The Israeli military on Wednesday released legal decisions regarding five investigations into prominent incidents of suspected war crimes by forces during the fighting against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in recent years.

They included a deadly strike on a group of aid workers with the World Central Kitchen organization in the central Gaza Strip in April 2024; the killing of 6-year-old Hind Rajab along with six of her family members and two medics in Gaza City in January 2024; the killing of 15 rescue workers in a convoy of ambulances and emergency vehicles in Rafah in March 2025; a strike on a building used by aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Khan Younis that killed two members in February 2024; and the deaths of another two MSF employees who were driving in a convoy in Gaza City in November 2023.

The high-level General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism, an independent military body responsible for investigating unusual incidents amid the war, has so far completed around 150 probes and handed over their details to the Military Advocate General, the IDF’s top legal body, for review. The MAG Corps then decides whether to open a criminal investigation and later file charges.

“Recently, legal decisions were made regarding five incidents that received public attention,” the military said in a statement. The MAG Corps dismissed some of these high-profile probes, but said others should be investigated by the Military Police due to suspected criminal offenses.

April 2024 attack on World Central Kitchen cars

On April 1, 2024, Israeli forces ordered a strike on a convoy of WCK vehicles that officers suspected carried a Hamas gunman, despite a low level of confidence in the assessment and against army regulations. The strike left seven humanitarian workers dead.

The forces did not identify the vehicles as belonging to WCK when the strike was ordered, according to the mechanism’s investigation.

The mechanism’s investigation found that WCK had hired an armed security force to accompany the convoy to protect it from looting, a move that had not been coordinated with the army.

During the incident, Israeli troops spotted an armed man on an aid truck that was part of the convoy and thought other vehicles surrounding the truck were Hamas operatives trying to take control of it, according to the probe.

After the convoy reached a warehouse to drop off the aid, several people were incorrectly identified by the Israeli forces as armed. Those people, aid workers who were not actually armed, entered vehicles and traveled south, and deviated from a route that WCK had coordinated in advance with the military.

The troops therefore believed Hamas had taken control of the convoy before it reached the warehouse, and that Hamas operatives were in the vehicles that drove away from it afterward. The cars were then targeted.

The investigation found that the army did try to contact WCK representatives to confirm that their members were not inside the cars that had driven away from the warehouse, but “these attempts, during the half-hour in which the convoy’s vehicles were monitored as being believed to contain Hamas operatives as stated, were unsuccessful.”

Following the investigation at the time, then-IDF chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi ordered the removal of Col. (res.) Nochi Mendel — the chief of staff of the Nahal Infantry Brigade amid the war — and the brigade’s firepower coordination officer, who held the rank of major, over their involvement in ordering the strike.

Additionally, Halevi reprimanded the then-commander of Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, for his........

© The Times of Israel