- At least 11 people – including five children – have been killed in the latest Israeli strikes on southern Rafah where 1.5 million displaced Palestinians fear an imminent ground invasion.
- Qatar’s prime minister says the country is reviewing its mediator role in Gaza ceasefire talks, accusing “some parties” of using the process for “narrow political interest”.
- The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to vote on Friday on a Palestinian request for full UN membership – a move the United States, Israel’s staunchest ally, is expected to block.
- At least 33,899 Palestinians have been killed and 76,664 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks stands at 1,139 with dozens of captives held in Gaza.
- Hamas, Israel talks unlikely to ‘evolve further without Qatar’Political analyst Luciano Zaccara tells Al Jazeera that if Hamas and Israel are unable to reach a ceasefire agreement with Qatar’s help, it’s unlikely negotiations will move forward,“If Qatar was not able to push for an understanding of the two sides I don’t see how negotiations can evolve further without Qatar,” said Zaccara, a professor of Gulf politics at Qatar University’s Gulf Studies Center.Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said the Gulf nation was reevaluating its role in mediations, saying that some parties have used the mediation for “narrow political interest”.His comment came a day after a US lawmaker accused Qatar of siding with Hamas.Click here to share on social media
- Palestinian journalist wins World Press Photo of the YearPalestinian Reuters photojournalist Mohammed Salem has won the prestigious World Press Photo of the Year for his picture showing a woman embracing the body of a child wrapped in white cloth – a quiet moment of intense grief.The woman is Inas Abu Maamar, 36, and the body she was holding in the photo was that of her five-year-old niece, Saly.The picture was taken in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 17 at the Nasser Hospital morgue, where residents were going to search for missing relatives.“It was a powerful and a sad moment, and I felt the picture sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” Salem said.The moment was particularly poignant for the photographer, whose wife gave birth just days before.
- Palestinians arrested in Gaza ‘beaten and humiliated’Reporting from Rafah, southern GazaWe have been reporting again and again that Palestinians who have been arrested by the Israeli military have endured inhumane conditions.The military has been blindfolding detainees, investigating them under really unbearable circumstances, including beating people and driving them to undisclosed locations.Since day one of the fighting, the Israeli military has launched a wide arrest campaign in which Palestinian detainees have been beaten and humiliated.This is obvious with the marks on the bodies of Palestinians who were detained.
- Gaza civil defence workers pull bodies from Nuseirat destructionEmergency services continue to scour collapsed buildings in the Nuseirat refugee camp for bodies in central Gaza after Israeli forces withdrew after a days-long incursion.According to Gaza’s government media office, 75 people were killed, 348 were injured and 100 others went missing during the Israeli operation, in addition to the destruction of 13,000 housing units in the camp.The civil defence agency said heavy machinery is needed to extract bodies from the debris of destroyed buildings.“Several victims were retrieved by civil defence teams, while many others are still under the rubble,” the agency said in a statement.
Search operations continue in the largely destroyed Nuseirat refugee camp near Deir el-Balah [File: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu] - Israeli forces arrest 40 in the occupied West BankAccording to the Wafa news agency, the arrests took place in the Nablus area, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron and Jerusalem.The Israeli army also demolished the houses of two prisoners in Hebron, the report said.Since the start of the war in Gaza, violence has increased to unprecedented levels across the occupied Palestinian territory. Israeli forces have conducted nearly daily raids, with a Palestinian prisoners’ watchdog saying at least 8,000 people have been arrested since October 7.
- Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/4/18/israels-war-on-gaza-live-children-among-7-killed-as-israeli-strikes-rafah
Israel’s war on Gaza live: Spate of deadly attacks as Iran fallout looms
