War on Gaza: Death toll surges to 50,887

Israel turns Strip into ‘killing field’ – UN ‘600,000 children malnourished’   Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Thursday that at least 50,887 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children and 115,875 wounded, with thousands still missing, since Israel began attacking the besieged territory following an attack led by the Palestinian group […]

• Israel turns Strip into ‘killing field’ – UN

• ‘600,000 children malnourished’

 

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Thursday that at least 50,887 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children and 115,875 wounded, with thousands still missing, since Israel began attacking the besieged territory following an attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas on October 7, 2023.

An estimated 1,139 people were killed and some 250 were taken captive in the attack in southern Israel.

On Thursday, at least 13 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, as Israel continued its deadly onslaught on the blockaded territory, medics said.

A medical source said five people, including a child, were killed when an Israeli drone shelled a group of civilians in central Gaza City. Several other people were injured in the attack.

Another strike hit a populated house in the Shujaiya neighborhood in Gaza City, leaving four people dead, the source said.

In southern Gaza, an airstrike on a tent for displaced civilians left two people dead and several others injured in Al-Qarara town, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

A child was also killed in the Al-Fukhari area in Khan Younis city as a result of Israeli artillery shelling.

Wafa also reported that one more Palestinian was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent for displaced people in the central Gaza Strip.

Israeli artillery shelling was also reported in several areas across Gaza, including the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, eastern Gaza City, and northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia town.

The Israeli army renewed a deadly assault on Gaza on March 18 and has since killed more than 1,500 people, injured over 3,800 others, and shattered a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement in the enclave that was signed in January.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed last week to escalate attacks on Gaza as efforts are underway to implement US President Donald Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from the enclave.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

Israel turning Gaza into ‘killing field’ – Guterres

On Tuesday, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned  the latest phase of Israel’s genocide in Gaza has made the Strip into “a killing field,” as Israel is blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid and is continuing its relentless bombardments.

He equally condemned Israel’s blockade of food and medical supplies.

“More than an entire month has passed without a drop of aid into Gaza. No food. No fuel. No medicine. No commercial supplies. As aid has dried up, the floodgates of horror have reopened,” Guterres said in remarks to the press.

“Gaza is a killing field — and civilians are in an endless death loop,” the UN chief said.

Guterres also said Israel’s actions in Gaza are “intolerable in the eyes of international law”.

‘600,000 children malnourished in Gaza’

At least 60,000 children in the Gaza Strip are “at risk of serious health complications due to malnutrition” as food supplies dwindle amid Israel’s blockade of aid, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.

The ministry’s statement came on Wednesday, a day after United Nations’ Guterres rejected a new Israeli proposal to control aid deliveries in Gaza, saying it risks “further controlling and callously limiting aid down to the last calorie and grain of flour”.

The Health Ministry warned that “the lack of adequate nutrition and drinking water will compound health challenges, with the continued ban on vaccinations for children, especially polio vaccinations”.

No aid has been delivered to the enclave of 2.3 million people since March 2 as Israel continues to seal vital border crossings, barring the entry of everything from food to medical supplies and fuel.

The situation has forced the closure of 21 nutrition centres, disrupting care for about 350 children already severely malnourished, according to the UN.

Israel had also bombed one of Gaza’s only operational water desalination plants that was supplying clean drinking water to the strip.

Activists turn US embassy pond red in London

Meanwhile, British police have arrested the UK head of Greenpeace, alongside five other activists, after they poured 300 litres of blood-red dye into a pond at the U.S. embassy on Thursday in protest against the U.S. sale of arms to Israel.

Will McCallum, the environmental campaign group’s UK head, and the others, disguised as delivery riders on bicycles with trailers, Greenpeace said, tipped the dye into the high-security embassy’s semi-circular pond.

‘France could recognise Palestinian state ‘in June’

France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, president Emmanuel Macron said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television, reports AFP.