Get the latest news and updates from Dawn
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
Israeli forces have killed nine Palestinians, including two children, and injured at least another 130 people in the occupied West Bank between March 25 and April 7, Al Jazeera reports, citing the latest UN situation report on the occupied territory.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a 10th victim of the Israeli military was shot and killed on April 8 — a Palestinian woman who Israeli soldiers alleged had thrown stones.
The UN report also reveals that 34 children were among the 130 injured by the Israeli military during the reporting period up to April 7.
On top of the military violence, Israeli settlers carried out 44 attacks on Palestinians that resulted in the injury of 25, including five children, and property damage across 35 communities.
Israeli authorities also demolished 105 Palestinian-owned structures across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem during the same period, leaving 122 Palestinians displaced, including 64 children.
Prominent US lawmakers have joined a chorus of condemnation on the ongoing detention of Mahmoud Khalil after an immigration judge ruled that the Columbia University student can be deported on the grounds of threats to US national security, Al Jazeera reports.
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the Trump administration’s detention of Khalil as an “attack on the First Amendment”, which guarantees freedom of speech.
“Mahmoud’s case is a litmus test for the right to free speech in our country. This ruling jeopardises dissent,” she said.
Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez also labelled Khalil’s detention a “clear 1st Amendment violation”.
“I stand with Mahmoud, and anyone who cares about our constitutional rights should too,” she said.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Japan have condemned Israeli authorities’ closure of six schools run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera reports.
Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released a statement condemning the closures, saying that it “considers the deprivation of children from education a new crime in the ongoing series of Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories”.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry also condemned what it called Israel’s “continued obstinance and systemic targeting of UNRWA”, while Japan’s Representative Office to Palestine said the move threatens “the fundamental right to education of 800 pupils”.
Doctors have warned of the risk of polio spreading in Gaza along with other diseases, such as measles and cholera, as Israel continues a total blockade of the Strip, Al Jazeera reports.
The fourth round of a polio vaccination campaign was scheduled to take place this week. But because of Israel’s refusal to allow medicine to enter Gaza, the Health Ministry said 600,000 children will not be immunised.
“If the vaccines are not allowed in the campaign will fail, which could lead to the renewed spread of the disease,” Dr Ola al-Najjar, one of the campaign supervisors, told Al Jazeera.
The president of the Red Cross has described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “hell on earth” and warned that its field hospital will run out of supplies within two weeks, Reuters reports.
“We are now finding ourselves in a situation that I have to describe as hell on earth … People don’t have access to water, electricity, food, in many parts,” Mirjana Spoljaric told Reuters at the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.
Spoljaric said supplies were running critically low.
“For six weeks, nothing has come in, so we will, in a couple of weeks’ time, run out of supplies that we need to keep the hospital going,” she said.
The World Health Organisation said supplies of antibiotics and blood bags were dwindling fast. Twenty-two out of 36 hospitals in the enclave are only minimally functional, Dr Rik Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via video link in Jerusalem.
The Red Cross president also raised concerns about the safety of humanitarian operations.
“It is extremely dangerous for the population to move, but it’s especially also dangerous for us to operate,” Spoljaric said.
The United Nations human rights office has warned that Israel’s actions in Gaza are increasingly endangering the existence of Palestinians as a group, Reuters reports.
“In light of the cumulative impact of Israeli forces conduct in Gaza, we are seriously concerned that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group,” Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has discussed a new Egyptian proposal for a prisoner exchange with Hamas during a briefing session that included Israel’s negotiation team and heads of security agencies, Anadolu reports citing Israeli media.
Channel 12 said that Netanyahu held a review session regarding the Israeli hostages in Gaza, without providing further details. According to the channel’s sources, the Egyptian proposal includes “the release of eight living Israeli hostages in exchange for a 50-day ceasefire”.
Channel 12 also said the proposal includes moving on to discussions for the second phase of the deal after the release of the eight hostages.
Israeli officials told the channel that “the chances of reaching an agreement are increasing.”
The latest Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 26 more Palestinians, bringing the death toll since October 2023 to 50,912, Anadolu reports citing the enclave’s health ministry.
A ministry statement said another 106 injured were taken to hospitals in the last 24 hours, bringing the number of wounded in the conflict to 115,981.
Many victims are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads, with rescuers unable to reach them, the statement added.
Gaza rescuers said a pre-dawn Israeli air strike killed 10 members of the same family, as the UN said dozens of recent attacks on the Palestinian territory had killed only women and children.
“Ten people, including seven children, were brought to the hospital as martyrs following an Israeli air strike that targeted the Farra family home in central Khan Yunis,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The dead and injured were taken to hospital. AFP footage of the aftermath showed several bodies wrapped in white shrouds and blankets. Footage of the house that was hit showed mangled concrete slabs and twisted metal.
Hundreds of thousands of Gaza City residents have lost their only source of clean water during the past week after supplies from Israel’s water utility were cut by the Israeli army’s renewed offensive, Reuters reports citing municipal authorities in the territory.
Many now have to walk, sometimes for miles, to get a small water fill after the Israeli military’s bombardment and ground offensive in the Gaza City’s eastern Shujaiya neighbourhood damaged the pipeline operated by state-owned Mekorot.
“Since morning, I have been waiting for water,” said 42-year-old Gaza resident Faten Nassar. “There are no stations and no trucks coming. There is no water. The crossings are closed. God willing, the war will end safely and peacefully.”
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read more here.
An investigation into Israel’s killing of paramedics in southern Gaza last month must be carried out independently, Al Jazeera reports quoting German Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Assistance Luise Amtsberg.
“This alleged violation of international law must not go unpunished,” Amtsberg said in a message on social media platform Bluesky. “The investigation must be carried out quickly and independently, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice as soon as possible. The Israeli government and judiciary have a duty here,” she said.
Israel’s distortion of the event is “once again” straining ties between Germany and Israel, she added.
The United Nation’s World Health Organisation has said that Medicine stocks are critically low due to the aid block in Gaza, making it hard to keep hospitals even partially operational, Al Jazeera reports.
“We are critically low in our three warehouses, on antibiotics, IV fluids and blood bags,” WHO official Rik Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via videolink from Jerusalem.
The United Nations has decried the impact of ongoing Israeli strikes across Gaza on civilians, finding that “a large percentage of fatalities are children and women”.
“Between 18 March and 9 April 2025, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people,” the UN human rights office said, adding that “in some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children”.
Hundreds of retired and current reserve officers from Israel’s Intelligence Unit 8200 are joining their colleagues at the Air Force, calling on the Israeli government to end the onslaught in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports, citing the Israeli Broadcasting Authority.
The report comes a day after the Israeli military, supported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said it had decided to discharge active-duty reservists who signed a letter asking the government to end the conflict that, they said, serves political rather than security interests.
“We identify with the serious and worrying assertion that at this time the war mainly serves political and personal interests and not security interests,” read an extract of the letter composed by the Intelligence Unit’s petitioners. “Continuing the war does not contribute to achieving any of its declared goals and will lead to the deaths of the abductees and soldiers,” it added.
Echoing similar concerns, about 2,000 faculty members at higher education institutions joined Air Force personnel and signed the petition, Channel 12 reported.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has posted a video on X in which it reiterated its call for a renewal of the ceasefire deal, abandoned by Israel last month.
The video contains the testimony of Umm Khaled from Gaza City’s Shujayea, who has been displaced five times during Israel’s war on the enclave. She said her family doesn’t have enough food and are forced to live in cramped conditions with barely enough space to sit down.
Bashar Masri, a Palestinian-American businessman, has resigned from his position on the dean’s council at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Al Jazeera reports, citing The New York Post.
The report comes days after Masri was accused by nearly 200 Americans, including survivors and relatives of victims of the October 7 attacks on Israel, of providing assistance in constructing infrastructure that allowed Hamas fighters to carry out their deadly assault.
“Mr Masri has resigned from the Dean’s Council. The lawsuit raises serious allegations that should be vetted and addressed through the legal process,” the school reportedly said.
The plaintiffs in the suit, filed in the US District Court for Washington, DC, claim properties that the Palestinian-American owned, developed and controlled concealed tunnels underneath them and had tunnel entrances accessible from within the properties, which Hamas used before and after October 7. Masri’s office called the lawsuit “baseless”.
Israel and Egypt have reportedly exchanged draft documents on a ceasefire-for-captives deal, according to a report from Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, Al Jazeera reports.
The new proposals are aimed at bridging the gap between a ceasefire extension tabled by US special envoy Steve Witkoff, and a counter one tabled by Egypt and Qatar in late March, according to the report.
Witkoff’s proposal, tabled last month, called for the release of five Israeli captives in exchange for a two month ceasefire and the release a large number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
Egypt’s proposal calls for Hamas to release of eight living captives and eight deceased captives in exchange for a truce lasting between 40 and 70 days, as well as Israel releasing a large number of Palestinians from prisons.
Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesperson, issued a warning to residents of the Shujayea district and at least five other areas in the east of Gaza City, ordering them to displace to the west.
The Israeli military “is operating with great force in your areas to destroy terrorist infrastructure,” Adraee claimed in a post on X, showing a map with the areas to be evacuated marked in red.
A Copenhagen court is to rule whether a lawsuit filed by four humanitarian organisations accusing Denmark of violating international law by exporting weapons to Israel is admissible in court, AFP reports.
The Palestinian human rights association Al-Haq, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Action Aid Denmark filed the lawsuit against the Danish foreign ministry and national police last year.
They said in a statement there was a risk that “Danish military material was being used to commit serious crimes against civilians in Gaza”.
The associations targeted the foreign ministry in their lawsuit since it “determines whether there is a risk that weapons and weapons components could be used to violate human rights” and the police because it was the authority responsible for issuing export licences.
Denmark’s Eastern High Court is expected to announce its decision around 10am (1pm PKT).
Read full story here.
The al-Salam neighbourhood in southern Khan Younis has come under heavy shelling and air strikes have struck nearby Rafah. Two people have been killed and several others injured in that attack, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
Local Palestinian media also reports people killed and wounded after Israeli strikes on a group of civilians in the al-Atatra neighbourhood of Beit Lahiya, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Jenin Brigades — an umbrella group of Palestinians fighting against the Israeli occupation — have claimed responsibility for an improvised explosive device (IED) attack on Israeli military vehicles in the occupied West Bank, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
The Brigades said in a statement that a “highly explosive device” was prepared in advance and detonated against “enemy vehicles” at the entrance to the town of Silat al-Harithiya in Jenin.
There were no initial reports of casualties.
The Nablus battalion of the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), also reported “battles” with Israeli forces in several areas of the Old City in Nablus.
Activists poured 300 litres of a blood-red coloured biodegradable dye into an ornamental pond outside the US embassy in London, to draw attention to Washington’s arming of Israel amid the war on Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
The Greenpeace activists turned the embassy’s pond into a lake of symbolic blood, using a container to dispense the dye bearing the words: “Stop Arming Israel”.
Will McCallum, Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director, was among five people arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage, the activist group and police said.
The Israeli military has killed at least eight people after bombing the Farra family home in the Sheikh Nasser area, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
But Al Jazeera Arabic now reports that a second attack has taken place in Khan Younis, with Israeli fighter jets bombing a home in the Katiba area in the north of the city.
At least six people have been killed, including three children and two women.
US authorities have charged 12 protesters with felony vandalism for participating in a June 2024 pro-Palestine demonstration at Stanford University in California, Al Jazeera reports.
The charged — who range in age from 19 to 32 — barricaded themselves inside the office of the school president last year. Prosecutors accuse the group of “conspiracy to occupy” the building, adding that at least one suspect entered by breaking a window.
The university said at the time that 13 people were arrested during the protest, while one police officer was injured and the building suffered “extensive” damage.
“On the other side of the Gaza Strip, we can see that there has been pretty much a concentration on targeting makeshift tents and residential homes in the city of Khan Younis,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports from Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip.
“Israel is systematically looking to isolate significant parts and tracts of land in Gaza in order to expand the so-called ‘buffer zone’.
“But there is more, growing — not just military pressure, but also medical isolation,” he said.
Gaza’s healthcare system has been left struggling to survive and provide the minimal level of medical services for the surging numbers of casualties arriving to the hospitals, and for also ensuring the stability of the medical service due to the chronic shortages of all essential medical supplies as the Israeli blockade continues, he added.
