UN rights chief ‘horrified’ by mass grave reports at Gaza hospitals
UN rights chief Volker Turk has said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the Nasser and al-Shifa medical facilities in Gaza and reports of mass graves discovered there.
The emergency services said yesterday that 73 more bodies had been found at the site of the Nasser hospital, the biggest in southern Gaza, in the past day, raising the number found over the week to at least 283 people.
Israel says it was forced to battle inside hospitals because Hamas fighters operated there, which medical staff and Hamas deny.
Turk, addressing a UN briefing via a spokesperson on Tuesday, also decried Israeli strikes on Gaza in recent days, which he said have killed mostly women and children.
He also repeated a warning against a full-scale incursion on Rafah, saying this could lead to “further atrocity crimes”.
Israel bombarded northern Gaza overnight in some of the heaviest shelling in weeks, residents said. Shelling was intense east of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia and continued on Tuesday morning in areas such as Zeitoun, one of Gaza City’s oldest suburbs, with residents reporting at least 10 strikes in a matter of seconds along the main road. Just west of Beit Hanoun in Beit Lahiya, medics and Hamas media said strikes had hit a mosque and a crowd gathering on the coastal road to collect aid dropped from the air.
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UN rights chief Volker Turk said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the Nasser and al-Shifa medical facilities in Gaza and reports of mass graves discovered there. The emergency services said yesterday that 73 more bodies had been found at the site of the Nasser hospital, the biggest in southern Gaza, in the past day, raising the number found over the week to at least 283 people.
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At least 34,183 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,143 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement.
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Qatar said there was no reason to end the presence of an office for Hamas in Doha while its mediation efforts continued amid Israel’s war in Gaza. It came after the US state department said Hamas “moved the goalpost” and changed its demands in negotiations with Israel. But it’s not clear what exactly has shifted in the details of the talks, which are being mediated by Egypt and Qatar.
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The Israeli military bombarded northern Gaza overnight in some of the heaviest shelling in weeks, residents have told Reuters.
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Army tanks made a new incursion east of Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, though they did not penetrate far into the city, according to residents, with gunfire reportedly reaching some schools where displaced people were sheltering.
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Shelling was intense east of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia and continued on Tuesday morning in areas such as Zeitoun, one of Gaza City’s oldest suburbs, with residents reporting at least 10 strikes in a matter of seconds along the main road.
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Just west of Beit Hanoun in Beit Lahiya, medics and Hamas media said strikes had hit a mosque and a crowd gathering on the coastal road to collect aid dropped from the air.
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“It was one of those nights of horror that we had lived in at the start of the war. The bombing from tanks and planes didn’t stop,” Um Mohammad, 53, a mother-of-six living 700 metres from Zeitoun, said.
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“I had to gather with my children and my sisters who came to shelter with me in one place and pray for our lives as the house kept shaking,” she told Reuters.
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“I don’t know if we will make it alive before this war stops.”
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The Israeli army said rockets launched overnight into Israel had come from firing positions in northern Gaza. It said it had struck rocket launchers and killed several militants overnight, in what the army called “targeted and precise” strikes.
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UN rights chief Volker Turk has said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the Nasser and al-Shifa medical facilities in Gaza and reports of mass graves discovered there.
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The emergency services said yesterday that 73 more bodies had been found at the site of the Nasser hospital, the biggest in southern Gaza, in the past day, raising the number found over the week to at least 283 people.
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Israel says it was forced to battle inside hospitals because Hamas fighters operated there, which medical staff and Hamas deny.
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Turk, addressing a UN briefing via a spokesperson on Tuesday, also decried Israeli strikes on Gaza in recent days, which he said have killed mostly women and children.
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He also repeated a warning against a full-scale incursion on Rafah, saying this could lead to “further atrocity crimes”.
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At least 34,183 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,143 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
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The death toll includes 32 people killed in the past 24 hours.
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Most of the casualties since October have been women and children, the ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across the devastated enclave.
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Welcome to our latest live news blog on Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis.
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The US state department says Hamas has “moved the goalpost” and changed its demands in negotiations with Israel. But it’s not clear what exactly has shifted in the details of the talks, which are being mediated by Egypt and Qatar.
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State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday at his daily press briefing that the US would continue to push for an agreement that would see hostages taken on 7 October released and a pause in fighting in Gaza, Reuters reported.
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Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 people and abducted another 253, on 7 October, according to Israeli tallies. Some of the hostages were freed in a November truce, but efforts to secure another deal to release the remaining 133 captives appear to have stalled for now.
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Hamas has been pushing for a far more significant cessation in hostilities, including a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, even as Israeli officials have vowed to continue with the war.
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Here is a summary of some of the other latest developments:
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Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has found. Israeli allegations of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency.
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The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has rejected the idea that Washington might have a “double standard” when applying US law to allegations of abuses by the Israeli military in Gaza, while suggesting that examinations of such charges are ongoing.
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Gaza authorities say over 200 bodies have been recovered so far from a temporary mass grave at what is left of Nasser hospital, which was besieged and raided by Israeli troops. Residents said Israeli troops fought their way back into an eastern section of Khan Younis in a surprise raid on Monday. Israel’s military has said that it remains operational during the Passover holiday and “is at full readiness in all areas”.
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The head of the World Health Organization on Monday again called for safe passage for humanitarian aid missions throughout Gaza after an aid team failed to complete its most recent trip to the devastated northern part of the enclave.
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Doctors in Gaza have saved a baby from the womb of her mother as she lay dying from head injuries sustained in an in Israeli airstrike. The girl was delivered via an emergency caesarean section at a hospital in Rafah.
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At least 34,151 Palestinians have been killed and 77,084 injured by israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday. Israel says that over the same period 260 of its troops have been killed inside the Gaza Strip during its ground operation, with 1,582 injured.
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In a resignation letter, Aharon Haliva, the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has described the Hamas attack inside southern Israel as a “black day” that he has carried with him ever since. Haliva said he was proud of the way that the men and women of the IDF had responded since that day, but that in failing to prevent the assault his team had not “lived up to the task”. He will stay in post until a replacement is appointed.
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Israeli forces conducted raids across the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Monday, injuring a man in the Balata refugee camp and detaining at least 25 more according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
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Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi is in Islamabad on a three-day trip to Pakistan.
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Key events
Reuters reports that Hezbollah has said in a statement it had launched a drone attack on Israeli military bases north of the city of Acre, which would mark its deepest attack inside Israel since 7 October.
Israel and anti-Israeli forces including Hezbollah have frequently exchanged fire over the UN-drawn blue line that divides Israel and Lebanon since 7 October.
In recent weeks Israeli soldiers have been wounded on the Lebanese side of the line, and in the last couple of days an Israeli drone operating over Lebanese airspace was shot down.
Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man early Tuesday in the West Bank city of Jericho, an eyewitness and Palestinian officials said.
Associated Press reports the Palestinian health ministry identified the man as Shadi Jalaita, 44, and said he suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.
His uncle, Shafiq Jalaita, said the man had been outside his home watching an Israeli military raid taking place at a neighbour’s house in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Suddenly, three gunshots rang out, he said.
“The third bullet hit his chest and came out of his back,” Jalaita said.
The Israeli army has not commented on the shooting.
The health ministry said a child also was shot in the stomach in Jericho and was in critical condition. No further details were available.
Israel’s military has said that the incident in northern Israel has ended, and that the sirens were sounding for the risk of falling shrapnel. It says “the IDF aerial defense array successfully intercepted two suspicious aerial targets off the northern coast”.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us today from Gaza over the news wires.
Within the last thirty minutes the IDF has posted to its Telegram channel that warning sirens have sounded in the north of Israel. It also claims “the IDF aerial defence array successfully intercepted a suspicious aerial target off the coast of Nahariyya.”
Summary of the day so far…
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Israel bombarded northern Gaza overnight in some of the heaviest shelling in weeks, residents said. Shelling was intense east of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia and continued on Tuesday morning in areas such as Zeitoun, one of Gaza City’s oldest suburbs, with residents reporting at least 10 strikes in a matter of seconds along the main road. Just west of Beit Hanoun in Beit Lahiya, medics and Hamas media said strikes had hit a mosque and a crowd gathering on the coastal road to collect aid dropped from the air.
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UN rights chief Volker Turk said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the Nasser and al-Shifa medical facilities in Gaza and reports of mass graves discovered there. The emergency services said yesterday that 73 more bodies had been found at the site of the Nasser hospital, the biggest in southern Gaza, in the past day, raising the number found over the week to at least 283 people.
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At least 34,183 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,143 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement.
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Qatar said there was no reason to end the presence of an office for Hamas in Doha while its mediation efforts continued amid Israel’s war in Gaza. It came after the US state department said Hamas “moved the goalpost” and changed its demands in negotiations with Israel. But it’s not clear what exactly has shifted in the details of the talks, which are being mediated by Egypt and Qatar.
Qatar said there was no reason to end the presence of an office for Hamas in Doha while its mediation efforts continued amid Israel’s war on Gaza.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari added in a press conference that Qatar remained committed to mediation but was reassessing its role in “frustration with attacks” on its efforts.
The US state department has said Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has “moved the goalpost” and changed its demands in negotiations with Israel.
But it’s not clear what exactly has shifted in the details of the talks, which are being mediated by Egypt and Qatar.
The Senate is returning to Washington to vote on $95bn in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, taking the final steps in Congress to send the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk after months of delays.
The foreign aid package, which was approved by the US House of Representatives over the weekend, includes $26.4bn (£21.34bn) in military support for Israel.
The package has had broad congressional support since Biden first requested the money last summer.
But congressional leaders had to navigate strong opposition from a growing number of conservatives who question US involvement in foreign wars.
Several dozen Democrats voted against the bill aiding Israel as they demanded an end to the bombardment of Gaza that has killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, over 34,000 Palestinians.
Israel strikes northern Gaza in heaviest shelling in weeks – residents
The Israeli military bombarded northern Gaza overnight in some of the heaviest shelling in weeks, residents have told Reuters.
Army tanks made a new incursion east of Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, though they did not penetrate far into the city, according to residents, with gunfire reportedly reaching some schools where displaced people were sheltering.
Shelling was intense east of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia and continued on Tuesday morning in areas such as Zeitoun, one of Gaza City’s oldest suburbs, with residents reporting at least 10 strikes in a matter of seconds along the main road.
Just west of Beit Hanoun in Beit Lahiya, medics and Hamas media said strikes had hit a mosque and a crowd gathering on the coastal road to collect aid dropped from the air.
“It was one of those nights of horror that we had lived in at the start of the war. The bombing from tanks and planes didn’t stop,” Um Mohammad, 53, a mother-of-six living 700 metres from Zeitoun, said.
“I had to gather with my children and my sisters who came to shelter with me in one place and pray for our lives as the house kept shaking,” she told Reuters.
“I don’t know if we will make it alive before this war stops.”
The Israeli army said rockets launched overnight into Israel had come from firing positions in northern Gaza. It said it had struck rocket launchers and killed several militants overnight, in what the army called “targeted and precise” strikes.
A source close to Hezbollah said an Israeli strike deep into Lebanon killed a fighter of the Iran-backed militant group on Tuesday as he was travelling in a vehicle, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The strike hit the Abu al-Aswad area near the coastal city of Tyre, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the border, an AFP journalist reported.
The source told AFP that the fighter killed was an engineer attached to Hezbollah’s air defence forces.
Lebanon’s state-run National news agency said an Israeli drone had fired on his vehicle, which an AFP journalist said was completely burnt out. These claims are yet to be independently verified by the Guardian.
Israel and Hezbollah – a Lebanese Shia Muslim militant group – trade almost daily strikes across the border, which began with the start of Israel’s war on Gaza after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was quoted by media as saying he does not believe the Palestinian militant group Hamas will leave Qatar, where it is based, adding he had seen no such signs from Doha either.
Speaking to reporters on a return flight from Iraq, the Turkish leader also said the full capture of Gaza by Israel would “open the door” for further invasions of Palestinian territories, according to broadcaster Haberturk and other media outlets.
Erdoğan met the head of Hamas’ politburo, Ismail Haniyeh alongside key members of his cabinet and Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, on Saturday to discuss Israeli attacks on Gaza and efforts to calm tensions across the region, according to the Turkish presidential office.
Qatar’s prime minister said last week that his country was re-evaluating its role as mediator in ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel, citing concerns that its efforts are being undermined by politicians seeking to score points.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who is also foreign minister, said there was a “misuse of this mediation for narrow political interests, and this necessitated Qatar to undertake a full evaluation of this role”.
UN rights chief ‘horrified’ by mass grave reports at Gaza hospitals
UN rights chief Volker Turk has said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the Nasser and al-Shifa medical facilities in Gaza and reports of mass graves discovered there.
The emergency services said yesterday that 73 more bodies had been found at the site of the Nasser hospital, the biggest in southern Gaza, in the past day, raising the number found over the week to at least 283 people.
Israel says it was forced to battle inside hospitals because Hamas fighters operated there, which medical staff and Hamas deny.
Turk, addressing a UN briefing via a spokesperson on Tuesday, also decried Israeli strikes on Gaza in recent days, which he said have killed mostly women and children.
He also repeated a warning against a full-scale incursion on Rafah, saying this could lead to “further atrocity crimes”.
Here are some of the latest images coming out from the newswires:
Rights groups have flagged numerous incidents of civilian harm during Israel’s war on Gaza, as well as raising the alarm about rising violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Palestinian health ministry records show Israeli forces or settlers have killed at least 460 Palestinians since the Hamas attack on 7 October.
The state department in its 2023 human rights report about Israel said the war has had “a significant negative impact” on the human rights situation in Israel, and cited allegations of numerous incidents such as arbitrary or unlawful killings, enforced disappearance, torture and unjustified arrests of journalists among others.
However, so far the Biden administration has said it has not found Israel in breach of international law.
Advocates have raised questions of double standards saying Washington has been quick to condemn the actions of, for example, Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, but the Biden administration has been careful not to go too far in its criticism of Israel.
Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheál Martin, has welcomed the conclusion of the Colonna report into the UN relief works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa), which found that Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the agency are members of terrorist organisations.
The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that Unrwa had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that “the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any concerns relating to any Unrwa staff based on these staff lists since 2011”.
Allegations of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency, the main channel of humanitarian support not only to Palestinians in Gaza but to Palestinian refugee communities across the region.
Speaking in Cairo ahead of a meeting with the Egyptian foreign minister and a visit to the Rafah crossing into Gaza, Martin said the report had vindicated Ireland’s response to the allegations made by Israel.
He was quoted by RTÉ as saying:
We were very clear from the word go that you could not replace or undermine Unwra’s role in terms of giving vital aid, teaching, education.
Half a million children in Gaza have been without education, and the only credible organisation that can deliver education is Unrwa.
We took an opposite view to most countries, we actually increased our aid at that time, and I’m hoping now as a result of the publication of this report that some countries who have paused their support will now allow their support.
Death toll in Gaza reaches 34,183, says health ministry
At least 34,183 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,143 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
The death toll includes 32 people killed in the past 24 hours.
Most of the casualties since October have been women and children, the ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across the devastated enclave.
EU sanctions announced after Iran’s attack against Israel are “regrettable” because the country was acting in self-defence, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, has said.
Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles on Israel in what it said was retaliation against a suspected Israeli bombing of its embassy compound in Damascus.
On Monday, EU foreign ministers agreed in principle to expand sanctions on Iran by agreeing to extend restrictive measures on Tehran’s weapons exports of any drone or missile to Iranian proxies and Russia.
“It is regrettable to see the EU deciding quickly to apply more unlawful restrictions against Iran just because Iran exercised its right to self-defence in the face of Israel’s reckless aggression,” Amirabdollahian wrote on X, before calling on the EU to apply sanctions on Israel instead.
It is regrettable to see the EU deciding quickly to apply more unlawful restrictions against Iran just because Iran exercised its right to self-defence in the face of Israel’s reckless aggression. The EU should not follow Washington’s advice to satisfy the criminal Israeli…
— H.Amirabdollahian امیرعبداللهیان (@Amirabdolahian) April 23, 2024
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It is regrettable to see the EU deciding quickly to apply more unlawful restrictions against Iran just because Iran exercised its right to self-defence in the face of Israel’s reckless aggression. The EU should not follow Washington’s advice to satisfy the criminal Israeli…
— H.Amirabdollahian امیرعبداللهیان (@Amirabdolahian) April 23, 2024
Tensions flared between pro-Palestinian student protesters and school administrators at several US universities on Monday, as in-person classes were cancelled and demonstrators arrested.
The protests, which began last week at Columbia University with a large group of demonstrators establishing a so-called “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on school grounds, have spread to other campuses, including Yale and MIT.
Some Jewish students at Columbia have reported intimidation and antisemitism amid the days-long protest, which is calling for the prestigious New York institution to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Classes were moved online on Monday, with university president Nemat Shafik calling for a “reset” in an open letter to the school community.
You can read more about the student protests at Columbia University here.
Opening summary
Welcome to our latest live news blog on Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis.
The US state department says Hamas has “moved the goalpost” and changed its demands in negotiations with Israel. But it’s not clear what exactly has shifted in the details of the talks, which are being mediated by Egypt and Qatar.
State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday at his daily press briefing that the US would continue to push for an agreement that would see hostages taken on 7 October released and a pause in fighting in Gaza, Reuters reported.
Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 people and abducted another 253, on 7 October, according to Israeli tallies. Some of the hostages were freed in a November truce, but efforts to secure another deal to release the remaining 133 captives appear to have stalled for now.
Hamas has been pushing for a far more significant cessation in hostilities, including a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, even as Israeli officials have vowed to continue with the war.
Here is a summary of some of the other latest developments:
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Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has found. Israeli allegations of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency.
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The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has rejected the idea that Washington might have a “double standard” when applying US law to allegations of abuses by the Israeli military in Gaza, while suggesting that examinations of such charges are ongoing.
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Gaza authorities say over 200 bodies have been recovered so far from a temporary mass grave at what is left of Nasser hospital, which was besieged and raided by Israeli troops. Residents said Israeli troops fought their way back into an eastern section of Khan Younis in a surprise raid on Monday. Israel’s military has said that it remains operational during the Passover holiday and “is at full readiness in all areas”.
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The head of the World Health Organization on Monday again called for safe passage for humanitarian aid missions throughout Gaza after an aid team failed to complete its most recent trip to the devastated northern part of the enclave.
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Doctors in Gaza have saved a baby from the womb of her mother as she lay dying from head injuries sustained in an in Israeli airstrike. The girl was delivered via an emergency caesarean section at a hospital in Rafah.
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At least 34,151 Palestinians have been killed and 77,084 injured by israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday. Israel says that over the same period 260 of its troops have been killed inside the Gaza Strip during its ground operation, with 1,582 injured.
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In a resignation letter, Aharon Haliva, the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has described the Hamas attack inside southern Israel as a “black day” that he has carried with him ever since. Haliva said he was proud of the way that the men and women of the IDF had responded since that day, but that in failing to prevent the assault his team had not “lived up to the task”. He will stay in post until a replacement is appointed.
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Israeli forces conducted raids across the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Monday, injuring a man in the Balata refugee camp and detaining at least 25 more according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
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Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi is in Islamabad on a three-day trip to Pakistan.
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