Palestinian aid worker Mohammed al-Wahidi, 65, was killed in an Israeli air strike on the taxi he was travelling in through Gaza City's Sabra neighbourhood on Tuesday, prompting widespread grief across the Gaza Strip. A prominent humanitarian figure and senior official with the Egypt-backed Egyptian Relief Committee, he had recently gained wider recognition for helping organise public screenings of World Cup football matches intended to give families, especially children, a brief respite from the war. His death matters as a symbol of the toll the conflict has taken on those working to help civilians, with tributes flooding social media within hours.

The strike also killed three other people, including two brothers aged eight and 10 who were passing by, and another man. The Israeli military said it had struck a Hamas operative and was aware of claims that uninvolved people had been killed. A former English teacher, al-Wahidi had spent more than two-and-a-half years co-ordinating food aid and displacement camps, and was killed only hours before a screening of Egypt's last-16 match against Argentina. The UN recorded at least 593 humanitarian workers killed in Gaza since the war began, which followed the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that killed about 1,200 people; at least 73,118 people have since been killed in Gaza, according to its Hamas-run health ministry.