Tel Aviv, Israel - Israel responded to mounting international pressure by admitting a series of "grave mistakes" were made in the drone killing of seven aid workers in Gaza.

World Central Kitchen (WCK), whose workers were killed in Monday night's drone strike, demanded that an independent commission investigate the killings.

Poland said it had demanded a "criminal inquiry" by Israel after what it called the murder of the charity workers, one of whom was Polish.

Israel claimed Friday it had been targeting a "Hamas gunman" in the strike, with its military admitting a series of "grave mistakes" and violations of its own rules of engagement.

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A colonel and major have been fired, while reprimands were handed out to other senior officers.

It also announced it would allow "temporary" aid deliveries into famine-threatened northern Gaza, hours after the US warned of a sharp shift in its policy over Israel's war against Hamas.

The toughened US position followed the killing of the World Central Kitchen workers – an Australian, three Britons, a Canadian-US dual national, a Palestinian, and a Pole.

An internal Israeli military inquiry found that the drone team had made an "operational misjudgment of the situation" after allegedly spotting a suspected Hamas gunman shooting from the top of an aid truck.

But WCK insisted that the Israeli army "cannot credibly" probe its own failure, which is why it wants an "independent commission to investigate the killings."

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With relief work in Gaza having become almost impossible amid a looming famine, Isabelle Defourny, president of Doctors Without Borders France, said that by providing military support to Israel countries like the US were "complicit with what to our eyes amounts to genocide".

On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council demanded a halt in all arms sales to Israel, the first time the top UN rights body has taken a position on the Gaza war.