with regard to what measures were in place to keep British aid workers in Gaza safe prior to April 2024, and what additional actions have been taken since the incident.
Elbit Systems has also been recommended as an interested person given the company could provide a witness statement confirming “whether any part of the [drone] originated in the UK”.
“As you know Elbit operates 16 facilities in the UK, the centrepiece is very close to where we are now in Bristol,” the lawyers said today.
“In terms of allaying public concern we would say this is a key part of this particular inquisitorial process and therefore evidence should be obtained from Elbit and they should be invited to take part in the process”.
In addition, the coroner has been requested to seek disclosure of IDF drone footage and audio, the IDF’s investigation file, IDF policy and procedures documents, and internal material from WCK.
The Foreign Office recently announced : “The World Central Kitchen attack is one of countless incidents in Gaza where there has been no accountability. In Gaza, humanitarian workers continue to work tirelessly to support civilians in desperate need, risking their lives whilst working in the most perilous conditions.
“Yet despite the fragile ceasefire, Gaza remains the deadliest place to deliver aid, with 186 humanitarian workers killed in 2025. Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, and must do more to ensure that humanitarian staff can carry out their work safely. Lessons must be learnt from this tragedy”.
The coroner is now expected to seek disclosure from interested persons as well as other relevant parties before a second pre-inquest review takes place on 5 March 2027.
The post Israel killed three UK citizens. Now their families want answers appeared first on Declassified UK .
Israel killed three UK citizens. Now their families want answers
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at DeclassifiedUK.