World Central Kitchen, the food charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, has halted work in Gaza after a strike in Israel killed seven staff.

The organization confirmed that among the dead were aid workers from the United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, Palestine, and a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. The company said it would make a decision soon on long-term plans for the area.

World Central Kitchen has been providing basic meals to Gazans facing widespread hunger, pioneering a recently launched effort to deliver aid by sea.

With the United Nations warning of looming famine, its absence, even temporarily, could deepen the territory’s suffering.

What is World Central Kitchen?

World Central Kitchen was founded after Andrés, a Hispanic American chef and restaurateur, visited Haiti in 2010 following the devastating earthquake.

His experience cooking with displaced families in makeshift camps inspired him to launch an initiative to provide freshly prepared meals to those in need after natural disasters or those suffering from protracted conflict.

WCK’s primary model is to send out teams of “food first responders” to work with local chefs to cook meals catering to regional tastes at scale and quickly.

“When you talk about food and water, people don’t expect a solution a week from now, a month from now. The solution has to be now,” Andres said on the show. Group website.

Since its inception, WCK has hosted meals in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Zambia, Peru, Cuba, Uganda, the Bahamas and Cambodia.

The organization also provides meals to immigrants arriving at the U.S. southern border and to hospital workers working tirelessly during the coronavirus pandemic.

WCK has been operating in Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in 2022, initially working to feed refugees who fled and then working to support communities that remained in conflict-torn cities.

The US-based organization estimates it has delivered tens of millions of meals throughout the conflict.

On June 2, 2023, a WCK volunteer in the city of Kharkiv died after a Russian missile hit his apartment.

WCK also invests in long-term solutions to address long-term food system challenges in disaster-prone regions of the Caribbean and Central America.

In Haiti, the organization launched a clean cooking program to support communities moving away from dangerous open wood and coal fires for cooking.

It also established and opened the École des Chefs, a cooking school in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

What is WCK doing in Gaza?

The charity’s teams have been deployed across Israel and Gaza since the current conflict started when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October.

WCK provides food to Israelis and former hostages displaced by the attacks, as well as Lebanese displaced by the war with Israel, according to its website.

However, its work is most demanding in Gaza, where nearly 33,000 people have been killed by Israeli bombing.

The organization says it has provided more than 43 million meals to Palestinians in Gaza. It has established two main kitchens in the southern city of Rafah and the central town of Deir al-Bala.

It supports 68 community kitchens across Hong Kong, delivering more than 170,000 hot meals every day.

The organization ramped up its efforts during Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims traditionally fast from sunrise to sunset, distributing 92,000 food boxes or about 4.7 million meals.

WCK is also delivering meals via airdrop and delivering two shipments of hundreds of tons of food by sea to northern Gaza, where the food crisis is at its worst.

Andres told The Associated Press in an interview last month that the charity’s sea deliveries prompted the U.S. to announce it would build a floating dock to deliver aid to Gaza by sea. “I think that’s our achievement,” he said.

WCK is shutting down immediately and tens of thousands of meals per day will not be distributed.

It is the first of two sea shipments to arrive so far. It is unclear in what capacity the maritime corridor will continue to exist without the group, and the planned floating terminals in the United States will take time to get off the ground.

Other aid organizations are still providing aid to the Palestinians on the ground, including the United Nations. But they say supplies are not arriving fast enough and once aid enters Gaza, logistical problems and ongoing fighting hamper deliveries.

Israel denies there are food shortages in Gaza and accuses the United Nations and other aid groups of failing to expand food supplies in the area.