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Long before the killing of seven employees in Gaza, World Central Kitchen pioneered a new way to offer emergency aid, local hard work, and recipes.
By Kim Severson
Kim Severson traveled to Puerto Rico in 2017 to participate in the World Central Kitchen project after Hurricane Maria.
World Central Kitchen’s rise as one of the world’s most agile and extensive emergency food operations has been driven by two hard forces: chefs who know how to organize kitchens temporarily in the most extreme circumstances, and the undeniable air of mystery of Chef José Andrés, a wealthy, well-connected restaurateur who decided to feed others in crisis spaces, even when it’s impossible.
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On Monday, seven of the organization’s workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. They had just unloaded 100 tons of food from a warehouse in Deir al-Balah, a city in the central Gaza Strip, and were heading toward a car with the organization’s logo and two armored vehicles. One of them killed a citizen with dual U. S. and Canadian citizenship, and the others were from Australia, Britain, Gaza, and Poland.
“I am heartbroken and grieving for their families, friends and our entire WCK family,” Mr. Andres said on social media platform X. The organization has stopped feeding other people there while it evaluates what it wants to do next.
The scale of the global reaction to the killings, in a war that has already resulted in the deaths of at least 203 other aid workers, according to the Aid Workers Database, partly reflects the visibility of World Central Kitchen.
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