[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 36 in Gaza

Gaza rescue teams and medics said Israeli air strikes killed at least 36 people on Thursday, including a family of six whose home was struck in Gaza City...

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Israeli strikes kill 36 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City 24 April, 2025, 23:38

Children queue to receive charity meals from a kitchen in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday. | AFP photo

Gaza rescue teams and medics said Israeli air strikes killed at least 36 people on Thursday, including a family of six whose home was struck in Gaza City.

Israel resumed its military offensive in the Gaza Strip on March 18, following the collapse of a two-month ceasefire that had brought a temporary halt to fighting in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

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 said.

Nine people were killed and several wounded in another strike on a former police station in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, according to a statement from the Indonesian hospital, where the casualties were brought.

‘The bombing was extremely intense and it shook the entire area,’ said Abdel Qader Sabah, 23, from Jabalia.

‘Everyone started running and screaming, not knowing what to do from the horror and severity of the bombing.’

The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas ‘command and control centre’ in the Jabalia area but did not specify whether the target was the police station.

‘The command and control centre was used by the terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops,’ it said in a statement.

Elsewhere, 21 people were killed in a series of strikes across the territory, medics and the civil defence agency reported, including several in the southern area of Khan Yunis.

‘We were sitting in peace when the missile fell,’ said Mohammed Faris, who witnessed a strike on the house in Khan Yunis. ‘I just don’t understand what’s happening.’

Bodies lay on the ground, including those of a young woman and a boy in body bags, surrounded by grieving relatives kissing and stroking their faces, AFP footage showed.

‘One by one we are getting martyred, dying in pieces,’ said Rania al-Jumla, who lost her sister in another air strike in Khan Yunis.

‘We have had enough. Every day there’s death, every day we lose someone dear to us.’

Since Israel resumed its military operations, at least 1,978 people have been killed in Gaza, raising the overall death toll to at least 51,355 since the war began, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The war was ignited by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

During the attack, militants also abducted 251 people and took them to Gaza. Of those, 58 remain in captivity, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israeli officials maintain that the on-going military campaign is essential to securing the release of the remaining hostages.

However, many families of the captives, along with thousands of protesters, have strongly criticised the authorities for pressing ahead with the offensive rather than striking a deal.​

 

[Saif]

UN food agency says its food stocks in Gaza run out

The World Food Program says its food stocks in the Gaza Strip have run out under Israel's nearly 8-week-old blockade, ending a main source of sustenance for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the territory. The WFP said in a statement that it delivered the last of its stocks to charity

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UN food agency says its food stocks in Gaza run out
AP
Published :
Apr 25, 2025 21:59
Updated :
Apr 25, 2025 21:59

The World Food Program says its food stocks in the Gaza Strip have run out under Israel's nearly 8-week-old blockade, ending a main source of sustenance for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the territory.

The WFP said in a statement that it delivered the last of its stocks to charity kitchens that it supports around Gaza. It said those kitchens are expected to run out of food in the coming days, reports AP.

Some 80 per cent of Gaza's population of more than 2 million relies primarily on charity kitchens for food, because other sources have shut down under Israel's blockade, according to the UN.

The WFP has been supporting 47 kitchens that distribute 644,000 hot meals a day, said WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa.

It was not immediately clear how many kitchens would still be operating in Gaza if those shut down. But Etefa said the WFP-backed kitchens are the major ones in Gaza.

Israel cut off entry of all food, fuel, medicine and other supplies to Gaza on March 2 and then resumed its bombardment and ground offensives two weeks later, shattering a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.

It says the moves aim to pressure Hamas to release hostages it still holds. Rights groups have called the blockade a "starvation tactic" and a potential war crime.

Israel has said Gaza has enough supplies after a surge of aid entered during the ceasefire and accuses Hamas of diverting aid for its purposes. Humanitarian workers deny there is significant diversion, saying the UN strictly monitors distribution.

They say the aid flow during the ceasefire was barely enough to cover the immense needs from throughout the war when only a trickle of supplies got in.

With no new goods entering Gaza, many foods have disappeared from markets, including meat, eggs, fruits, dairy products and many vegetables. Prices for what remains have risen dramatically, becoming unaffordable for much of the population. Most families rely heavily on canned goods.
​

 

[Saif]

Israeli fire kills at least 44 people in Gaza, hits a police station

An Israeli airstrike hit a police station in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 10 people, local health authorities said, and Israel's military said it had struck a command centre of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad groups

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Israeli fire kills at least 44 people in Gaza, hits a police station

Palestinians inspect damage at the site of an Israeli strike on a tent sheltering displaced people, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip April 25, 2025. Photo: Reuters/Hatem Khaled

An Israeli airstrike hit a police station in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 10 people, local health authorities said, and Israel's military said it had struck a command centre of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad groups.

Medics said two Israeli missiles hit the police station, located near a market, which led to the wounding of dozens of people in addition to the 10 deaths. The identities of those killed were not immediately clear.

The Israeli military said in a statement apparently referring to the same incident, that it attacked a command and control centre operated by Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad groups in Jabalia, which militants used to plan and execute attacks against Israeli forces.

It accused Palestinian militant groups of exploiting civilians and civil properties for military purposes, an allegation Hamas and other factions deny.

Local health authorities said Israeli strikes have killed at least 34 other people in separate airstrikes across the enclave, bringing Thursday's death toll to 44.

The Gaza Health Ministry said the Durra Children's Hospital in Gaza City had become non-operational, a day after an Israeli strike hit the upper part of the building, damaging the intensive care unit and destroying the facility's solar power panel system.

No one was killed. There was no Israeli comment on the incident.

Israel's military said on Thursday that one soldier was killed during combat in the northern Gaza Strip, while an officer and a reservist were severely injured.

Gaza's health system has been devastated by Israel's 18-month-old military campaign, launched in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas in 2023, putting many of the territory's hospitals out of action, killing medics, and reducing crucial supplies.

Since a January ceasefire collapsed on March 18, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,900 Palestinians, many of them civilians, according to the Gaza health authorities, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced as Israel seized what it calls a buffer zone of Gaza's land.

Efforts by Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have so far failed to reconcile disputes between the two warring parties, Israel and Hamas.

The attack on Israel by Hamas in October 2023 killed 1,200 people, and 251 hostages were taken to Gaza. Since then, more than 51,300 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to health officials.​

 

[Saif]

‘Israel's main mission is not combating terrorism, but destroying Gaza’

Both the US and Israel massively spy on each other.

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‘Israel's main mission is not combating terrorism, but destroying Gaza’

VISUAL: STAR

As the genocide in Gaza continues, Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist, film-maker, and best-selling author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation around the World, speaks to Priyam Paul of The Daily Star debunking how Israel's surveillance technology, the military-industrial complex, and global dynamics perpetuate the suffering of Palestinians.

What experiences shaped your interest in writing your book?

I am a Jewish Australian-German. I was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1974, and brought up in a relatively liberal Jewish home. However, believing and supporting Israel was pretty much a part of the regular, daily discourse. It was not rammed down my throat, but it was pretty standard for many Jewish people to support Israel, because of our own history. For instance, my own family came from Germany and Austria. Majority of my family members were killed in the Holocaust; the ones who escaped, mostly in 1939, were spread around the world, including Australia. Therefore, the idea of a so-called safe-haven for Jews—as we were told—was Israel, which made sense to me when I was a child.

Of course, what I was not told while growing up was that there were millions of Palestinians who have been under occupation for decades, and they are suffering because of that safe haven and supposed Jewish liberation. When I discovered the truth myself, it really made me deeply uncomfortable since I was a teenager and it continues to unnerve me to this day.

Why and how have the military-industrial complexes of both Israel and the US become so deeply intertwined, and in what ways have they operated similarly over the years, particularly to perpetuate the occupation and systemic erasure of the Palestinian people?

The US is Israel's biggest funder, armour, political supporter, diplomatic backer, and ally. This has been the reality since 1948, when Israel was established. It massively accelerated after 1967 when Israel took control of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and it has been the case long before Donald Trump became president again earlier this year.

Huge amounts of weapons that Israel uses are often tested and trialled in the US first. When the US is giving billions of dollars of so-called aid and military support every year to Israel, a significant amount of that money goes to certain districts in the US to back specific weapons or defence programmes. It is also worth mentioning that although the US-Israel relationship is very close, it is dysfunctional. Both nations massively spy on each other. We are not aware of the exact number of spies that both nations use on the other, but there is a desire on both sides to get the most accurate insider information about each other. So, the two nations are supposedly best of friends, but they also don't completely trust each other.

In your book, you wrote, "Israeli history can be split into two eras: before and after 1967." Could you elaborate on the implications of the Six Day War for Israeli policy and explain what led to such a drastic historical and political shift?

After 1967, Israel took control of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, and there was a perceived need within Israel to justify and defend those military actions and what became a brutal military occupation against the occupied Palestinians who lived there. Although Israel, for years before 1967, had used Palestine as a laboratory, it massively expanded after that. From the late 1960s, but certainly into the 1970s and pretty much to this day, roughly 50 or so years later, Israel often uses the occupied Palestinian territories as a way to prove to other countries how effective they are at suppressing Palestinian dissent or their self-determination.

A large number of other countries, military figures, police forces from the US, along with parts of Europe and Asia, often travel to Israel to observe firsthand the reality of what the occupation means for Palestinians and then take back that experience and knowledge, often to develop defence relationships and contracts relevant to their own conflicts. The previous repressive administration in Bangladesh also sought Israeli tech to spy on dissidents of the state.

To what extent has the world changed with Israel's global reach in surveillance—through arms sales, mobile tracking technologies, and its influence over social media platforms where Palestinian content is often censored?

Israeli technology has massively influenced surveillance around the world, although there are obviously other countries that produce surveillance technology, including the US, China, and many countries in Europe. Israel is a global leader in surveillance technology and possibly among the top one or two biggest providers of surveillance worldwide.

The most prominent of these technologies often comes from the software company NSO Group and its tool, Pegasus. However, there are others, such as Paragon. They are sold to various governments, dictatorships, democracies, police forces, and intelligence services.

We are told that they are used to fight "terrorism and crime," but actually they are often used by those states with clearly the knowledge of both NSO Group and the Israeli government, to go after dissidents, critics, and human rights activists. And one of the ways that Israel—particularly since Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister many years ago—has been using these weapons and surveillance technologies is as a diplomatic tool.

It is a way for Israel to make so-called friends. Israel says to a country, that we will sell this incredibly powerful spyware that will enable you to monitor your dissidents and people you don't like, but in return, we would like you to do certain things for us. For example, voting in a certain way in the United Nations or supporting Israel in some other way.

How do you evaluate the events of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel's ongoing large-scale assault on Gaza?

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in many ways, should have revealed to the world that Israel's surveillance and military tech has failed miserably. From the Israeli perspective, more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and all their defences disappeared. Hamas was able to overwhelm Israel's defences.

However, the reality is that many of the same companies that had been used by Israel before October 7, 2023 to provide apparent defence to Israel from Gaza and Hamas are now some of the key players in Israel's genocide in Gaza. I am talking about Elbert, Israel's biggest defence company, and others. They are using, leveraging, and testing massive amounts of weapons in Gaza. One of the most prominent examples of this testing includes killer drones, so-called quadcopters, artificial intelligence (AI), which did exist and was used before October 7 as well.

However, Israel has massively increased the use of this AI warfare in Gaza after the Hamas attack. So, a huge number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 have been chosen by the so-called AI warfare tech with barely, if any, human oversight. This is because Israel's main mission in Gaza has never been about destroying Hamas or going after terrorism. Rather, it has been about destroying Gaza and making it unliveable.

What role can the global public opinion play in addressing the long-term Palestinian cause, especially when international pressure often fails to bring about meaningful change?

The two-state solution for Israel and Palestine is over and dead, and arguably was never going to happen. Because for decades, the Israeli politicians—and I would say many, if not most, of the Israeli Jewish public—have shown little interest in giving up the occupied territories that they control. The Israeli settler movement, which is not the majority of the Israeli public but certainly the most politically powerful, has essentially taken over the state. There is no political pressure within Israel for a two-state solution, and there is frankly no international pressure either.

The US, even before Donald Trump, essentially was allowing and supporting Israeli actions in the West Bank, Gaza, and beyond. The Europeans are mostly distracted with their own issues, with Ukraine and now Trump. The Arab countries talk about a two-state solution, but they are mostly keen on maintaining good relations outrageously and shamefully with Israel and the US. So, what I fear is that, in the short to medium terms, we are going to see what kind of already exists, which is a one-state apartheid system, where Israelis have full rights, while Palestinians remain second class citizens.

Antony Loewenstein's book The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation around the World is set to be translated into Bangla and re-published soon.​

 

[Saif]

Death toll rises to 52,243 in Gaza

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza announced Sunday that the death toll from the war had risen to more than 52,000 people, after hundreds previously listed as missing were confirmed dead...

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Death toll rises to 52,243 in Gaza
Hundreds of war missing confirmed dead
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City 27 April, 2025, 23:59

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza announced Sunday that the death toll from the war had risen to more than 52,000 people, after hundreds previously listed as missing were confirmed dead.

‘An additional 697 martyrs have been added to the cumulative statistics after their data was completed and verified by the committee monitoring missing persons,’ the health ministry said in a statement, giving the overall toll of 52,243.

Several United Nations agencies that operate in Gaza have said the ministry’s data is credible and they are frequently cited by international organisations.

One hospital in the Palestinian territory confirmed the data and elaborated on the process.

‘The families of those initially reported missing had informed authorities of their disappearance, but their bodies were subsequently recovered — either from beneath the rubble or from areas previously inaccessible to medical teams due to the presence of the Israeli army,’ said Khalil al-Daqran, spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

He said the ministry’s release of the 697 figure came after a ‘judicial committee’ that collects and checks data completed its documentation, ‘confirming their martyrdom and transferring their status from missing persons to martyrs.’

When asked why such a large number was announced simultaneously, the Hamas government’s Media Office in Gaza explained that statistics are released periodically.

It is not the first time the health ministry has made such a revision.

‘Because the judicial committee issues its report periodically rather than daily. They follow their own procedural protocols, and once their report was finalised, it was officially adopted,’ Ismail al-Thawabta, director general of the Media Office, said.

With Gaza largely in ruins after more than 18 months of war, the health ministry has struggled to count the death toll.

Israel has repeatedly questioned the credibility of the daily figures put out by the ministry, criticising the Gaza authorities for failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

But neither the Israeli military nor top Israeli officials have denied the scale of the overall toll.

Earlier this year, Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce, which began on January 19, but collapsed two months later on March 18 due to disagreements over the next phase of the deal.

Since then, Israel has resumed its military campaign in Gaza, resulting in at least 2,151 additional deaths.

Meanwhile, Gaza mediator Qatar said on Sunday there was some progress in talks in Doha this week aimed at securing a new truce in the Israel-Hamas war.

Speaking at a news conference, Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani reported ‘a bit of progress’, in response to questions about reports of a Thursday meeting in Doha between Israel’s Mossad spy agency chief David Barnea and the Qatari prime minister.

‘We need to find an answer for the ultimate question: how to end this war. That’s, that’s basically, I think, the key point of the entire negotiations,’ Sheikh Mohammed added.

Qatar, alongside Egypt and the United States, brokered a truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza which came into effect on January 19 but which did not bring a complete end to the war.

The initial phase of the truce ended in early March, with the two sides unable to agree on the next steps. Israel resumed air and ground attacks across the Gaza Strip on March 18 after earlier halting the entry of aid.

Sheikh Mohammed met with Barnea in the Qatari capital to discuss a potential hostage deal on Thursday, according to Israeli media.

‘The meeting that took place on Thursday is part of these efforts where we’re trying to find a breakthrough,’ the Qatari prime minister said without further elaborating on the details of the meeting.

Hamas is open to an agreement to end the war in Gaza that would see all hostages released and secure a five-year truce, an official said on Saturday as the group’s negotiators met in Cairo.

The Qatari PM said efforts were focused on the ‘best comprehensive deal possible that ends the war, brings the hostages out and not dividing a deal into other phases.’

Hamas has insisted that the negotiations should lead to a permanent end to the war.

According to the Palestinian group, it rejected an earlier Israeli offer that included a 45-day ceasefire in exchange for the return of 10 living hostages.​

 

[Saif]

Israel using aid blockage as ‘weapon of war’

A top Palestinian official yesterday told the International Court of Justice that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza as a “weapon of war”, at the start of a week of hearings at the UN’s top court.

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Israel using aid blockage as ‘weapon of war’
Palestinian official tells ICJ as food runs out in the tiny Palestinian enclave

A Palestinian mother cries, holding the body of her baby, at the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday. The baby was killed in an Israeli air strike. Photo: AFP

A top Palestinian official yesterday told the International Court of Justice that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza as a "weapon of war", at the start of a week of hearings at the UN's top court.

Israel is not participating at the ICJ but hit back immediately, dismissing the hearings as "part of the systematic persecution and delegitimisation" of the country.

The ICJ is hearing dozens of nations and organisations to draw up a so-called advisory opinion on Israel's humanitarian obligations to Palestinians, more than 50 days into its total blockage on aid entering war-ravaged Gaza.

Top Palestinian official Ammar Hijazi told judges that "all UN-supported bakeries in Gaza have been forced to shut their doors".

"Nine of every 10 Palestinians have no access to safe drinking water. Storage facilities of the UN and other international agencies are empty," added Hijazi.

"These are the facts. Starvation is here. Humanitarian aid is being used as a weapon of war," concluded the Palestinian representative.

Speaking in Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the case in The Hague was "part of a systematic persecution and delegitimisation of Israel".

"It is not Israel that should be on trial. It is the UN and UNRWA", he told reporters, referring to the United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees.

Israel has banned UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil.

UNRWA Secretary-General Philippe Lazzarini urged Israel "as an occupying power" to "provide services or facilitate their delivery -- including through UNRWA -- to the population it is occupying".

In December, the UN's General Assembly asked the ICJ for an advisory opinion "on a priority basis and with the utmost urgency".

The UN asked judges to clarify Israel's legal duties towards the UN and its agencies, international organisations or third-party states to "ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population".

Israel strictly controls all inflows of international aid vital for the 2.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

It halted aid deliveries to Gaza on March 2, days before the collapse of a ceasefire that had significantly reduced hostilities after 15 months of war.

Israel resumed air bombardment on March 18, followed by renewed ground attacks.

This has triggered what the UN has described as "likely the worst" humanitarian crisis the occupied Palestinian territory has faced since the Israeli offensive started on October 7, 2023.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 52,243 people in Gaza since October 2023, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Sunday had killed 50 people in the territory.

At least 2,111 Palestinians have been killed since March 18.

The UN considers the ministry's figures reliable.​

 

[Saif]

Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘live-streamed genocide’ in Gaza

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a ‘live-streamed genocide’ by forcibly displacing most Gazans and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe — allegations Israel dismissed as ‘blatant lies’.

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Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘live-streamed genocide’ in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City 29 April, 2025, 22:28

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a ‘live-streamed genocide’ by forcibly displacing most Gazans and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe — allegations Israel dismissed as ‘blatant lies’.

The UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned Israel’s blockade on aid had become a ‘silent killer’ in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, with children and the sick suffering the most.

In its annual report, Amnesty said Israel was acting with ‘specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide’.

The Gaza war erupted after the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of Gaza and a ground offensive that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,365 dead.

‘Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide,’ Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said.

‘States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools.’

Gaza’s civil defence agency on Tuesday said Israeli strikes killed at least seven people, including four in tents for displaced people near Al-Iqleem in southern Gaza.

‘I just want to lay my head on a pillow and sleep. We don’t want to be collecting remains (of body parts),’ said Widad Fojo, who lost relatives in one of the strikes.

Israel resumed its Gaza offensive on March 18 after a two-month ceasefire, saying it aimed to secure the release of hostages.

‘We will bring them back,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, referring to captives held in Gaza.

Amnesty said it had ‘documented multiple war crimes by Israel’, including attacks on civilians, and that Israel had ‘deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe’.

The London-based rights group said 1.9 million people — about 90 per cent of Gaza’s population — had been forcibly displaced.

Israel rejected the report, accusing Amnesty of spreading Hamas propaganda.

‘The radical anti-Israel organisation Amnesty has once again chosen to publish baseless lies against Israel,’ said foreign ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein.

‘Israel is targeting only terrorists and never civilians. Hamas, on the other hand, deliberately targets Israeli civilians and hides behind Palestinian civilians, stealing humanitarian aid intended for the people of Gaza and causing suffering for both Palestinians and Israelis,’ he said.

UNRWA said children and the sick were suffering the most.

‘Children in Gaza are going to bed starving. The ill and the sick are not able to get medical care because of shortages in supplies in hospitals and clinics,’ its spokeswoman Juliette Touma said.

‘Gaza has become a land of desperation. The siege on Gaza is a silent killer, a silent killer of children, of older people, of the most vulnerable in the community.’

UNRWA also said more than 50 of its staff, including teachers and doctors, had been abused by Israeli forces in detention.

‘They have been treated in the most shocking & inhumane way. They reported being beaten + used as human shields,’ UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X.

Israel has accused some UNRWA employees of involvement in the October 7 attack and has subsequently banned the agency from operating within its territory.

Amnesty said the war represented a collective failure by the international community.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty’s regional director, said Palestinians had endured ‘extreme levels of suffering while the world showed a ‘complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it’.

Separately, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israel released from detention on Tuesday a medic held since a deadly attack on ambulances in southern Gaza on March 23.

The attack had left 15 medics and emergency responders dead, which an Israeli military investigation said was a result of ‘operational’ failures on part of the troops on the ground.​

 

[Saif]

'We are breaking the bodies and minds of children of Gaza', says WHO Executive Director

The minds and bodies of children in Gaza are being broken following two months of aid blockade and renewed strikes, the Executive Director of the World Health Organization Emergencies programmes said on Thursday. Since Mar 2 Israel has blocked the entry of medical, fuel, and food supplies into Gaz

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'We are breaking the bodies and minds of children of Gaza', says WHO Executive Director
REUTERS
Published :
May 02, 2025 15:24
Updated :
May 02, 2025 15:24

Palestinian kids stand at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 7, 2024. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

The minds and bodies of children in Gaza are being broken following two months of aid blockade and renewed strikes, the Executive Director of the World Health Organization Emergencies programmes said on Thursday.

Since Mar 2 Israel has blocked the entry of medical, fuel, and food supplies into Gaza.

"We are breaking the bodies and minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza. We are complicit," Deputy Director General Michael Ryan told reporters at the WHO's headquarters.

"As a physician I am angry. It is an abomination," he said.

Israel says the decision to block the supplies was aimed at pressuring Hamas to free hostages as the ceasefire agreement stalled.

"The current level of malnutrition is causing a collapse in immunity," Ryan said, warning that cases of pneumonia and meningitis in women and children could increase.

Israel has previously denied that Gaza was facing a hunger crisis. It has not made clear when and how aid will be resumed.

Israel's military accuses Hamas of diverting aid, which Hamas denies.

The United Nations warned this week that acute malnutrition among Gaza's children was worsening.​