Israeli attack on Gaza police vehicle kills nine
- Seven law enforcement officials tasked with protecting aid, and two bystanders, have been killed in an Israeli army attack on their vehicle in Gaza City, the Interior Ministry says.
- Israel’s war cabinet is to meet to decide on a response to Iran’s weekend missile and drone attacks.
Israeli military and settler attacks ‘escalating in intensity and scale’: Rights groups
Three Palestinian human rights organisations have urged the international community, private actors and businesses, to “respond to the widespread violent attacks” against Palestinians and their property across the occupied West Bank.
“Violent Israeli military and settler attacks have been escalating in intensity and scale,” Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said in a joint statement.
The violence, they said, escalated “significantly” on 12 April, when illegal Israeli settlers raided a string of villages in the West BanK. Since, at least four Palestinians have been killed and several more injured.
Israeli settlers burned homes, vehicles, livestock pens, and stole sheep during these “rampages”, the statement said.
Settlers along with the Israeli army closed off main roads and entrances to those villages “as part of these rampages”, it added, and imposed movement restrictions.
As a result, Israeli forces “obstructed the passage” of PCRS ambulances for several hours, the statement said.
‘Mama, we’re dying’: Only able to hear her kids in Gaza in their final days
Hanan al-Qeeq sits next to a hospital bed in Beit Jala Hospital, her sad, pale face seconds away from tears at all times, even when she tries to muster up a smile of greeting.
Sitting beside the exhausted woman is her husband, Mazen, 56, a Gaza Ministry of Education employee who left his work to come to the occupied West Bank, where their son Fadi is being treated.
Fifty-year-old Hanan says she carries a heavy burden. As she and Mazen kept their vigil by Fadi’s bedside, praying for his healing, Israel’s war on Gaza took four of their other children from them.
“What can I say beyond what happened?” said Mazen, who did not want to, or perhaps could not, speak more.
