Humanitarian coordinator Amjad Shawa in Gaza warned that more children likely to die from malnutrition as “the whole Strip is starving” due to Israel’s siege.
Medical sources say at least 35 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza today alone, with one strike on Bureij killing nine members of the same family.
A Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship carrying 30 pro-Palestinian activists bombed, with the group blaming Israel or one of its allies. There were no casualties.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 52,418 Palestinians and wounded 118,091, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry. The Gaza Government Media Office updated the death toll to more than 61,700, saying thousands of people missing under the rubble are presumed dead.
An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive.
A Palestinian child has been killed in an Israeli air strike that targeted al-Sikka street in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood, Wafa news agency reported.
It identified the child as Aoun Nizar al-Dib and said his grandfather, who was with him at the time of the strike, was wounded.
A Palestinian man was killed in a separate attack when Israeli forces targeted Gaza City’s al-Zaytoon neighbourhood, Wafa said. Several people were wounded in the attack.
Palestinian-American activist Huwaida Arraf says the attack on the Freedom Flotilla vessel Conscience outside Maltese territorial waters marks an “escalation” compared to previous missions she was involved in.
In 2010, Arraf was on board one of six vessels known as the Freedom Flotilla I that was intercepted by the Israeli navy. Israeli commandos who boarded the Turkish Mavi Marmara opened fire and killed nine activists.
On that occasion, “[Israel] hit us in international waters, but we were on our way to Gaza and they had communicated with us to tell us to turn back,” Arraf said. “I was the one to speak to them on the radio to say that what we’re doing is lawful, we are bringing humanitarian aid, we’re unarmed civilians.”
The Conscience had left from an undisclosed location and was hit on Thursday while on its way to Malta to pick up more aid and volunteers. Arraf said the Freedom Flotilla Coalition has so far refrained from disclosing where the vessel departed from as previous missions had failed to depart following Israel’s diplomatic pressure.
While an attack was something the group had anticipated, Arraf said it did not expect it would happen during the “preparatory phases”, before it had even begun sailing towards Gaza. “This is an escalation,” the lawyer and human rights activist said.
Lebanon’s top security body, the Higher Defence Council, has warned Hamas against using the country’s territory for acts that could undermine national security, after rocket fire towards Israel led to counterstrikes.
“The harshest measures will be taken to put a complete end to any act that infringes on Lebanon’s sovereignty,” according to a statement.It comes as Lebanon faces growing pressure from the US to disarm groups outside state control, following a 14-month war between Israel and the armed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Lebanese authorities say Israel has violated the US-brokered truce agreement on a near-daily basis.
The Houthi group claimed responsibility for firing two missiles targeting Israel’s Ramat David airbase and the Tel Aviv area. Alarms were sounded in several areas, the Israeli army said, after the launch of both missiles, but there were no reports of damage or casualties.
At least four people have been in killed as a result of “Israeli aggression” in Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida governorate, Syria’s state-run news agency SANA reported.
It cited the Sweida governorate as saying that an Israeli military aircraft launched a strike targeting four people in the town of Kanaker.
The attack on the Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza while sailing in international waters off the coast of Malta “is a result of direct impunity that the world has granted to Israel”, Palestinian-American lawyer and human rights activist Huwaida Arraf told Al Jazeera.
The drone attack was blamed on Israel or one of its allies. Israel has not claimed responsibility.Arraf, a member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, said the group was calling for an investigation.
“We assume [Israel’s drone] violated Maltese airspace and that just reinforces the impunity with which Israel acts, that it can violate anyone and anything and any country to do what it wants,” she said. “Either that or they coordinated, which would be outrageous.
“When you’re talking about an attack on an initiative that is trying to take life-saving aid to Gaza, it makes it all the more egregious. We call on every country to act to stop this barbarity.”
Israel’s aid blockade and more than 18 months of war are pushing Gaza’s children to the brink, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF says.
Children in the enclave have not only faced relentless bombardment, but are also being deprived of essential goods, services and lifesaving care, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.
“With each passing day of the aid blockade, they face the growing risk of starvation, illness and death – nothing can justify this,” Russell said. “The sea they used for fishing has been restricted. Bakeries are closing, water production is declining, and market shelves are almost bare.”
In the past month, she said, families have been forced to choose between showering, cleaning, and cooking as access to water is quickly deteriorating. Vaccines are also running out, Russell warned, and diseases are spreading rapidly.
“Malnutrition is also on the rise,” she said, adding that more than 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year.
The Israeli military is preparing for a large-scale mobilisation of reserve troops in order to expand its ground operations in Gaza amid a growing crisis in troop numbers and escalating public tensions over the fate of Israeli captives held in Gaza, according to Israeli media.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to hold security consultations later today with senior ministers and military officials on the matter, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
“In recent days, several reserve officers have alerted their units to prepare for a sudden call-up,” the newspaper said.Tensions escalated further on Thursday when Netanyahu declared that Israeli military objectives were a higher priority than rescuing captives.
Hamas has offered a proposal to exchange all Israeli captives for a full ceasefire, complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, a proposal rejected by Netanyahu and his government.
In recent days, the Israeli army issued a statement indicating that reserve deployments would be carried out “with care and responsibility, based on objective and professional considerations”.
Many families in Gaza have been forced to resort to using old shoes to light fires instead of firewood, according to the Wafa news agency,
Firewood has become scarce and, even when available, unaffordable for the Palestinians in Gaza, the agency said.
Five kilogrammes of worn-out shoes are priced at about 10 shekels ($2,75), while a kilogramme of firewood costs four shekels, it added.
Gas cylinders, which are the main source of energy for cooking, have been blocked from being transported into Gaza by Israel in the first months after October 7, 2023, Wafa said in its report.
