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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
Gaza’s government media office says famine is spreading in the enclave, with “more than a million children at risk”, Al Jazeera reports.
“Vital sectors in Gaza are collapsing amid a stifling blockade and shameful international silence. We warn that the humanitarian catastrophe will continue to worsen at a frightening rate as the occupation continues to close the crossings,” the office said.
It added that famine has become a “reality” with at least 52 deaths, including 50 children, due to hunger and malnutrition.
The ministry in the enclave says 84 people killed and 168 injured were reported to Gaza’s hospitals in the last 24 hours, Al Jazeera reports.
The toll includes the bodies of six people killed in the previous days but recovered today.
The death toll from Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023 has risen to 51,439, with 117,416 injured, a statement on Telegram added.
The UN’s World Food Programme warns that it has depleted all its food stocks in Gaza, where the entry of all humanitarian aid has been blocked by Israel since March 2, AFP reports.
“Today, WFP delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meals kitchens in the Gaza Strip. These kitchens are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days”, WFP said in a statement.
The UN human rights office says Israel’s attacks on Palestinians have accelerated since the collapse of the Gaza ceasefire in March and during the past week in particular, Al Jazeera reports.
A statement by the agency stressed that attacks killed countless civilians and further risked the destruction of what little infrastructure remains in the enclave. It issued a reminder that Israel’s complete closure of Gaza, preventing lifesaving assistance from reaching civilians, including food and fuel, has entered its eighth week.
“Persistent Israeli military attacks on civilians and civilian objects have continued throughout Gaza in violation of the core principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack required by international humanitarian law,” the agency stressed.
It added: “Extremely high civilian casualties over 18 months do not appear to have prompted any changes in Israeli targeting practices and policies, a pattern indicating at the very least a complete disregard for the lives of civilians in Gaza.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says the multiple forced displacement orders issued by the Israeli military have left Palestinians “with less than a third of Gaza’s area to live in”, Al Jazeera reports.
“That remaining space is fragmented, unsafe, and barely liveable,” a statement on X said.
It added: “Overcrowded shelters are in a terrible condition, service providers are struggling to operate, and the last resources are being depleted.”
A child has succumbed to their wounds after an Israeli attack on a tent housing displaced people in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, Al Jazeera reports.
Since Israel restarted its attacks in March, it has issued several forced evacuation orders to Palestinians, calling on them to move to the al-Mawasi area, which the army has routinely targeted.
Spain’s government has halted a controversial $7.5 million deal to buy ammunition from Israel, following criticism from far-left allies within the governing minority coalition.
The country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, intervened to cancel the deal after Sumar, a group of left-wing parties, threatened to pull out of the governing coalition.
“After exhausting all routes for negotiation, the prime minister, deputy prime minister and ministries involved have decided to rescind this contract with the Israeli company IMI Systems,” a government source, who did not want to be named according to Spanish government practice, told Al Jazeera.
Read more here.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has condemned Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s refugee camps and displacement shelters amid its ongoing blockade of aid deliveries into the enclave, calling it a “concrete example of a war crime and a crime against humanity”, Al Jazeera reports.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ismail Baghaei also criticised the United Nations Security Council for its “inaction” and called the US and some European countries that supply Israel with weapons “accomplices”, according to a statement the Foreign Ministry posted on X.
“The Foreign Ministry spokesman stressed that the continued impunity of the Zionist regime and the continued killing of defenceless people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and the occupation of parts of Lebanon and Syria, severely threaten peace and security in the West Asian region,” the statement read.
It added that “serious measures” must be taken to prevent the “spread of insecurity and confront the expansionism of the apartheid regime”.
Gaza’s civil defence agency has reported that the death toll from an Israeli air strike the day before on a house in the north of the Palestinian territory had risen to 23.
“Civil defence teams recovered 11 bodies last night and this morning following the Israeli bombing that targeted a residential house … in Jabalia.”
“This is in addition to the 12 victims recovered at the time of the attack yesterday,” Mohammad al-Mughayyir, an official with the agency, told AFP.
Five members of the same family were killed when Israeli forces bombed their tent shelter in the Al-Mawasi area to the west of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Wafa reports.
According to Wafa correspondent, the airstrike targeted the tent of the Abu Taimah family, killing a man, his pregnant wife, and their three children.
Additionally, a 3-year-old child died from severe burns following a fire that broke out in a separate tent in the same area.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that approximately half a million people have been newly displaced in the Gaza Strip over the past month due to repeated evacuation orders issued by Israeli forces, Wafa reports.
In a statement shared on X, UNRWA said the latest waves of displacement have confined Palestinians to less than one-third of Gaza’s original territory. The remaining areas, according to the agency, are “fragmented, unsafe, and barely livable”.
UNRWA stressed the dire humanitarian conditions in overcrowded shelters, describing the situation as catastrophic. It said service providers are struggling to operate amid a near-total depletion of available resources, the agency added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered condolences on behalf of Israel following the death of Pope Francis, AFP reports.
“The State of Israel expresses its deepest condolences to the Catholic Church and the Catholic community worldwide at the passing of Pope Francis. May he rest in peace,” Netanyahu’s office posted on X late Thursday.
It was Netanyahu’s first statement since the announcement of the pope’s death on Monday.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, was among the first world dignitaries to respond to the Pope’s death, praising him as “a man of deep faith and boundless compassion”.
Israel’s forcible displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank is rising, the UN warns, with 14 more families ordered to leave Tulkarem city while tens of thousands are being prevented by the military from returning to their homes in the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps, Al Jazeera reports.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also reports in its latest situation update that Israeli settler violence and home demolitions displaced seven families in Ramallah.
A Palestinian man suffered a fatal heart attack triggered by tear gas deployed by Israeli troops during an attack by settlers on a Palestinian village earlier this week that was aided by the Israeli soldiers.
In another settler attack, six Palestinians were injured include one who was shot and later had to have their leg amputated.
Between April 15 and 21, six Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, including one child, in the occupied West Bank. Over the same period, two Palestinians died in Israeli custody in what the UN called “unclear circumstances”.
Residents have been injured following an Israeli air strike on a house in the Al-Manara neighbourhood, south of Khan Younis, Al Jazeera’s correspondent on the ground reports.
Since Israel resumed its incursion on Gaza on March 18, approximately 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and 5,200 others injured.
The US federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism has praised Yale University for its response to student protests opposing the visit of Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to New Haven this week, Al Jazeera reports.
Yale accused the campus protest group, Yalies4Palestine, of briefly setting up an encampment on Tuesday and consequently withdrew its status as a registered student organisation. Yalies4Palestine has denied it organised the protest.
The federal task force praised the college administration in a statement, saying they were “cautiously encouraged by Yale’s actions”.
“Yale University appears to have enforced its time, place, and manner policies, cleared the area, de-registered a student organization involved in the incident, and started an investigation into individual discipline for students who crossed the line from speech into unlawful conduct,” it said.
The Trump administration has taken aim at numerous US colleges – threatening to withdraw federal funding, among other punitive measures – over pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses.
Citing local Palestinian media, Al Jazeera reports that Israeli forces have launched numerous attacks on Gaza in the early hours of this morning.
There are reports of people across Gaza feeling the force of detonations in southern Gaza’s Rafah city, where the Israeli army is deployed and reportedly using explosives to destroy residential structures.
Israeli military aircraft bombed a medical clinic in the east of Gaza City earlier this morning, and warplanes have more recently targeted other areas in the city.
Air strikes and artillery shelling have hit Khan Younis in the south of the territory after an earlier attack on tents sheltering forcibly displaced people killed at least five in the al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis. Victims from the attack were reported to be a family of five: Ibrahim Khalil Abu Taima, his wife Hanadi, and their three children, ages 4, 6 and 8.
Israeli artillery has shelled the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
Casualties resulting from the latest attacks are not yet known.
Israeli fighter jets have bombed a tent in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing at least five members of one family, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
The camp, previously designated a “safe zone” by the Israelis and home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, has come under repeated attack in recent days.
Posting on X, Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik announced that Marie Antoinette Sedin has been appointed as the country’s ambassador to Palestine.
Kravik was sworn in by Norway’s King Harald at a ceremony on Thursday.
In May last year, Norway – alongside Ireland and Spain – announced its decision to formally recognise Palestinian statehood based on the pre-1967 borders.
Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said Norway’s decision was an investment in the “only solution” that can bring lasting peace in the Middle East — “two states living side by side in peace and security”.
As hunger spreads in Gaza due to Israel’s blockade that has prevented all food, water, medicines and fuel from entering the war-torn territory, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said it has 3,000 trucks of humanitarian aid ready and waiting to enter the enclave, Al Jazeera reports.
In its latest situation update, UNRWA said that it has run out of flour to feed Palestinians in Gaza, and other “critical humanitarian supplies are rapidly depleting” as well as food parcels the agency provides to families to stave off hunger.
UNRWA also reports that at least 742 Palestinians have now been killed in Israeli attacks while sheltering at their facilities in Gaza, and more than 2,400 injured. More than 290 of their own UN personnel have also been killed in Israeli attacks, the agency said.
UNRWA said it is continuing to run 115 shelters across the Gaza Strip, where 90,000 forcibly displaced people are now residing.
Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court have ordered a lower panel to reconsider Israel’s objections to the court’s jurisdiction over arrest warrants issued against Israeli leaders last year, Reuters reports.
The appeals chamber said the court had not properly weighed challenges by Israel to its jurisdiction and the legality of arrest warrant requests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for their conduct of military operations in Gaza.
The so-called Pre-Trial Chamber had ruled that Israel’s challenges had been premature, but the appeals judges now said that had been an “error of law”. It said Israel’s argument that it was entitled to challenge the jurisdiction was not sufficiently addressed.
“The Appeals Chamber therefore reversed the decision and remanded the matter to the Pre-Trial Chamber for a new ruling on the substance of Israel’s challenge to the jurisdiction of the Court,” they said.
The office of the ICC Prosecutor said it was studying the new ruling, without offering further comment.
AFP reports that Bulgaria “received an official apology from Israel” over the death of one of its citizens, a UN worker killed in Gaza in March.
In a statement announcing Israel’s apology, Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev said such tragedies should not happen again and again expressed his condolences to the family of Marin Marinov.
“The protection of humanitarian workers had to be a top priority,” Georgiev added.
Israel’s army chief has threatened to expand the ongoing military offensive in the Gaza Strip if captives being held there by Hamas are not freed soon, AFP reports.
“If we do not see progress in the return of the hostages in the near future, we will expand our activities to a larger and more significant operation,” Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said during a visit to Gaza.
The Israeli military issued an evacuation order for Palestinians residing in two north Gaza areas ahead of a planned attack, AFP reports.
“To all of the civilians of the Gaza Strip staying in the areas of Beit Hanoun and Sheikh Zayed. This is a preliminary and a final warning … move west immediately toward Gaza City,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.
Gaza rescue teams and medics said Israeli air strikes killed at least 36 people since dawn, including a family of six whose home was struck in Gaza City, AFP reports.
Six members of one family — a couple and their four children — were killed when an air strike levelled their home in northern Gaza City, the civil defence said in a statement.
Nidal al-Sarafiti, a relative of the family, said the strike came as the family was sleeping.
“What can I say? The destruction has spared no one,” he told AFP.
