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Here is where things stand on Saturday 24 May 2025:
- Israeli attacks have killed at least 76 people across Gaza since early on Friday, and casualties continue to mount amid ongoing strikes.
- Witnesses to Israel’s bombing of a family home in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp that left some 50 people dead or missing told Al Jazeera that “the Israeli military is killing civilians for fun”.
- UN chief Antonio Guterres said the conflict in Gaza has reached the “cruellest phase of this cruel conflict” as Palestinians starve while Israel allows only a “teaspoon of aid” to enter the famished enclave and “nothing has reached the besieged north”.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 53,822 Palestinians and wounded 122,382, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The Government Media Office updated the death toll to more than 61,700, saying thousands of people missing under the rubble are presumed dead.
- An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Israel ‘not successful in destroying Hamas’: Israeli lawmaker
Israel is now “unable to subdue Hamas”, according to Likud lawmaker Amit Halevi, who was quoted by the Israeli media outlet Yedioth Ahronoth.
“We have been fighting a war for 20 months with failed plans and Israel is not successful in destroying Hamas. We knew in all wars how to subjugate our enemies, but we are now unable to subdue Hamas.
“This is a war of deception and they lied to us regarding their accomplishments.”
‘Do this or we’ll kill you’: Palestinians man tells his story as a human shield
Several Palestinians have told The Associated Press that Israeli troops are systematically forcing Palestinians to act as human shields in Gaza, sending them into buildings and tunnels to check for bombs and fighters.
They say the practice has become ubiquitous over 19 months of war, according to the report which quoted a Palestinian man as saying that the only times he was not bound or blindfolded were when he was used by Israeli soldiers as their human shield.
Dressed in army fatigues with a camera fixed to his forehead, Ayman Abu Hamadan was forced into houses in the Gaza Strip to make sure they were clear of bombs and gunmen, he said, adding that when one unit was finished with him, he was passed to the next.
“They beat me and told me ‘You have no other option; do this or we’ll kill you’,” the 36-year-old said.
Eleven killed in Gaza since dawn
Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 11 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since dawn across the territory.
UN’s Albanese says targeting of doctors’ family shows ‘sadistic pattern’ of genocide
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, condemned Israel’s bombing of a home on Friday belonging to Palestinian doctors Alaa and Hamdi Al-Najjar, in which nine of their 10 children were killed.
Commenting on a video published by Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who volunteers in Palestine, Albanese said the attack represented a “distinguishable sadistic pattern of the new phase of the genocide”.
Alaa Al-Najjar, a paediatrician at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, reportedly received the bodies of her children while working.
Israeli settler ‘revenge gangs’ driving Palestinians from their homes
Since the war on Gaza, Israeli settler attacks have become more brazen.
“You don’t know where to look. They [Israeli settlers] were throwing stones, Molotov cocktails, and explosives. When they hit, the car catches fire instantly,” Fadi Samara, a Palestinian resident of Bruqin, and a witness to an attack there yesterday, told Al Jazeera.
“We don’t even know what exactly they’re using. This is the reality you see before you. They’ve burned many cars, not just in Bruqin, these revenge gangs have spread throughout the West Bank.”
Earlier on Friday, further south, more settlers set up a new outpost to intimidate Palestinians living nearby.
“The settlers attacked us. We want to leave and save ourselves, our livestock, our children, and get away from them,” Yousef Malihat, a resident of the Bedouin community there, told Al Jazeera.
Hamas slams US congressman’s proposal to nuke Gaza
Hamas has called US House of Representatives member Randy Fine’s suggestion “an incitement to genocide and a crime against humanity”.
In a statement on Friday, Republican legislator Randy Fine told Fox News: “In World War II, we did not negotiate a surrender with the Nazis. We did not negotiate a surrender with the Japanese. We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here.”
Hamas said in a statement on Telegram that “this rhetoric is filled with hatred and incitement to genocide”.
“This extremist call is a full-fledged crime and evidence of the fascist racism that governs the thinking of some American politicians.”
Israel says it let 83 aid trucks enter Gaza on Friday
Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) office said it allowed “83 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community” to carry humanitarian aid into Gaza on Friday.
Posting on X, it said the shipments of “flour, food, medical equipment, and pharmaceutical drugs” entered Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing.
The Israeli army partially lifted its months-long blockade on all humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip this week, but UN chief Antonio Guterres said the limited supplies it has allowed into the besieged enclave amounts to a “teaspoon” of what’s needed.
New Israeli attacks target central and southern Gaza
One Palestinian has been killed and five wounded, including a one-month-old baby, by Israeli air strikes on a house near al-Qassam Mosque in Nuseirat, central Gaza, according to Palestinian media.
In southern Gaza, Israeli artillery shelling targeted Khan Younis. Attacks struck Abasan al-Jadida and Qizan Abu Rashwan in the early hours of Saturday, sources told Al Jazeera.
UN chief says Israel is still blocking aid as Gaza families starve
The UN secretary-general gave very stark words saying families are being starved in Gaza and being denied the very basics all while the “world is watching in real time”.
The secretary-general also said the UN would not participate with the Israeli and US-backed so-called Gaza humanitarian foundation that would essentially take aid distribution away from the United Nations and put it in the hands of private contractors. The secretary-general said the UN will not take part in any scheme that fails to respect international law and humanitarian principles, such as impartiality, independence and neutrality.
The secretary-general also said that the UN has 160,000 pallets of food – enough to fill 9,000 trucks – ready to be sent into Gaza if Israel would approve it. He said Israel is still blocking things such as fuel, shelter, cooking gas and water purification supplies. All things the UN has and wants to get into Gaza to those who need it the most.
Lastly, the secretary-general again reminded Israel that it – as the occupying power – is bound under humanitarian and international law provide to aid to the people that it is occupying.
Something that Israel has not been doing.
Israeli settler attacks increase – violence and intimidation against Palestinians
In the occupied West Bank this week, there have been more reports of attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property. Settler violence has ramped up there since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Israeli military arrests 2 Palestinians during Nablus raid
Israeli forces stormed a home in the occupied West Bank town of Balata al-Balad, east of Nablus, and arrested two brothers, the Quds News Network reports.
Israeli forces have also stormed the Rafidia neighbourhood in the city of Nablus, according to Quds.
We will bring you more information when we have it.
If you’re just joining us
Let’s bring you up to speed:
- The Israeli military has carried out several deadly attacks across Gaza over recent hours, killing at least eight Palestinians since midnight, including a drone strike on a tent near Gaza City that killed one person.
- Israel’s army has also said it carried out a drone strike targeting “several armed Palestinians” in central Gaza, The Times of Israel reports, claiming some were “Hamas operatives” standing near aid trucks.
- Gaza’s Government Media Office denied the six men killed in Friday’s attack were Hamas fighters, saying they were aid security “performing purely humanitarian tasks”.
- The Saudi, Jordanian, Egyptian and French foreign ministers met in Paris on Friday to discuss “international efforts to stop the war in Gaza” and ways to “enable humanitarian aid delivery to the Strip”.
