Israel’s deadly siege of Gaza Strip enters seventh month after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack
UN says half of Gaza population experiencing “catastrophic” hunger as threat of famine looms
Israel plans ground operation in overcrammed Rafah refugee camps
Concerns of wider conflict grow as Iran strikes Israel following attack on consulate in Syria
A senior official with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) has said there are some 37 million tonnes of debris to clear away in Gaza once the Israeli offensive is over, AFP reports.
And unexploded ordnance buried in the rubble would complicate that work, said UNMAS’ Pehr Lodhammar, who has run mine programmes in countries such as Iraq.
It was impossible to say how much of the ammunition fired in Gaza remained live, said Lodhammar.
“We know that typically there is a failure rate of at least 10 per cent of land service ammunition,” he told journalists in Geneva.
“What we do know is that we estimated 37m tonnes of debris, which is approximately 300 kilos of debris per square metre,” he added.
Starting from a hypothetical number of 100 trucks, that would take 14 years to clear away, he said.
A delegation from Gaza fighting mediator Egypt has arrived in Israel on Friday for a bid to reignite stalled ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.
There has been “noticeable progress in bringing the views of the Egyptian and Israeli delegations closer”, said Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian state intelligence services.
Several Israeli media outlets, citing unnamed officials, said that Israel’s war cabinet discussed a new plan for a truce and hostage release ahead of the Egyptian delegation’s visit.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that any rulings issued by the International Criminal Court will not affect Israel’s actions but would “set a dangerous precedent”, Reuters reports.
“Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the International Criminal Court in the Hague to undermine its basic right to defend itself,” Netanyahu said in a statement shared on Telegram.
“While decisions made by the court in the Hague will not affect Israel’s actions, they will set a dangerous precedent that threatens soldiers and public figures.”
An Israeli assault on southern Gaza’s Rafah area would spell disaster for civilians, not only in Gaza but across the Middle East, the head of an aid group has warned, saying the region is facing a “countdown to an even bigger conflict”.
Jan Egeland, the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters that 1.3 million civilians seeking refuge in Rafah — including his aid group’s staff — were living in “indescribable fear” of an Israeli offensive.
Egeland urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to conduct the operation. “Netanyahu, stop this. It is a disaster not only for the Palestinians, it would be a disaster for Israel. You will have a stain on the Israeli conscience and history forever,” he said.
“We do not need another war in the Middle East. At the moment, I’m feeling like (this is a) countdown to an even bigger conflict,” he said.
Berlin police have begun clearing a pro-Palestinian camp set up in front of the German parliament by activists demanding the government stop arms exports to Israel and end what they say is the criminalisation of the Palestinian solidarity movement, Reuters reports.
Police dismantled tents, forcibly removed protesters and blocked the surrounding area to stop others from arriving.
The Berlin camp ‘Besetzung Gegen Besatzung’ — ‘Occupy Against Occupation’ — coincided with the start of International Court of Justice hearings in Nicaragua’s case against Germany for providing military aid to Israel.
“The idea was to draw attention to that and … to the German complicity and active enabling of the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” the camp organiser, Jara Nassar, told Reuters.
Nassar and a dozen protesters sat on the ground, chanting pro-Palestinian slogans and songs as police with loudspeakers called on them to leave.
“We look at what is happening in the US … with admiration. There is no reason to believe we should stop now,” said Udi Raz, a PhD student at Berlin’s Free University and a member of the Jewish Voice association.
Raz, who wore a Jewish kippah with the Palestinian flag colours and held his phone in a live social media broadcast of the clearance, said Jewish activists had joined the camp and held a candle-lit Passover dinner there this week.
Police said the prohibition order for the camp was due to repeated violations committed by some protesters, including the use of unconstitutional symbols and forbidden slogans.
“Protection of gatherings cannot be guaranteed at this point because public safety and order are significantly at risk,” police spokesperson Anja Dierschkesaid said, adding tents had to be moved daily under local regulations to maintain the lawn.
“For the German government, grass matters more than the lives of more than 40,000 innocent people in Gaza murdered by the Israeli military,” Raz said.
The top UN court said it will rule on Tuesday on charges by Nicaragua that Germany is breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention by supplying weapons to Israel for the Gaza offensive, AFP reports.
Nicaragua has hauled Germany before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to demand judges impose emergency measures to stop Berlin from providing Israel with weapons and other assistance.
The ICJ said Friday it would hand down its order at 3pm (1pm GMT) on April 30, with presiding judge Nawaf Salam reading out the ruling.
Top lawyers from the two countries clashed earlier this month at the court, with Nicaragua saying Germany was “pathetic” to be both providing weapons to Israel and aid to Gazans. Berlin retorted that Israel’s security was at the “core” of its foreign policy and argued that Nicaragua had “grossly distorted” Germany’s supply of military aid to Israel.
Nicaragua requested five emergency measures, including that Germany “immediately suspend its aid to Israel, in particular its military assistance including military equipment.”
Diplomatic officials said top Arab and European diplomats are expected to begin arriving in the Saudi capital for an economic summit and meetings on the conflict in Gaza, AFP reports.
The two-day World Economic Forum special meeting, scheduled to begin in Riyadh on Sunday, includes appearances by the Saudi, Jordanian, Egyptian and Turkish foreign ministers in its official programme.
A Gaza-focused session on Monday is set to feature newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa, Egyptian PM Mostafa Madbouly and Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations aid coordinator for Gaza.
French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne is among the European officials travelling to the Saudi capital for talks on the conflict during the summit. “Discussions with European, American and regional counterparts on Gaza and the regional situation are planned in Riyadh,” a diplomatic source has said.
German FM Annalena Baerbock is due to arrive on Monday to meet officials including Kaag and Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, said spokesperson Sebastian Fischer.
Gabriel Romanelli, the sole Catholic parish priest in Gaza, has said 33 Palestinian Christians have died during Israel’s military offensive in the area, Al Jazeera reports.
Twenty were killed by Israeli military attacks and 13 lost their lives due to insufficient medical care and other reasons, the report added.
Their deaths mean Gaza’s small Christian population, believed to number about 1,000 people, has shrunk by more than 3 per cent, the priest told Sky News during a visit to Glasgow.
“Our church will always be an oasis for people. Unfortunately, this oasis has become a shelter, a hospital and a cemetery,” Romanelli said.
Several Israeli media outlets, citing unnamed officials, have said that the war cabinet discussed a new plan for a Gaza truce and hostage release, ahead of an Egyptian delegation’s visit, AFP reports.
Aid groups warn any Rafah invasion would add to already catastrophic conditions in Gaza where, according to the World Food Programme, famine is “a real and dangerous threat”.
Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told AFP that Israel “will not achieve what it wants” in Rafah.
After nearly seven months of war Israel had not achieved its goals, “whether eliminating Hamas or returning the captives”, he said.
Hamad warned that an invasion “will undoubtedly threaten the negotiations” and show “that Israel is interested in continuing the war”. The official spoke by phone from Qatar where a number of senior figures from Hamas’s political bureau are based.
A delegation from mediator Egypt is travelling to Israel today, a source close to the Israeli government told AFP, in what local media said is a bid to reignite stalled hostage-release negotiations.
The source told AFP that Egypt’s delegation was travelling to Israel “for security coordination”.
The effort comes alongside preparations for a military push against Hamas in southern Gaza’s Rafah, and with spillover from the Gaza conflict leading to stepped-up exchanges of fire over Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
Israel’s army on Friday said missile fire near that border killed an Israeli civilian.
A Hamas official told AFP that any push into Rafah, where much of Gaza’s population is sheltering, would threaten negotiations.
The US Central Command has said that its forces “successfully engaged and destroyed” two drones in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen a day ago, Al Jazeera reports.
The US strike occurred hours after a missile was launched from the area in Yemen towards the Gulf of Aden, near where US coalition ships are stationed. The missile fire caused no casualties, Centcom said.
The European Union has announced it is giving an extra €68 million ($73m) to provide desperately needed aid to Palestinians in Gaza, AFP reports.
“In light of the continued deterioration of the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the steady rise of needs on the ground, the (European) Commission is stepping up its funding to support Palestinians affected by the ongoing war,” an EU statement said.
“This support brings total EU humanitarian assistance to €193m for Palestinians in need inside Gaza and across the region in 2024.”
The EU said the new aid would focus on food deliveries, clean water, sanitation and shelters, and would be channelled through local partners on the ground.
The health ministry in Gaza has said at least 34,356 people have been killed in the territory during more than six months of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, AFP reports.
The tally includes at least 51 deaths in the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 77,368 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since fighting between Israel and Hamas began.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that pro-Palestinian campus protests sweeping the US are a part of democracy, AFP reports.
“It’s a hallmark of our democracy that our citizens make known their views, their concerns, their anger, at any given time,” Blinken told reporters in China, which tightly controls protests, adding: “I think that reflects the strength of the country.”
A baby girl who was delivered from her dying mother’s womb in a Gaza hospital following an Israeli airstrike has herself died after several days, Reuters reports.
The baby had been named Rouh (Soul). Her mother, Sabreen Al-Sakani, was seriously injured when an Israeli strike hit the family home in Rafah, the southernmost city in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Sabreen, who was 30 weeks pregnant, was rushed to the Emirati hospital in Rafah. She succumbed to her wounds but doctors were able to save the baby, delivering her by Caesarean section.
However, the baby suffered respiratory problems and a weak immune system, said Doctor Mohammad Salama, head of the emergency neo-natal unit at Emirati Hospital, who had been caring for Rouh.
Pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom have announced that they have taken over the piazza and formed an encampment, Al Jazeera reports.
“As the University of Warwick continues to reject our demands to cut ties with genocide, we rise up in unison with fellow students all over the world, from Columbia, NYC, to Paris, to Sydney. We say no business as usual as long as Warwick sponsors colonial genocide,” the group Warwick Stands for Palestine wrote on X.
UNRWA says that the healthcare provided by its team in Gaza is critical for saving lives in the Palestinian enclave.
“More children and families rely on our support. Safe and unimpeded access across #GazaStrip can’t wait any longer,” it said in a post on X.
Students at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) are conducting a sit-in to protest the Israeli military offensive in Gaza.
“One thing to know is our school is a leading school when it comes to political sciences, when it comes to international relations and international law, so it is important for us, regarding what is happening right now in Palestine, to speak up,” Sophie, a spokesperson for the students, told Al Jazeera.
She added that they are calling for a town hall, for Sciences Po to cut ties with Israeli universities and for all investigations into pro-Palestinian students to be cancelled.
“We feel silenced because we are not heard by the administration. We have been demanding what I’m telling you since October now. Plus we have been under several threats every time we were organising events,” she said.
The Israeli army has said that a civilian was killed near the country’s northern border with Lebanon, as near-daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah rage, AFP reports.
“Overnight, terrorists fired anti-tank missiles toward the area of Har Dov in northern Israel,” the Israeli army said, referring to the disputed Shebaa Farms district.
“As a result, an Israeli civilian doing infrastructure work was injured and he was later pronounced dead.”
Israeli media reported that the victim was an Arab-Israeli truck driver.
Police told AFP they had not identified the body, but said it was the only one found after a truck was hit.
Pakistan has again demanded that the United Nations and the international community consider further measures to secure Israel’s adherence to a ceasefire in Gaza, Radio Pakistan reports.
At a ministerial-level debate at the UN Security Council, Pakistan’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Usman Jadoon said Israel continued to defy the UNSC resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and was hampering the flow of humanitarian assistance, creating the reality of famine in Gaza.
The ambassador highlighted that Israel has also refused to abide by the interim injunctions of the International Court of Justice, the report added.
Condemning Israel’s relentless violence in Gaza, Jadoon reiterated Pakistan’s unwavering support for Palestine’s quest for self-determination and emphasised that UN membership was a crucial step towards rectifying historical injustices and fostering conditions for meaningful negotiations.
He also reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to a two-state settlement based on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.
Palestinians continue to mourn people killed in Israeli bombardment of Rafah, the crowded southern Gaza city where Israel says it is advancing plans for a ground invasion, AFP reports.
Aid groups warn any invasion would add to already-catastrophic conditions for Gaza’s 2.4 million people. Israeli officials have vowed to enter Rafah, near the Egyptian border, but even before any ground operation the area has been regularly bombed.
Rafah resident Abu Abdallah said “a very powerful strike” hit a house where displaced Gazans were sheltering. “This is not a life,” he told AFP.
“We can no longer live in our home, our neighbourhood, or walk anywhere. The war has been going on for too long.”
At the city’s Al-Najjar Hospital on Thursday, among the mourners were two men crouching, grief-stricken, in front of a white body bag. Belgium said an Israeli strike on Rafah killed Abdallah Nabhan, 33, who worked for its Enabel development agency.
The lack of safe and unimpeded humanitarian access has a devastating in Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said in a post on X.
“As the weather gets warmer, the risk of disease spreading increases across the Gaza Strip,” the agency said.
“UNRWA services are critical, but not possible without access,” it added.
