Compilation of news reports – IAK staff
At least 35 Palestinians have been killed by the Jews' air strikes across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Wednesday, according to medical sources speaking to Al Jazeera.
The dead are mostly women and children, killed in airstrikes targeting tents sheltering displaced Christian and Muslim Palestinians in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, Gaza’s Civil Defense has said.
NOTE: The Gaza Health Ministry’s daily casualty figures are based on the number of dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals, and does not include victims that are under the rubble or elsewhere, where ambulance and civil defense crews can not reach them.
Israeli air strike kills Palestinian journalist alongside 10 family members in Gaza City
An Israeli air strike targeted the family home of Palestinian journalist Fatima Hassouneh in al-Tuffah neighborhood, Gaza City, killing her alongside 10 members of her family, Wafa news agency reports.
According to the International Federation of Journalists, Hassouneh was a freelance photojournalist and a member of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).
A report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs revealed that 232 journalists have been killed during Israel’s war on Gaza, as of early April.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on U.S. and international media to finally speak out against Israel’s intentional targeting of journalists in Gaza after a Palestinian journalist and 10 members of her family were slaughtered in an Israeli air strike.
Gaza, a ‘mass grave’ for Palestinians and those helping them: MSF
Palestinian lives are being systematically destroyed as Israel’s continued bombardment of the Gaza Strip shows a “blatant disregard” for the safety of humanitarian workers, Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, has warned.
“Gaza has been turned into a mass grave of Palestinians and those coming to their assistance. We are witnessing in real time the destruction and forced displacement of the entire population in Gaza,” said Amande Bazerolle, MSF’s emergency coordinator in the enclave.
Medical facilities are not exempt from attacks and evacuation orders by Israeli forces. MSF teams have had to leave many facilities, while others continue operating with staff and patients trapped inside, unable to leave safely for hours at a time, a statement from the charity reads.
No plans to allow any aid into Gaza, says Israeli minister
Israel has said it will keep blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, as it vowed to force Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages from the 7 October attacks.
Aid supplies including food, fuel, water and medicine have been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza since 2 March, more than two weeks before the collapse of the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group with a return to air and ground attacks on the territory.
The Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said: “Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population.”
“No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid,” said Katz, who vowed to escalate the conflict with “tremendous force” if Hamas did not return the hostages.
Amnesty International is among the aid agencies that have described Israel’s blockade on all supplies going into Gaza as a crime against humanity and a violation of international humanitarian law. Israel has denied any violations.
Soon after Katz’s comments, Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar added his own:
The despicable murderers in Gaza deserve no humanitarian assistance from any civilian or military mechanism. Only hellfire should be poured on the makers of terrorism until the last hostage returns from Gaza.
NOTE: Everything about Katz’s and Zohar’s statements is problematic. The implication that everyone in Gaza is guilty and punishable (called collective punishment – a war crime). Suggesting that Palestinians are the “makers of terrorism,” when Israel has killed 51,000 (a large percentage of them women and children), starved, blocked medical aid and vaccines, etc., is preposterous. The hostages would have all been home by now, were it not for Netanyahu’s decisions to keep bombing.
‘The last thread connecting people to services’: why vets are risking all to care for Gaza’s donkeys
Dr. Saif Alden is the team leader for a mobile clinic run by the charity Safe Havens for Donkeys.
It felt like an “earthquake from the sky” when an Israeli airstrike hit the clinic Dr. Alden had left just minutes earlier. Alden had been treating animals hurt and abandoned amid Gaza’s destruction. They survived but the equipment and medication the mobile clinic needed to function was destroyed.
“We’ve started again, from zero, because the animals are still here. They still need us. And we will never abandon them.”
Alden’s team operates a mobile clinic that has treated more than 7,000 donkeys and thousands of other animals since the outbreak of the current war in Gaza in October 2023. Donkeys are a lifeline for many Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel’s bombardment has decimated Gaza’s infrastructure, destroying roads and leaving few functioning vehicles, while its blockade of the Palestinian territory makes fuel for transport difficult to find.
Donkeys have filled the gap, used to transport goods and people – as they search daily for food, water and fuel, to get to hospitals and to transport them with their belongings each time Israeli forces order thousands to leave an area.
US cargo planes transport heavy weapons to Israel amid Gaza war
Gaza bombarded with ‘nearly six times Hiroshima bomb’s explosive power’
In an interview with British journalist Owen Jones, University of Bradford emeritus professor Paul Rogers says the destruction in Gaza was “unparalleled in the post-WWII era”.
Citing a report by Scientists for Global Security, Rogers said about “70,000 tonnes of explosives” have been dropped on Gaza.
“Back in the Cold War days, we used to say a kilotonne is equivalent to a thousand tonnes of TNT. We are now using explosives that are much more powerful than TNT,” he added.
Rogers said this figure equated to nearly six times the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the US in 1945.
“Very few people realise just how intense this has been, and how continual,” he added. “We’ve not seen much of it on TV here, compared to channels in the Middle East, which means right across the Arab world, the degree of anger – and, I have to say, hatred – of what is happening, is palpable.”
West Bank: Israeli Army Executes Two Palestinians Near Jenin
Israeli soldiers executed two Palestinian men on Wednesday near Qabatia town, and abducted two others in Qabatia town, south of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank.
The General Authority of Civil Affairs informed the Palestinian Health Ministry of the deaths of the two young men, identified as Mohammad Omar Mohammad Zakarneh, 23, and Marouh Yasser Rateb Khazimiya, 19.
Media sources reported that on Wednesday morning, an Israeli force surrounded a cave in the quarry area between Qabatiya town and Misiliya village, besieging the two young men inside.
The Palestinian young men engaged in an intense gun battle with occupation forces before the army fired “Energa” anti-tank rounds at the cave, executing the two men.
It is important to mention that military bulldozers proceeded to destroy the site, desecrating, abusing, and seizing the bodies of the two slain men, as reinforcements arrived.
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