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October 7, 2023: Israel begins bombarding Gaza in retaliation to Hamas attacks
Israel resumes massive attacks on March 18, killing over 400 in a day — two months after ceasefire ending 15 months of relentless attacks began
Future governance of Gaza remains unclear as Trump suggests US takeover but Arab countries propose alternative plan, which UK, others back
Hamas and Israel exchange 25 hostages, bodies and 1,700 detainees in seven swaps
Over 50,000 Palestinians, 400 Israeli soldiers dead; nearly all of Gaza displaced
Multi-billion dollar challenges ahead to reconstruct decimated enclave
At least four were killed and several others injured as Israeli attacks across various areas of the Gaza Strip continued, according to Al Jazeera reports.
In the most recent incident, an attack on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed a young man.
Separately, Israeli fighter jets bombed a group of Palestinians in the al-Musaddar area, north of the city of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, killing at least one person and injuring others.
Earlier today, Al Jazeera quoted Gaza’s Civil Defence as saying that two people were killed and several were wounded in an attack earlier on the Abu Shamala family home in Khan Younis.
The 12-year-old Ahmed Abu al-Rous was born paralysed. He was killed in an Israeli attack on a tent camp for forcibly displaced people that killed 10 others, including his mother, sister and four more children, Al Jazeera reports.
Ahmed’s wheelchair was burned to ash in the Israeli attack.
“He used to smile at everyone,” a family friend said of Ahmed.
Watch the full report here.
An attack on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza has killed a young man, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
It said the Palestinian Information Centre reported that a young man, identified as Akram al-Hawajri, was killed by the drone near the al-Fazb market, located to the north of the entrance to Bureij camp.
Israeli artillery is reported to be shelling the nearby Maghazi refugee camp, located south of Bureij camp in central Gaza.
Marking World Heritage Day, human rights group Al-Haq has said Israel has targeted several Palestinian sites — including those on Unesco’s World Heritage List — in its ongoing attempt to suppress Palestinian culture and heritage, Al Jazeera reports.
The al-Makhrour region, located in the occupied West Bank’s northern Bethlehem governorate and inscribed on the UN’s World Heritage List in 2014, faces increased threats of land grabbing by Israeli settlers, Al-Haq said.
Palestinians have long “farmed the landmark ancient terraced slopes of the Al-Makhrour and Battir area with vegetables, fruit trees, olives and vines, an area marked out for its unique cultural and agricultural landscape, irrigation system, and archaeological remains”, the rights group said in a statement.
“With the construction and expansion of illegal settlements and related infrastructure in Al-Makhrour, Israel’s settlement enterprise has been disrupting the area’s biodiversity and incredible potential as one of the few remaining farming areas for Palestinians, sustaining Palestinian life,” Al-Haq was quoted as saying.
The death toll from US strikes on a Yemeni fuel port has risen to at least 80, Houthi rebels say, in the deadliest attack of Washington’s 15-month campaign against the group, AFP reports.
Houthi media reported fresh strikes in and around the capital Sanaa last night.
Houthi health ministry spokesman Anees Alasbahi said rescuers were still searching for bodies at the fuel terminal on the Red Sea, suggesting the number of dead could rise.
The rebels’ Al-Masirah TV, citing local officials, said the toll from the strike had “risen to 80 dead and 150 wounded”.
Hezbollah “will not let anyone disarm” it, the Lebanese group’s leader Naim Qassem said, as Washington presses Beirut to compel the movement to hand over its weapons, AFP reports.
“We will not let anyone disarm Hezbollah or disarm the resistance” against Israel, Qassem said in remarks on a Hezbollah-affiliated TV channel.
“We must cut this idea of disarmament from the dictionary.”
Qassem said his group was ready for dialogue on a “defence strategy”, “but not under the pressure of occupation” by Israel.
“Israel must withdraw (from south Lebanon) and cease its aggression, and the Lebanese state must begin the process of reconstruction,” he added.
An Israeli military helicopter has attacked a tent housing displaced Palestinians in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing at least five people, according to an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent on the ground.
Medical sources in Gaza have told Al Jazeera that at least 64 people have now been killed in Israeli raids across the Strip over the past day.
The Israeli forces have bombed a home in the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza, killing at least two people, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
A federal judge has ordered US President Donald Trump’s administration to transfer Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk being held in Louisiana to Vermont while he weighs her claims that US immigration authorities unlawfully arrested her based on her pro-Palestinian advocacy, Reuters reports.
The decision by US District Judge William Sessions in Burlington marked an early victory for Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish national, in her continuing bid to be released from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s custody and return to her studies following her March 25 arrest in Massachusetts.
The case has become a flashpoint in the administration’s rapid moves to revoke the visas and legal status of hundreds of international students, including pro-Palestinian activists, as part of Trump’s hardline approach to immigration.
The night before Ozturk was transferred to Louisiana, a lawyer for her sued in Massachusetts to challenge her arrest. A judge quickly ordered authorities not to remove Ozturk from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice.
Read more here.
Al Jazeera has reported that at least 50 people have now been killed by Israeli attacks since dawn.
Citing medical sources, the news agency said that more than half of the casualties were in Gaza City and northern Gaza, but deadly attacks have occurred throughout the Palestinian enclave, including in Khan Younis and Rafah in the south.
Summer Aljamal, a Palestinian woman who works with Medical Aid for Palestinians, and her family have spent nearly a year displaced from their home in Rafah, Al Jazeera reports.
“Throughout that time, my family and I have had to move multiple times,” she said in a video shared by the organisation.
“We were never able to settle, never able to feel truly safe.”
She described returning to Rafah during the short-lived ceasefire in Gaza, which ended on March 18, and seeing that her home was “seriously damaged but somehow still standing”.
“Today, we live with the unbearable uncertainty of not knowing what’s next. We do not know if we will ever be able to go back, or if the place we once called home will still be there.”
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports that the prolonged and systematic Israeli policy of siege and blockade of the entire Gaza Strip has led to severe repercussions at the humanitarian level.
“Gaza’s hospitals are operating beyond capacity. In light of chronic shortages of medical supplies, the situation is now unprecedented,” he adds. “The situation is very difficult for every single person here in Gaza – you have 200,000 Palestinians suffering from chronic diseases in very desperate need of essential medicines.”
Azzoum reports that Palestinians are forced to cut down on the number of daily meals and are eating only canned goods and vegetables that they can afford. Prices of those have skyrocketed.
“We can see the very psychological toll of the city on the faces of everyone here, people are walking very exhausted, traumatised,” Azzoum adds. “They are thinking about the dark future that awaits them.
“People are not just dying here from bombardment, but they have started to die from malnutrition, and many of them feel psychologically broken due to their inability to provide meals for their children.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei has condemned the killing of Palestinian children in Gaza in what he described as Israel’s “relentless brutal bombardment” and “cruel starvation”.
“These are not only morally outrageous; they are the most heinous acts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide under international law,” Baghaei said in a post on X.
“The Israeli regime, its enablers & apologists, must be held accountable.”
In a post on X, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) stated that it estimates “nearly 420,000 people have been displaced yet again since the breakdown of the ceasefire,” Al Jazeera reports.
Al Jazeera reports that 45 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since dawn.
Six Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air raid that hit a makeshift barber shop in central Khan Younis, while at least 10 people were killed after Israel bombed a home in Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian woman was killed in Israeli bombardment of an area northeast of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, while two Palestinians were killed in an attack on a tent housing displaced people in the at-Twam area in the north.
Three Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air attack on a house on as-Sikka Street in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Hamas has urged the international community to exert immediate pressure to end Israel’s complete blockade of the Gaza Strip that has been in place since March 2, AFP reports.
“The international community is required to intervene immediately and exert the necessary pressure to end the unjust blockade imposed on our people in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas’s chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said in a statement.
The Foreign Office (FO) has condemned Israel’s bombing of the Baptist Hospital in Gaza, calling it a flagrant violation of humanitarian law.
“This attack, part of a pattern of targeting medical facilities, constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,” said FO spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan. “That it occurred on Palm Sunday, a sacred occasion for Christians, underscores Israel’s blatant disregard for religious sanctity and civilian lives.”
Pakistan demanded an immediate end to Israel’s military campaign, which has “resulted in the indiscriminate killing of innocent and unarmed Palestinians, including women and children, and the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure”.
“Israel’s relentless assaults have crippled Gaza’s healthcare system, depriving critically ill patients of vital medical care. Coupled with the blockade on humanitarian aid, these actions reflect a deliberate strategy to prolong suffering and entrench conflict,” the FO spokesperson said.
Pakistan reiterated its call for an immediate halt to hostilities by Israeli forces and its support for the two-state solution, “with a viable, independent and sovereign State of Palestine on pre-June 1967 borders with Al Quds Al Sharif (Jerusalem) as its capital”.
Pakistan also urged the international community to take decisive action to hold Israel accountable and protect Palestinian civilians from further violence.
The British consulate has posted a thread on X in which it says diplomats from a number of countries, including Belgium, France, Spain and Germany, have shown “support with Palestinian community members” after settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.
“The attacks included demolitions of donor-funded shelters and other structures,” the consulate said, as it called on Israel to “uphold its obligations under the 4th Geneva Convention, including the prohibition of forcible transfer and destruction of homes and property”.
“We also reaffirm our opposition to settlements, which are illegal under international law, and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and to a just, lasting and comprehensive peace,” it said.
Baby formula is largely missing from the markets and pharmacies in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
Families are not able to provide for their most basic needs, even for the most vulnerable – children and newborn babies.
Gaza is quickly running out of all necessities.
Gaza’s civil defence agency has said that a fuel shortage could force the organisation, which carries out emergency and rescue services in Gaza, to halt operations “within the next few days”, in a post on Telegram.
“We call for pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities to allow the entry of sufficient quantities of fuel,” said the civil defence.
Israel has not allowed any fuel, or food or medicine for that matter, into the Gaza Strip since early March. A top Israeli official said earlier this week that it will continue to blockade Gaza as a means to force Hamas to release the remaining Israeli captives.
Outside Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera spoke to Fadi Ahmed, who had lost his son who was suffering from malnutrition.
He said his son was referred to Al-Aqsa Hospital where the medical staff discovered “massive infections in the boy’s lungs, which led to a severe lack of oxygen in his blood”.
“The boy’s weakness and severe malnutrition led to his inability to resist and then to his death … after spending one week at the hospital.”
The outlet also spoke to Intisar Hamdan outside the hospital after she had lost her grandson due to malnutrition.
Her son had not been able to find any milk for the child for three days, and after he was unable to receive treatment, the child had died, she said as she held her deceased grandson in her arms.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said, “This is the bleak and sombre reality that has emerged from the ongoing Israeli closure of crossing borders that have left families vulnerable to face these extreme humanitarian conditions.
“Children are suffering from not just malnutrition, but also serious medical complications and diseases that cannot be easily treated and require medical supplies that are scarce,” he said.
Hamas has denounced overnight US strikes on a Yemeni fuel port that killed dozens of people as Washington renewed its campaign against the Houthi rebels, AFP reports.
“This blatant aggression represents a gross violation of Yemeni sovereignty, a full-fledged war crime, and reaffirms the continuation of hostile American policies targeting the free peoples who reject Zionist and American hegemony in the region,” Hamas said in a statement.
Gaza’s civil defence agency has said 15 people, including 10 from the same family (Baraka family), had been killed in two overnight Israeli strikes, AFP reports.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said on Telegram that “our crews recovered the bodies of 10 martyrs and a large number of wounded from the house of the Baraka family and the neighbouring houses targeted by the Israeli occupation forces in the Bani Suhaila area east of Khan Yunis,” in the southern Gaza Strip.
Bassal later announced that a separate strike hit two houses in northern Gaza’s Tal al-Zaatar, where crews had “recovered the bodies of five people”.
The Donald Trump administration has ordered a social media vetting for all US visa applicants who have been to the Gaza Strip on or after January 1, 2007, in the latest push to tighten screening of foreign travellers, Reuters reports.
If the review of an applicant’s social media uncovers “potential derogatory information” relating to security issues, then a security advisory opinion will be a submitted which is an interagency investigation to determine if a visa applicant poses a national security risk to the United States.
Order is to conduct a social media vetting for all immigrant and non-immigrant visas, including non-governmental organisation workers as well as individuals who have been in the Palestinian enclave for any length of time in an official or diplomatic capacity.
Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for Israel to end its weeks-long blockade and allow humanitarian aid to enter the besieged enclave, Al Jazeera reports.
“We need to work with our international partners [to exert] maximum pressure, maximum encouragement for an immediate ceasefire [in Gaza],” he said, speaking as the leaders of Canada’s four major parties squared off in their final debate ahead of the country’s general election later this month.
Posting on X, Carney also called for the “the release of all hostages” and “more humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza”, as well as a “lasting two-state solution”.
