Israeli strikes kill at least 29, Gaza rescuers say

Gaza’s civil defence agency has said Israeli bombardment killed at least 29 people since midnight in the territory, which has been under Israeli aid blockade for nearly two months, AFP reports.

Civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir said today’s toll included eight people killed in an air strike on the Abu Sahlul family home in Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza.

Four people were killed in an air strike east of Shaaf in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, he told AFP.

At least 17 more were killed in other attacks across the Palestinian territory, including one that hit a tent sheltering displaced people near the central city of Deir el-Balah, the agency said.Director of Gaza’s health ministry calls on UN to issue famine declaration

Dr Munir al-Bursh, director of Gaza’s health ministry, said the UN should make an official declaration of famine in the Strip as an Israeli blockade choking off access to food and other vital goods enters its third month, Al Jazeera reports.

“We call on the United Nations to issue an official declaration of famine in Gaza, given that field indicators and medical and humanitarian data confirm that international conditions for this have been met,” he said.

Here are some points he shared with Al Jazeera about the dire conditions faced by Palestinians in Gaza. 91 per cent of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are facing a food crisis two months after Israel closed the crossings.

92pc of children and breastfeeding mothers in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition.

65pc of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip do not have access to clean drinking water.

Military’s mission to bring hostages home but ‘supreme goal’ victory against Hamas: Netanyahu  .Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that while the military’s mission was to bring home all the hostages from Gaza, its “supreme goal” was to achieve victory against Hamas, AFP reports.

“We want to bring home both the living and the fallen — this is a very important mission,” Netanyahu said at a function in Jerusalem marking Israel’s Independence Day. “But in war, there is one supreme goal — and that is victory over our enemies, and we will achieve it.”‘We are breaking the bodies and minds of the children of Gaza’, says WHO Executive Director

The Executive Director of the World Health Organisation has said that the “minds and bodies” of children in Gaza were being “broken”, following two months of aid blockade and renewed strikes, Reuters reports.

“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 Dr Michael Ryan told reporters at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva on Thursday, urging the international community to act.

“As a physician, I am angry. It is an abomination,” he said.Blocking aid to Gaza is a ‘cruel collective punishment,’ says UN relief chief  The United Nations has again called on Israel to lift its blockade of humanitarian aid delivery into the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reports.

“International law is unequivocal: as the occupying power, Israel must allow humanitarian support in. Aid, and the civilian lives it saves, should never be a bargaining chip,” Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said in a statement.

He said blocking aid starves civilians and leaves them without basic medical support, adding that it strips them of dignity and hope and “inflicts a cruel collective punishment. Blocking aid kills.

“The humanitarian movement is independent, impartial and neutral. We believe that all civilians are equally worthy of protection,” said Fletcher, underlining that they remain ready to save as many lives as they can, despite the risks.

Increased looting of food stores and community kitchens in the Gaza Strip shows growing desperation as hunger spreads two months after Israel cut off supplies to the Palestinian territory, aid officials tell Reuters.

The looting “is a grave signal of how serious things have become in the Gaza Strip — the spread of hunger, the loss of hope and desperation among residents as well as the absence of the authority of the law,” said Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network (PNGO) in Gaza.

“The looting, while devastating, is not surprising in the face of total systemic collapse. We are witnessing the consequences of a society brought to its knees by prolonged siege and violence,” she said in a statement shared with Reuters.

More than 600,000 Gaza children out of school: UNRWA

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has revealed that some 660,000 children in the coastal enclave are out of school due to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.

“Following the resumption of military bombardments when the ceasefire ended, temporary learning activities have been severely impacted,” it said in a post on X.

Gaza death toll rises as 18 killed in past 24 hours: health ministry .At least 18 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll since 2023 to 52,418, Al Jazeera reports, citing the enclave’s health ministry.

Those killed included one person whose body was recovered. At least 77 people were also wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said.

The number of injured in Gaza rose to 118,091 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, it added.

Israel has killed at least 2,326 Palestinians and wounded 6,050 since it broke the ceasefire on March 18, according to the ministry.Netanyahu says 18 arrested on suspicion of arson connected to wildfires

Israel’s Arutz Sheva media has cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as stating that 18 people are detained on suspicion of starting fires that have swept parts of Israel, Al Jazeera reports.

Al Jazeera reports that at least 14 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip since the early hours of this morning.The aid shortage is being exacerbated by the ongoing attacks, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reports from Gaza City, Gaza.

“People cannot reach whatever aid is left in warehouses in areas where the Israeli military is operating aggressively, and the food is going to waste,” he said.

Mahmoud refernced a statement from the United Nations on 3,000 trucks filled with much-needed aid and survival items stuck on the other side of the border.

“There are 1 million children relying on this aid — without it, we’re on the verge of absolute famine.”