The Israeli military has released unverified photographs that it says show a murdered member of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) wearing a military uniform at a gathering of Gaza militants. MSF had previously denied that his worker had links to Palestinian militias.
Israeli forces maintain that Fadi al-Wadiya, who died in a air attack launched by Israel earlier this week, he was a “major operative” of the Islamic Jihad group and involved in its rocket program.
Doctors without borders has not responded to a request for comment from the AP agency about the photos, which were published Wednesday night. The aid group previously said that had no indication that Al-Wadiya was a militiaman.
Las Photographs published by the Israeli Army appear to show Al-Wadiya wearing a military uniform in meetings with Islamic Jihad militants, but Its authenticity has not been independently verified..
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman who shared the photos on the social network X, said without providing evidence that Al-Wadiya attempted to leave Gaza for military training in Iran when he joined Doctors Without Borders in 2018. “Al-Wadiya took advantage of his position in a humanitarian organization to promote terrorist operations,” Shoshani said.
Doctors Without Borders had said that Al-Wadiya, a doctor and physiotherapist, worked for the group between 2018 and 2022, before resuming his work with the humanitarian organization during the war in Gaza. The group reported that the man was killed while riding his bike to work on Tuesdayand said it was the sixth of its employees killed in Gaza since October 7calling their deaths “unacceptable.”
Asked about the discrepant versions, the spokesman for the US Department of StateMatthew Miller said Wednesday that Washington I had not been able to clarify the situation.
The armed wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian militant groups are highly secretive, and their combatants rarely identify themselves publicly for fear of being the target of Israeli attacks.
Summer heat aggravates critical humanitarian conditions in Gaza
In it stifling heat of the summer, Palestinians say the smell and filth around them is another inescapable reality of war, like the pangs of hunger or the sounds of shelling. Children in sandals walk through sewage and climb ever-growing mounds of garbage in the Overcrowded tent camps for displaced families in Gaza. People relieve themselves in precarious pits, with nowhere nearby to wash their hands.
The territory’s ability to dispose of garbage, treat sewage and provide drinking water has been virtually decimated by eight brutal months of Israeli war and siege. This has worsened the grim living conditions and increased the health risks for hundreds of thousands of people deprived of adequate shelter, food and medicine, humanitarian organizations say.
Cases of hepatitis A are increasing and doctors fear that as the heat tightens, it is more and more most likely to produce a cholera outbreak if there are no significant improvements in living conditions. The UN, aid groups and local officials are struggling to build latrines, repair water pipes and get desalination plants back online.
