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Aid workers killed in Israeli air strike in Gaza, charity tells BBC

BBC News

A team of charity workers has been killed in Israeli strikes in northern Gaza, the UK-registered Al Khair Foundation has told the BBC. The charity said eight workers - including volunteers and journalists documenting their activities - were killed when their vehicles were targeted on Saturday in what Hamas described as a "blatant violation" of the ceasefire agreement with Israel. The Israeli military has said it had struck "two terrorists who were identified operating a drone that posed a threat to Israeli troops", adding that it then targeted "additional terrorists" who arrived at the scene. The charity rejects the allegation that members of its team were terrorists.


HumVI: A Multilingual Dataset for Detecting Violent Incidents Impacting Humanitarian Aid

Lamba, Hemank, Abilov, Anton, Zhang, Ke, Olson, Elizabeth M., Dambanemuya, Henry k., Bárcia, João c., Batista, David S., Wille, Christina, Cahill, Aoife, Tetreault, Joel, Jaimes, Alex

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Humanitarian organizations can enhance their effectiveness by analyzing data to discover trends, gather aggregated insights, manage their security risks, support decision-making, and inform advocacy and funding proposals. However, data about violent incidents with direct impact and relevance for humanitarian aid operations is not readily available. An automatic data collection and NLP-backed classification framework aligned with humanitarian perspectives can help bridge this gap. In this paper, we present HumVI - a dataset comprising news articles in three languages (English, French, Arabic) containing instances of different types of violent incidents categorized by the humanitarian sector they impact, e.g., aid security, education, food security, health, and protection. Reliable labels were obtained for the dataset by partnering with a data-backed humanitarian organization, Insecurity Insight. We provide multiple benchmarks for the dataset, employing various deep learning architectures and techniques, including data augmentation and mask loss, to address different task-related challenges, e.g., domain expansion. The dataset is publicly available at https://github.com/dataminr-ai/humvi-dataset.


Israel dismisses 2 officers over deadly drone strikes on aid workers in Gaza

FOX News

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli military said Friday that it dismissed two officers and reprimanded three others for their roles in drone strikes in Gaza that killed seven aid workers on a food-delivery mission, saying the officers had mishandled critical information and violated the army's rules of engagement. The findings of a retired general's investigation into the Monday killings marked an embarrassing admission by Israel, which faces growing accusations from key allies, including the United States, of not doing enough to protect Gaza's civilians from its war with the militant Hamas group. The findings are likely to bolster widespread skepticism over the Israeli military's decision-making.


White House investigating reports Israel used AI to identify bombing targets in Gaza and create a 'kill list' of 37,000 Palestinians suspected of being militants

Daily Mail - Science & tech

The White House revealed it is looking into reports the Israeli army has been using an AI system to populate its'kill list' of alleged Hamas terrorists, hours after President Joe Biden's call with Benjamin Netanyahu. The report cited six Israeli intelligence officers, who admitted to using an AI called'Lavender' to classify as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants -- marking these people and their homes as acceptable targets for air strikes. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told CNN on Thursday that the reports had not been verified, but they were investigating. Israel has vehemently denied the AI's role with an army spokesperson describing the system as'auxiliary tools that assist officers in the process of incrimination.' However, during the call Biden reportedly threatened that he would condition the US' support for the attack in Gaza if the Israeli government didn't protect civilians and aid workers from offensive assaults.


Israeli military sacks two officers over strikes on WCK aid convoy

Al Jazeera

The Israeli military says it has dismissed two officers for their roles in an attack in central Gaza that killed seven aid workers, saying they had mishandled critical information and violated the army's rules of engagement. The military said in a report on Friday that an internal investigation "found that the forces identified a gunman on one of the aid trucks" which led to the discovery of another. The United States-based charity, World Central Kitchen (WCK), whose convoy was hit said Israel's "apologies for the outrageous killing of our colleagues represent cold comfort". WCK CEO Erin Gore also said "Israel needs to take concrete steps to assure the safety of humanitarian aid workers. The Israeli military said that after the vehicles left the warehouse where the aid had been unloaded "one of the commanders mistakenly assumed that the gunmen were located inside the accompanying vehicles and that these were Hamas terrorists". It called the strike on the aid vehicles "a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the Standard Operating Procedures". Reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera's Rory Challands pointed out that the report by the Israeli military makes no mention of any potential legal prosecutions against the dismissed officers. "That might come in the future, but it's certainly not contained in the report," he said. "What we're getting is dismissals and military reprimands.


Biden ridiculed for 'obvious hypocrisy' as he condemns Israeli airstrike that killed aid workers in Gaza

FOX News

Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., and Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson react to military leaders testifying during House hearing on President Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal on'Hannity.' President Biden's condemnation of the Israeli airstrike that killed seven food aid workers in Gaza earlier this week isn't sitting well with some critics, who called the president's reaction "obvious hypocrisy." Biden responded after the World Central Kitchen (WCK) nonprofit, founded by celebrity chef Jose Andres, announced Tuesday that it was pausing all its operations in Gaza after seven of its food aid workers – including a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen -- were killed by an "unforgivable" Israeli airstrike. "I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday," Biden wrote in a statement. "They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war. They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy."


Researchers' revamped AI tool makes water dramatically safer in refugee camps

#artificialintelligence

Researchers from York University's Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and Lassonde School of Engineering have revamped their Safe Water Optimization Tool (SWOT) with multiple innovations that will help aid workers unlock potentially life-saving information from water-quality data regularly collected in humanitarian settings.


'More than a dozen killed' by Ethiopian drone attack in Tigray

Al Jazeera

An air attack in Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray on Monday killed at least 17 people, mostly women, and wounded dozens in the town of Mai Tsebri, two aid workers have told Reuters news agency, citing local authorities and witnesses. Monday's attack came on the day US President Joe Biden in a phone call raised concerns with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed about civilian casualties and suffering caused by air attacks. At least 56 people were killed and 30 injured, including some children, in a drone attack on a camp for displaced people in Tigray on Friday. A report by the zonal administration said women at a flour mill made up most of the casualties in Monday's drone attack, a source who saw the report told The Associated Press news agency. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak about it to reporters.


Rep. Mike Turner: Biden's failed Afghanistan drone strike begs questions Gen. Milley must answer

FOX News

Tuesday, top U.S. military officials publicly acknowledged they advised President Joe Biden to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan despite the president's claim otherwise. This amid multiple sources confirming extremist organizations such al-Qaeda and ISIS-K are still present in Afghanistan and remain a rising threat to U.S. national security. While Tuesday's Senate hearing was a productive start to this investigation, I am looking forward to asking General Mark Milley, Secretary Lloyd Austin, and General Kenneth McKenzie questions in Wednesday's House Armed Services Committee Hearing. Leading up to the Biden Administration's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the president touted an "over-the-horizon" capability that would allow the U.S. to identify and eliminate threats from afar. The Biden administration has claimed the U.S. did not need a counterterrorism force in Afghanistan because the U.S. possessed significant intelligence and military capability to attack and eliminate terrorist threats reaching into Afghanistan from other U.S. military locations. However, Biden's withdrawal left a gap in intelligence gathering capabilities that has caused targeting decisions to be made with incomplete information, with increased risk and assumptions, and outside the norms of standard protocols.


Botched Kabul drone strike latest furor involving Milley, who called the operation 'righteous'

FOX News

Former DNC national press secretary Jose Aristimuno and Urban Reform president Charles Blain weigh in on'Fox News Live.' A botched drone strike in Kabul aimed at ISIS-K terrorists, but that the Pentagon admitted on Friday instead killed an aid worker and members of his family including seven children, is the latest furor to involve Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley -- who had called the strike "righteous" but on Friday described it as a "horrible tragedy." Head of the U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. announced Friday that it is unlikely any ISIS-K members were killed in a Kabul drone strike on Aug. 29, which led to multiple civilian casualties. GENERAL SAYS IT IS UNLIKELY ISIS-K MEMBERS KILLED IN AUGUST KABUL DRONE STRIKE: 'A TRAGIC MISTAKE' "We now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K or a direct threat to US forces," McKenzie said of the airstrike at a briefing, following an investigation by the military. The drone strike, which was intended to target ISIS-K operatives, resulted in the deaths of an aid worker and up to nine of his family members, including seven children.