Children, women killed in Deir el-Balah attack
- Israeli attacks on Deir el-Balah in central Gaza killed at least 12 people and wounded many more, including children, according to videos and witnesses.
- Thirteen aid trucks arrived safely in Jabalia and Gaza City, marking the first convoys to travel from the south to the north of the Gaza Strip without incident in four months.
Israel lost war against Hamas in Gaza: Ex-military commander
Israel has lost its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a former Israeli military commander said.
“You can’t lie to many people for a long time,” Yitzhak Brick said in an article in Israel’s Maariv newspaper. “What is happening in the Gaza Strip and against Hezbollah in Lebanon will blow up in our faces sooner or later.”
Brick said the Israeli home front “is not prepared for a regional war, which will be thousands of times more difficult and serious than the war in the Gaza Strip”.
Germany’s Scholz say Rafah assault would make regional peace ‘very difficult’
The large number of civilian casualties that could result from an Israeli assault on Rafah would make regional peace “very difficult”, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
“[A long-lasting ceasefire] would enable us to prevent such a ground offensive from taking place,” he said.
Asked if he was prepared to exert pressure on Netanyahu to stop such an assault, Scholz said it was “very clear we must do everything so the situation does not get worse than it already is”.
“Israel has every right to protect itself… At the same time, it cannot be that those in Gaza who fled to Rafah are directly threatened by whatever military actions and operations are undertaken there,” he said.
Flour being distributed after 6 aid trucks arrive in northern Gaza
Gaza’s Civil Defence spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, spoke to Al Jazeera about the entry of aid trucks into northern Gaza.
Here are the main points from his interview:
- Six trucks arrived in northern Gaza and have been secured at UNRWA centres.
- The distribution of bags of flour has begun but they are not enough for Gaza City and the north.
- We expect aid to enter every day, but the Israeli forces’ measures hinder this.
- Those who distribute aid are members of some known families and tribes.
- More than 400 people have been killed while waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli pattern of targeting families inside residential homes
We’ve been seeing this pattern of attacks by Israel in the past weeks where it targets entire families inside homes they’ve been sheltering in.
There have been a lot of confrontations in the central area, namely Deir el-Balah, the refugee camps and the western parts of the central area.
Those injured do not get the necessary treatment and the medical intervention required to save their lives as they come with shrapnel that fractures their bones or makes them bleed severely.
The aftermath of these attacks is the fact that many people are becoming internally displaced as the kind of bombs that are being used also cause damage to the surrounding area. This causes further mounting misery and miserable conditions.
Netanyahu criticises Israel’s allies for ‘short memory’
PM Netanyahu says Israel’s allies have a short memory regarding Hamas’s October 7 attack, and that Israel would push on with its Rafah offensive despite growing international pressure.
“To our friends in the international community I say: Is your memory so short? So quickly you forgot about October 7, the worst massacre committed against Jews since the Holocaust?” Netanyahu said at the start of his cabinet meeting.
“So quickly you are ready to deny Israel the right to defend itself against the monsters of Hamas?”
Netanyahu reiterated that Israel would push on with its offensive in Gaza, including in the city of Rafah.
Since October 7, at least 31,645 Palestinians have been killed and 73,676 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza. The revised death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attack stands at 1,139 with dozens taken captive.
Rights advocates sound alarm over Israeli torture of Palestinian detainees
Israeli rights groups have called for international action over Israeli abuse and torture of Palestinian detainees, saying the situation amounted to a “crisis”.
Tal Steiner, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), told AFP news agency that nine people had allegedly died behind bars since October 7.
And “there are almost 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody right now… a 200% increase from any normal year”, she said.
Miriam Azem, of the Adalah legal centre, said that her organisation had managed to document “19 clear cases” of torture within the Israeli prison system since October 7, including sexual violence.
“We’re seeing really widespread and systemic use of many, many tools in order to inflict torture and ill-treatment on Palestinians,” she said, adding that the situation “requires the immediate intervention of the international community”.
