Nearly 13,000 students killed by Israel in Gaza, West Bank – ministry
- The Palestinian Education Ministry says more than 12,799 students have been killed and at least 20,942 wounded in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the war.
- Israeli forces continue to pound Gaza, killing at least 10 people in Gaza City and knocking out the power generators at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north of the territory.
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Israeli forces plant explosive traps around Gaza’s besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital
- The situation continues to escalate as Israeli forces launch attacks on areas across the Gaza Strip, including Nuseirat, Rafah and the northern parts which have been under blockade for more than 70 days now without any basic necessities.
There have been several strikes in the past 24 hours, trapping Palestinians under the rubble of buildings after two homes were targeted. We don’t have the full information yet because we are unable to access those areas.
This has been increasingly happening because Israeli troops force civil defence teams and paramedics to evacuate areas.
The Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is also facing a very difficult situation, with the latest including Israeli forces planting booby traps in areas surrounding the facility.
Israeli army bombed 18 civil defence sites in Gaza, agency says
Our colleagues in Al Jazeera Arabic have quoted the group’s deputy director, Brigadier General Samir al-Khatib, as saying about 92 civil defence members were killed and more than 300 injured in Israeli attacks in Gaza.
“The occupation bombed and destroyed 18 civil defence sites in the Strip, and we are now working without official sites,” al-Khatib said.
“The occupation has forced civil defence crews to leave the northern Gaza governorates,” he added.
The northern part of the Strip is under the siege of the Israeli army, which has continued its relentless attacks in the region for several weeks.
Israel will be ‘uprooted’ as it plans to encircle Hezbollah from Syria: Khamenei
During a speech to a group of women gathered in Tehran, the Iranian supreme leader has again emphasised that those who believe the Tehran-led “axis of resistance” is finished after the changes in Syria are mistaken.
“The spirit of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is alive; the spirit of Sinwar is alive,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, referring to Hezbollah and Hamas leaders killed by Israel.
As the crowd chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, he said their bodies had been taken but their beliefs remained, ensuring their paths would continue.
“They are attacking Gaza and taking martyrs on a daily basis, but they are still standing, they are still resisting. Lebanon resists,” Khamenei said.
“The Zionist regime believes it is preparing itself through Syria to encircle Hezbollah’s forces and uproot them. But the one who will be uprooted is Israel.”
Israeli military says explosions expected as part of ‘routine activity’ in Lebanon
The Israeli military says in a report addressed to Israeli citizens that sounds of explosions could be expected in the coming hours in the Upper Galilee.
It said this would be part of “routine activity” by the army in southern Lebanon and there is no need for concern about a security incident.
The warning was issued while Israel’s ceasefire with Hezbollah continues to hold despite numerous violations.
Gaza death toll rises
At least 45,059 people have been killed and 107,041 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, 2023, the enclave’s Health Ministry says.
Of those, 31 Palestinians were killed and 79 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry added.
Palestinians in Syria flock to cemetery off-limits under al-Assad
In a war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Radwan Adwan was stacking stones to rebuild his father’s grave, finally able to return to Yarmouk cemetery after Bashar al-Assad’s fall.
“Without the fall of the regime, it would have been impossible to see my father’s grave again,” said 45-year-old Adwan.
“When we arrived, there was no trace of the grave.”
It was his first visit there since 2018 when access to the cemetery south of Damascus was officially banned.
Yarmouk camp fell early in the war. It was bombed and besieged by al-Assad’s forces, emptied of most of its residents and reduced to ruins before its recapture in 2018.
Al-Assad’s ouster has allowed former residents to return for the first time in years.
Back at the cemetery, Adwan’s mother Zeina sat on a small metal chair in front of her husband’s gravesite.
She was “finally” able to weep for him, she said. “Before, my tears were dry.”
“It’s the first time that I have returned to his grave for years. Everything has changed, but I still recognise where his grave is,” said the 70-year-old woman.
Yarmouk camp, established in the 1950s to house Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their land after Israel’s creation, had become a key residential and commercial district over the decades.
Some 160,000 Palestinians lived there alongside thousands of Syrians before the country’s conflict erupted in 2011.
Thousands fled in 2012, and few have found their homes still standing in the eerie wasteland that used to be Yarmouk.
