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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
Olga Cherevko, a staff member with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), has told Al Jazeera from Gaza’s Deir el-Balah that the situation in the enclave is now “absolutely catastrophic”.
“More than 400,000 people have now been displaced in just over three weeks,” Cherevko stated.
She highlighted that a “massive shortage of water” and destruction of water facilities has led to “absolutely appalling” hygiene conditions.
A lack of water has contributed to the spread of skin rashes and public health issues, including fleas, mites and lice, according to Cherevko.
“Absolutely zero supplies have come in in over 40 days”, which means OCHA is “running out of everything, including critical medical and trauma supplies”, she was quoted as saying.
The Israeli military has said that forces have completed the encirclement of Gaza’s Rafah, part of an announced plan to seize more areas of the enclave, accompanied by large-scale evacuations of the population, Reuters reports.
“Over the past 24 hours, the 36th Division’s troops completed the establishment of the Morag route, separating Rafah and Khan Younis,” the military said.
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that the military has completed its takeover of the new Morag Corridor between the southern Gaza cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, AFP reports.
“The IDF (military) has now completed its takeover of the Morag axis, which crosses Gaza between Rafah and Khan Younis, turning the entire area between the Philadelphi Route and Morag into part of the Israeli security zone,” Katz said in a statement.
Israeli artillery and aircraft’s overnight attacks on the northern areas of the Gaza Strip have killed at least two people in the Shujayea district, Al Jazeera reports.
Amid Israel’s closure of UNRWA schools, Qatar’s foreign ministry has said it “considers the deprivation of children from education a new crime in the ongoing series of Israeli crimes”, Al Jazeera reports.
The statement also stressed “the need for the international community to act urgently to hold Israel accountable and oblige it to comply with international laws”.
Israel effectively banned UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, via legislation at the beginning of this year, rendering the agency unable to carry out its work in the occupied West Bank, Israel or occupied East Jerusalem.
A Palestinian teenager was shot by Israeli forces during a military raid last night on the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reports, citing local security sources.
The Palestinian news agency said soldiers stormed the town and fired live ammunition and sound grenades towards residents.
The boy, who is 17 years old, was shot in the foot and is receiving treatment at a hospital, Wafa added.
Johnny Sinodis, a member of the detained Columbia University student’s legal team, said the immigration judge who ruled that Mahmoud Khalil could be deported didn’t show “an ounce of desire” to give him a fair hearing, Al Jazeera reports.
“[The ruling] was historic in its unfairness. The judge went out of her way to make very clear to us and anyone in the courtroom that the constitutional arguments we were making had no place in immigration court,” Sinodis said in an online news conference.
Another of Khalil’s lawyers, Marc Van der Hout, described the ruling by Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court in Louisiana as the “epitome of the lack of due process in a court proceeding in this country”.
“It was shocking. The immigration judge had made up her mind before the hearing even started. What she was going to do, she basically cut off questioning throughout the proceeding,” he said.
Khalil — a US permanent resident arrested and facing deportation over his pro-Palestine activism — can still appeal the decision.
Findings by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that 36 Israeli attacks on Gaza had killed only women and children further confirms a pattern previously identified, Al Jazeera cites Palestinian rights group Al-Haq as saying.
“Israel is purposely targeting” women and children in Gaza, Al-Haq said, adding that both it and the UN’s international commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory and East Jerusalem had reached such a conclusion.
“Such a calculated effort to exterminate women, boys, girls and even infants, has not been witnessed in any other modern conflict,” Al-Haq said in a post on social media.
“While being targeted with heavy weaponry, they are forced to endure a total blockade on humanitarian aid — now for a 2nd month in a row,” the group said.
The bodies of two people have been recovered from the Kahil family home in the east of the Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City, which was bombed by Israeli forces earlier this morning, Al Jazeera reports citing local Palestinian media.
Several people were also injured in the attack, which we reported on earlier, including two young girls.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), has again said that Israel’s total blockade of the Gaza Strip contravenes international law, Al Jazeera reports.
Speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on Friday in Turkiye, Lazzarini said Israel was engaged in the “weaponising humanitarian assistance”.
“If you decide to stop any supply to a needy population, in order to put pressure on the same population, this is nothing else than weaponising humanitarian assistance, which we all know is contrary to any, you know, expected line of IHL (international humanitarian law),” he said.
A teenager was deliberately struck by an Israeli settler who drove his vehicle at three Palestinian boys as they walked along a road south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports, citing Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P).
The child rights group said 16-year-old Ahmad Wisam Ahmad Odeh was walking at 2:15pm on Monday along the main street in the village of Huwara when an Israeli settler accelerated their car and drove directly at the three boys.
Ahmad was launched some five metres in the air and 10 metres along the road by the force of the impact, sustaining serious injuries, including a liver haemorrhage, 20 stitches in his head, and severe bruising, the rights group said.
“Under international law, Israel, as the occupying power, must protect the Palestinian civilian population from all acts of violence, including from attacks by Israeli settlers,” DCI-P’s Ayed Abu Eqtaish said.
“Yet, Israeli settlers act with near-total impunity, nearly always with full protection from Israeli authorities,” he said.
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.
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.
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”.
