Apr-June
April 1: Five humanitarian workers, including four foreigners, working for the World Central Kitchen — a civil society organisation that provides food relief — are killed in a targeted Israeli strike while returning from dispatching aid to Palestinians. Tel Aviv admits the attack is a “grave mistake”, after which the WCK suspends its operations in starving Gaza where it was providing 35 million meals.
According to experts, the closure of the group’s operations in Gaza has increased the risk of famine, suggesting that the attack was intended to ensure the continued starvation of Palestinians. Along with attacking aid workers, Israel is also now planning to dismantle the UN agency for Palestinians, The Guardian reports.
The Israeli government has also passed a law to ban Al Jazeera, which the network calls an “attack on press freedom”. Israel largely controls access to Gaza and the West Bank, which means the outlet’s reporting in these areas could be affected due to the ban.
In Gaza, the Israeli army withdraws from the Al-Shifa hospital after a two-week raid, leaving the grounds ploughed and buildings flattened. Bodies crushed by Israeli vehicles are found, with accusations of recklessly endangering civilians and crippling an already overwhelmed health sector.
April 2: Philippe Lazzarini, the director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, says the famine in Gaza is entirely “man-made” and requires “a complete reversal in policies from the Israeli government”.
Dozens of children have died of starvation in the northern part of Gaza, where the Israeli army continues to block aid missions and is shooting people who gather to collect food aid. Through these actions, Israel shows its intent to kill Palestinians or create conditions that cause them bodily and mental harm as mentioned in the Genocide Convention.
April 3: A UN-World Bank report describes the level of destruction in Gaza as “unprecedented”, estimating that the damage caused in the first four months of the war amounted to around $18.5 billion, equivalent to the combined GDPs of the West Bank and Gaza in 2022. At least 2m Palestinians in the enclave are now displaced while 70,000 housing units have been completely destroyed, it says. It is now almost impossible for Palestinians to go back to what once used to be their lives.
At least four Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air attack on a residential building in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah. In the West Bank, Israeli forces raid Jenin city and its refugee camp, bringing bulldozers and destroying essential infrastructure.
April 4: Eight people are killed in overnight Israeli bombings on houses in Rafah, while two people are killed and 15 injured in an attack on the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. In northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoon, four people, including a paramedic, are killed in an Israeli attack on a rescue team.
April 5: At least 1,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both of their legs in Israeli bombardment since Oct 7, the Palestine Red Crescent Society says, adding that 31 children have died from starvation and dehydration. According to Unicef, eight out of every 10 schools in the strip are damaged, leaving as many as 625,000 students without access to education.
Climate Defiance, a climate activist group focused on young adults, warns that the continued devastation of Gaza could render the besieged coastal enclave “uninhabitable not just for years but for generations”.
“This is a war crime. This is ecocide,” the group says. “This is not ‘just’ about nature. This is about the food, the air, the water, and the land being deprived of life. It is about an entire population being denied its sustenance.”
In the West Bank, Israeli settlers burn four residential structures in the Ain al-Auja area. These repeated waves of violence backed by the army have led to the displacement of 1,208 Palestinians, including 586 children across 198 households since Oct 7.
April 6: Unicef executive director says the Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed over 13,000 children and injured “countless” others. Separately, the WFP warns that malnutrition among children is “spreading at a record pace” where every one in three children under the age of two is acutely malnourished.
Meanwhile, Oxfam says Israel is complicating a humanitarian response in Rafah and hindering “access to urgently needed basic services, including water, food, medicine, and fuel”.
April 7: Palestinian news agency Wafa reports several civilians are killed and others injured in Israeli shelling of the Nuseirat refugee camp and Rafah City. It adds that Israeli warplanes bombed a group of civilians in the town of Nasser, north of Rafah, killing at least one and wounding several others.
April 8: Gaza doctor Shadi Abu Hassanein is among a dozen Palestinians who have been killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, Wafa reports.
On the other hand, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society states that Israeli authorities are holding the bodies of 26 detainees, a practice human rights groups condemn as collective punishment of bereaved families. International law recognises this as a violation of human rights.
April 9: At least 10 Palestinians, including four children, are killed in an Israeli attack on a home in the al-Zawaida area of the Nuseirat refugee camp. In another attack, a woman is killed and several others are wounded when Israeli forces target an agricultural area in northern Rafah’s Zuhoor neighbourhood, Wafa reports.
At the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, the devastation after an Israeli siege is extensive, the Palestine Red Crescent says, adding that the “deliberate destruction” carried out by Israeli soldiers has rendered the hospital “incapable of providing services to patients and wounded individuals”.
Meanwhile, a UN spokesperson says Israel is restricting far more convoys carrying food aid into Gaza — where famine is looming — than convoys carrying other kinds of humanitarian relief.
April 10: Palestinians celebrate Eid while mourning loved ones and dodging intense Israeli attacks.
In the West Bank, four Palestinians, including a 15-year-old, are wounded by live bullets during an Israeli settler attack on the town of Burqa, near Ramallah. Meanwhile, an Israeli air strike kills Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh’s son. Haniyeh has been leading the truce talks between Hamas and Israel.
April 11: Israel carries out multiple attacks at places “packed with civilians” across Gaza, killing scores of Palestinians. These locations include a mosque in the Nuseirat refugee camp, a UN-run school and the Firas market. Residential homes are also targeted in northern, central and southern Gaza.
In a post on X, the WHO says its team assessed health facilities in Khan Younis and found that the destruction caused by undeterred Israeli bombing is “disproportionate to anything one can imagine”.
“Attacks and hostilities have left Nasser Medical Complex, Al-Amal and Al-Khair hospitals non-functional. These facilities have no oxygen supply, water, electricity or sewage system,” the agency’s chief says.
Separately, Unicef says its vehicle at an Israeli checkpoint in northern Gaza came under attack with live bullets. The convoy was at a “holding point” — a designated area where cars have to wait until a checkpoint is ready to receive them. The convoy returned to Rafah without delivering any aid. These Israeli actions show how it is deliberately pushing Palestinians into hunger, which, as pointed out by aid agencies, constitutes a “war crime”.
In the West Bank, a 14-year-old girl, who was photographing landscapes with her phone near the entrance of the town of Dura, is arrested by Israeli soldiers.
April 12: Israeli forces attack a TRT Arabi camera operator in central Gaza, leading to his foot being amputated. These actions prevent journalists in the strip from doing their jobs, which then affects the information coming out of the enclave. At the Nuseirat refugee camp, 70 Palestinians are injured in Israeli shelling and air strikes.
Israel declares some 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) of land in the occupied West Bank as state territory, with its seizures in 2024 outpacing any year in history, reports Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
April 13: Israel attacks a UN-run school in northern Gaza sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians. Amid these rampant attacks, the enclave’s civil defence crews say they face problems in terms of accessing and reaching bomb sites due to damaged roads.
At least six Palestinians are shot during a settler attack in the occupied West Bank.
April 14: An Israeli attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp kills five, besides levelling a mosque. Gaza’s media office says Israeli forces have carried out six attacks on the camp over the past 24 hours, killing at least 19 Palestinians and wounding 200 more.
On the other hand, videos on social media, verified by Al Jazeera, show bodies of Palestinians found under mounds erected by Israeli forces in northern Gaza. In the video, several Palestinians can be seen digging the bodies out from underneath the sand and placing them on white burial cloths.
April 15: Palestinian doctors returning to the Al-Shifa Hospital after Israeli forces withdrew from the facility find mass graves at the entrance of the complex. Some of the bodies are believed to be of people who were receiving treatment at the hospital. Many of the bodies are of women and children.
The bodies are identified as patients as they are still attached with catheters and bandages, Gaza authorities add. Another mass grave is also found in Beit Lahiya. It is believed that the killings occurred as Palestinians were passing through an Israeli checkpoint.
Meanwhile, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor says dozens of Palestinians returning to the north are killed and wounded in Israeli fire. The monitor condemns “the Israeli army’s targeting of thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians as they attempted to return to their homes in Gaza City and its north, directly with artillery shells and live bullets, which led to dozens of deaths and injuries, including women and children”.
April 16: At least seven law enforcement officials tasked with protecting aid and two bystanders are killed in an Israeli attack on their vehicle in Gaza City, the interior ministry says. Separately, at least 11 people, mostly children, are killed in an Israeli strike on a playground in central Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp, Wafa reports.
A video verified by Al Jazeera shows the sounds of crying children coming from an Israeli quadcopter. Residents call this a tactic used by Israel to draw out Palestinian civilians from their homes and kill them. One man who had come out to inspect the cries was shot by an Israeli sniper. This does not just put civilian lives at risk but also traumatises them.
Separately, a report released by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees says Israeli forces subjected Palestinian detainees to “sexual violence”.
April 17: At least seven people, including three children, are killed in an Israeli strike in southern Gaza’s Rafah. According to Wafa, the strike hit a room and an area of open land where displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
April 18: The Israeli military carries out wide-ranging attacks across Gaza overnight with the bloodiest in southern Rafah where at least 11 Palestinians are killed, including five children, the health ministry says. Unicef says two-thirds of homes across Gaza have been destroyed in Israeli bombing.
The UNRWA says its aid convoys are being hit by Israeli drones and strikes making it difficult to reach Rafah, where more than half of the enclave’s population is crammed following Israeli evacuation orders. Several aid trucks have been destroyed, further keeping away desperate Palestinians from much-needed aid.
Israeli forces also raid Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank’s Tulkarem, closing off entrances to the camp as well as the main roads leading to it, Wafa reports, adding that the military “imposed a curfew” on the camp, preventing residents and vehicles from leaving or entering the area.
April 19: All of Gaza’s water wells stopped working two weeks ago due to a lack of fuel, the government media office says. Israel has not allowed any fuel into the enclave. Additionally, Gaza City’s only desalination plant ceases to function after its water neck is destroyed.
Israeli forces in the West Bank attack and raid the Nur Shams refugee camp just outside Tulkarem, killing five Palestinians including a teenager. The death toll will further increase in the coming days. It has also blocked the access point to the camp which makes it impossible for Red Crescent ambulances to help the injured.
April 20: Israeli forces have delayed or impeded two-thirds of the coordinated humanitarian mission in Gaza, the UN humanitarian office says. “On average, each of these missions faced nearly five hours of delay before being allowed to proceed,” it highlights, adding that this forces convoys to turn back. These Israeli actions, the UN says, are preventing critical supplies, equipment and fuel from reaching hospitals across the enclave and endangering hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives.
In Rafah, three Palestinians, including a pregnant woman and a child, are killed in the Israeli bombing of a house in the Shaboura camp. Israeli warplanes also bomb al-Mawasi — where the mass majority of displaced Palestinians are sheltering after Israel declared it to be a “safe zone” — near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
April 21: Palestinian civil defence crews uncover a mass grave containing 180 bodies at the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s Khan Younis. Just a few kilometres away in Rafah, at least 22 Palestinians, including 18 children, are killed in Israeli strikes over the night, the health ministry says.
Among the victims are an 80-year-old woman — reportedly found “in pieces” — and an 18-month-old baby. In central Gaza, an air raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp kills at least seven Palestinians.
April 22: At the Nasser Hospital, three more mass graves are found days after Israeli forces retreat from the complex. More than 300 bodies of women, children and young men are found on the facility’s grounds. Local officials say several of the bodies were found with their hands and feet bound from what appeared to be “temporary graves”.
According to a 2020 UN report, mass graves are not necessarily burial sites or final resting places but “places of atrocity or mass death”. What distinguishes mass graves from other mass burial sites, the report highlights, “are violations of last rights and last rites, including suppression or even annihilation of individual, cultural or religious identity in death”.
April 23: Homes, residential towers and vehicles are targeted by Israeli forces across Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor warns Israel will likely carry out a massacre in Beit Lahiya in north Gaza after the army issued new evacuation orders to people who have remained in the area.
Israeli forces will “wipe out the last remnants” of Beit Lahiya, and will cause yet another wave of mass displacement in the area, where some 50,000 Palestinians reside, the monitor says in a statement.
Separately, advocacy group Palestinian Prisoners Club says over 3,660 Palestinians are being held in administrative detention by Israel, where they are subjected to all kinds of torture. The “unprecedented” figure includes 22 women and over 40 children.
April 24: The Palestinians Centre for Human Rights says over 300 people in Gaza are suffering from the blood disorder, Thalassaemia, including 80 children. They have wounds that are not healing due to a lack of antibodies and a lack of nutrition. They also lack the necessary medications and are at an increased risk of developing hemochromatosis, an iron overload in body organs.
April 25: Israeli warplanes continue to attack neighbourhoods across Rafah where a Belgian aid worker and his 11-year-old son are among those killed. This will likely cause a slowdown of the already broken aid mechanism across the enclave, where there is an immense need for humanitarian efforts.
Al Jazeera reports there is zero sense of safety among aid workers, which is likely to discourage them from delivering much-needed aid and survival goods.
April 26: The eastern part of Rafah is under constant artillery shelling as a senior Israeli official says the military is “moving ahead” with its planned ground invasion, ignoring a growing chorus of international warnings to call it off, Al Jazeera reports.
April 27: Gaza’s health ministry says all Palestinians in the strip are drinking “unclean” water after Israel refuses to allow any chlorine or alternatives for treating drinking water. It says this is leading to the spread of diseases and epidemics.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dr Junaid Sultan, a vascular surgeon in Gaza, says patients coming in are at higher risk now due to malnutrition. “They have wounds which are not healing due to a lack of antibodies and a lack of nutrition,” he adds.
Separately in the West Bank, Israeli forces open fire and kill two young Palestinians during a raid in Jenin. Witnesses say the victims were left to bleed out for an hour before ambulances were allowed to arrive. This is a violation of international law under which Israeli soldiers are obligated to provide life-saving aid.
April 28: Israeli drones continue to fire missiles targeting refugee camps across Gaza, particularly in densely-populated Rafah, where thousands of people have set up tents on footpaths. In the central part of the strip, a father finds his one-year-old son with a fractured face under the rubble after an Israeli attack. His two-year-old daughter’s face is “completely disfigured” in the attack.
April 29: The Jabalia and Nuseirat refugee camps come under overnight Israeli bombardment. These areas have been hit by Israeli strikes from the beginning of the war, leaving the remaining Palestinians residing there in deep fear and trauma. Entire families and their homes have been wiped out.
In Rafah, Israeli forces bomb three houses killing 20 Palestinians, including five children, all from the same family.
April 30: Two people are killed and several others injured when an Israeli military drone attacks a house in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, the health ministry says.
The Gaza Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs issues a statement accusing the Israeli military of mutilating the bodies of hundreds of dead Palestinians, including carrying out postmortem decapitation and dismemberment. It calls the alleged mutilation of corpses a violation of the sanctity of the dead, which is “a religious, humanitarian and moral crime” under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
May 1: Unicef says 600,000 children in Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatised or living with disabilities. All of this is because Israel continues its bombardment in the southern city, where hospitals are barely functioning and thousands of Palestinians are living in dire conditions.
Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian office reports 800 Israeli settler attacks have taken place in the West Bank since Oct 7. It says 84 of these incidents resulted in casualties while 628 incidents led to damage to Palestinian-owned property.
May 2: Adnan al-Barash, a prominent Palestinian doctor in the Gaza Strip, is killed in Israeli detention, the health ministry says. This takes the total death toll of medical personnel since the start of the war on Gaza to 496. Israel is also attacking aid workers in the enclave; its forces open fire on a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian relief in north Gaza.
Separately, a UN report says Israel’s aggression in Gaza has wiped out 40 years’ worth of investments in human development along with destroying 72pc of housing in Gaza. Rebuilding will require $40bn, it adds. These actions show how Israel is making the enclave uninhabitable, as highlighted by aid organisations.
May 3: Israeli strikes target houses and residential buildings in central and southern Gaza along with killing at least seven Palestinians in an overnight attack on a home in Rafah.
These attacks coincide with the rapidly deteriorating situation in the strip where 155,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women have limited access to vital water and sanitation, further compounding the already desperate humanitarian conditions.
May 4: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says 37 children in Gaza lose their mothers every day in what it terms as a “war on women”. It adds that the generational trauma arising from this situation will haunt Palestinians for generations to come.
Reem al-Salem, the UN special rapporteur on women and girls, says nearly 15,000 children and 10,000 women have been killed in the last seven months of Israeli attacks, emphasising that this level of violence against women and children is a “deliberate attempt to destroy the foundations of Palestinian life”.
In northern Gaza, there is a “full-blown famine”, the World Food Programme says, warning that it is “moving its way south” where more than half of the population of the enclave is now sheltering.
May 5: The WHO reports that only a third of Gaza’s 36 hospitals and 30pc of its primary healthcare centres remain functional, reflecting the devastating toll of the ongoing conflict on the region’s medical infrastructure.
Amid this crisis, Israeli forces have continued their bombardment, killing 10 people in airstrikes on homes in southern Gaza and targeting other areas across the besieged territory, including northern Gaza City, where a mother and her two children were killed.
May 6: The death toll in Gaza is nearing another dismal milestone of 35,000. The Israeli army has begun evacuating Palestinians from Rafah, where it is now deepening the assault, as the UN says safe evacuation is “impossible”.
The Unicef also warns that a ground invasion into Rafah poses “catastrophic risks” to the hundreds of thousands of children taking shelter in the area.
May 7: The Israeli forces are currently holding the “operational control” of the Rafah crossing, thereby halting whatever aid is coming into the enclave. Gaza, where starvation and relentless bombings are rapidly increasing the death toll, remains cut off from the humanitarian aid it desperately needs.
Richard Brennan of the WHO says that the impact of the Rafah crossing now being closed “makes a disastrous, catastrophic situation far worse”. Simultaneously, a wave of overnight Israeli strikes kill 23 people including women and children, according to hospital records cited by Reuters.
Residents report heavy tank shelling in the evening in some areas of eastern Rafah. “They have gone crazy. Tanks are firing shells, and smoke bombs cover the skies over al-Salam and Jnaina neighbourhoods,” says a Gaza City resident displaced in Rafah.
May 8: Dozens of people are being killed in Gaza as residents say the Israeli army is firing artillery shells indiscriminately and bombing places designated safe.
Meanwhile, a third mass grave is uncovered in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, where 50 bodies are recovered. “The bodies we found were on beds in the reception and emergency department, meaning Israel destroyed the department over the heads of sick and injured people — and they were buried alive,” says the health ministry.
In the south, hospitals only have three days of fuel left due to the closure of border crossings, AFP reports, quoting the head of the WHO.
May 9: Israeli forces are making their way through Rafah in southern Gaza despite heavy international criticism, with Benjamin Netanyahu saying his country is ready to “stand alone” if necessary. Israel has allowed nothing in or out of Gaza for three days, exacerbating an already catastrophic humanitarian situation.
“The wounded and sick suffer a slow death because there is no treatment and supplies and there is no possibility for them to travel,” the enclave’s health ministry says, adding that Gaza’s only dialysis centre has now closed.
May 10: Journalists report artillery strikes on Rafah’s southern border with Egypt and air strikes further north. The wife and child of a WHO worker are injured in this bombing, with his house completely reduced to rubble.
The UN says around 110,000 Palestinians, who had come to Rafah following Israeli evacuation orders, are once again displaced and searching for a safe place.
May 11: Health authorities in Gaza say 80 bodies have been recovered from three mass graves within a section of the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza City. Strikes across central Gaza result in the deaths of 20 Palestinians, including eight children and as many women.
May 12: Thousands of Palestinians are being forced to flee from across Gaza, including Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Rafah, as Israeli forces reinvade already heavily hit areas. Gaza’s civil defence agency says two doctors were killed in an Israeli air strike on the city of Deir al-Balah, AFP reports.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Imad Abu Zayda, an emergency doctor in Gaza’s Jabalia, says: “No light due to the lack of fuel and there’s no medical supplement available as Israel has expanded their operation in the area. We have no oxygen to give to patients.”
May 13: An Israeli airstrike on a three-storey house in the southern part of the Nuseirat refugee camp kills 14 Palestinians. In Rafah, which is the centre of Israeli operations now, two individuals on the way to the European Hospital in a UN-marked vehicle come under fire. The agency confirms one of them, an international staff member, was killed while the other sustained critical injuries.
May 14: At least 550,000 Palestinians have been displaced in recent days due to escalating Israeli military operations in both the northern and southern parts of Gaza, the UN says. Women and children make up at least 56pc of the tens of thousands killed in the conflict, it adds.
The Israeli army is operating with extreme force in Jabalia, in particular, encircling evacuation zones with tanks, bulldozers, and armoured vehicles. Three evacuation centres — all UN-run schools housing hundreds of displaced families — have been surrounded, with people inside urgently appealing to the authorities for help.
May 15: Israel forces attack an internet access point in Gaza City, killing four people and injuring dozens, Al Jazeera reports. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine, says Israel has effectively turned Gaza into a place “without civilians”, where everything and everyone is considered a target.
Additionally, the European Hospital near Rafah has been forced to stop operations due to fuel shortages, putting the lives of hundreds of patients at risk, according to Wafa.
May 16: Thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza are cut off from water and food for over a week as aid is stalled, the media office says. In the same area, Israeli strikes hit an ambulance, injuring two paramedics.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor reports that Israeli forces are intentionally destroying more schools and medical facilities during a ground invasion of the Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City and Jabalia in northern Gaza.
According to international law, schools and hospitals must remain safe zones even during conflicts. “When civilians and especially children and civilian infrastructure become part and instruments of conflict, it is our entire societies that are suffering,” the UN says.
May 17: Israel continues its attacks in Jabalia where residents say tanks, bulldozers and planes have wiped out residential homes, shops, markets, restaurants — everything.
“The fact that this Israeli military is causing this is all feeding into one conclusion — making the northern part, including Gaza City, quite uninhabitable by eliminating all social services and pushing people into more enforced displacement and eventually into expulsion from the Gaza Strip,” reports Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud.
May 18: Overnight Israeli attacks hit schools and refugee camps in which more than 20 Palestinians — mostly women and children — are killed. With intense bombing underway, WHO says no medical supplies have entered Gaza since May 6, creating a “difficult situation”. Hundreds of lives are at risk as hospitals are rapidly running out of fuel.
May 19: Doctors Without Borders says the Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza, which is treating 34 wounded patients, has run out of drinking water after Israeli tanks surrounded it. Israeli raids continue in Rafah and other neighbourhoods with a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp killing 31 Palestinians, Al Jazeera reports.
Gaza’s media office says Israel has blocked 300 aid trucks and prevented 690 sick and wounded people from leaving Gaza for medical treatment, as the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem border crossings remain closed.
May 20: Israeli air strikes hit several areas across the Gaza strip overnight, including multiple sites in Khan Younis, Wafa news agency reports. Israeli air strikes also hit the Nuseirat refugee camp and the town of Az-Zawayda in the central Gaza Strip, as well as the Jabalia refugee camp in the north in which 18 Palestinians are killed.
The UN agency for Palestinian Refugees estimates more than 810,000 people have fled Rafah in the past two weeks as a mass exodus continues. In a post on X, the agency says: “Every time families are displaced, their lives are at serious risk. People are forced to leave everything behind looking for safety. But there’s no safe zone.”
May 21: Food distribution in Rafah comes to a halt due to a lack of supplies as Israel keeps border crossings closed and continues its bombing unabated, the UN agency says, describing the situation as a “catastrophe, nightmare, hell on Earth — all of these and worse”. At least 85 people were killed and 200 wounded over the last 24 hours, Gaza health ministry says.
US news agency Associated Press reports Israel has shut down its live video feed of conflict-ridden Gaza after authorities accused it of violating a new ban on Al Jazeera. “The Associated Press decries in the strongest terms the actions of the Israeli government to shut down our longstanding live feed,” the AP says in a statement, blaming “an abusive use” of Israel’s new foreign broadcaster law. This is seen as yet another attempt by Tel Aviv to block information coming out of the enclave.
In West Bank’s Jenin camp, a major Israeli military operation kills seven Palestinians, including a doctor, a teacher and a ninth-grade student.
May 22: The Gaza Strip is hit by another night of intense Israeli air strikes, artillery fire and drone attacks that result in massive casualties from Jabalia in the north to Rafah city in the south, Wafa reports.
At the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, all medical staff has been evacuated, says the WHO chief. The facility is no longer functional. Even the Al-Awda Hospital is under siege by Israeli forces, the UN adds.
May 23: The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza has warned of an imminent “health catastrophe” for hundreds of patients if fuel isn’t delivered to the facility. Even the Al-Awda Hospital has been forced to shut operations after a four-day terrifying siege. “Staff and patients were forced to leave one of the only hospitals still functioning in the north of Gaza”, the charity organisation running the hospital says in a post on X.
As hospitals continue to shut down, Unicef says children are increasingly facing death from hunger and dehydration due to the blockade of aid.
May 25: A day after the top UN court orders Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah, Israel intensifies its attacks in northern Gaza where no hospitals are accessible. Meanwhile, aid organisations say Palestinians in central Gaza are surviving on just 3pc of the internationally recognised minimum requirements of water. And this is because Israel has blocked any aid from coming into the enclave.
May 26: At least 35 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded in Israeli air attacks on a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah, the health ministry says. Dozens are also killed in bombings on homes in Jabalia and other areas in the north of the strip.
May 27: Eight Israeli airstrikes hit a makeshift tent in Tas as-Sultan, where thousands of internally displaced Palestinians gathered thinking it was safe due to its proximity to a UN logistics area. At least 45 Palestinians are killed. Netanyahu admits the attack was a “grave mistake” but does nothing to let even a drop of aid into the enclave or stop the bombings.
The crowded camp, comprising plastic and cloth tents, quickly catches fire. Huge smoke billows from the site along with flames that are difficult to extinguish, even for the Gaza civil defence teams. Thousands of children, women and families chose this area because Israel claimed that it was safe. Now they are being “burnt alive”.
The only hospital in Rafah has just eight beds and does not have an ICU unit, so medical facilities are not capable of treating all of these severe injuries. Other sites in Rafah have been targeted earlier in the morning, from where scores of injured are already being treated in the hospitals.
May 28: The world is still reeling from last night’s “heinous massacre” but Israeli tanks unabashedly move deeper into Rafah in a sign of the city’s full-scale invasion. Health officials in Gaza say 13 out of the 21 people killed in the latest Israeli military attack on tent cities in southern Rafah’s so-called “safe area” of al-Mawasi are women and girls, as deadly strikes on civilians continue.
The UN agency for Palestinian Refugees says one million people in Rafah have been forced to flee over the past three weeks and its healthcare centre has not received any medical supplies in the last 12 days.
May 29: At least 31 Palestinians are killed across Gaza, with more than half of the deceased being murdered in Israeli strikes on Rafah, the health ministry says. Israeli authorities say the military has achieved full operational control of the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, Reuters reports.
May 30: At least 53 Palestinians are killed and 357 wounded throughout the war-battered territory over the past 24 hours. Among those killed are two PRCS staff whose ambulance is bombed by Israeli forces in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan area as they carried out their “humanitarian duty”, the organisation says.
Samantha Power, administrator for USAID, says the group’s partners have called conditions in Gaza “worse now than ever before”, adding that Israeli military operations are “making it extremely difficult to distribute aid”. Meanwhile, the International Rescue Committee warns children in Gaza face a heightened risk of violence, exploitation and abuse.
May 31: Several Gazans who had moved to Rafah in the early days of the war are now returning to the north after an escalation in bombing in the former. They say Gaza City has turned into a graveyard where destruction is everywhere they can see.
June 1: The Gaza health ministry says it has recovered dozens of bodies from the Jabalia refugee camp after Israeli troops withdraw from the area. These bodies include 30 of a single family, 22 of whom are children and women. In Rafah, the WHO says almost no health services are remaining after the city’s last partially functioning hospital, al-Helal al-Emirati, shut down amid the ongoing hostilities.
On the other hand, the AP reports Israel runs a hospital dedicated to treating Palestinians detained by the military in the Gaza Strip. It is located beside a military base in southern Israel, three people working at the facility tell the outlet. They add that patients lie shackled and blindfolded on more than a dozen beds inside a white tent in the desert. Surgeries are performed without adequate painkillers. While Israel says it detains only suspected militants, many patients have turned out to be non-combatants taken during raids and held without trial.
June 2: At least 32 people, many of them children, have died of malnutrition in Gaza since Oct 7, with the WHO saying over four in five children in the strip have gone a whole day without eating at least once in 72 hours.
Rescuers find 50 more bodies from the Jabalia refugee camp days after the end of Israel’s three-week operation. Nonstop Israeli attacks on Gaza continue, killing at least 60 people in the last 24 hours.
June 3: Overnight Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis and Rafah kill 22 people, including women and children, Wafa reports. The northern cities of Jabalia and Beit Hanoon are declared “disaster areas” after a weeks-long Israeli military operation.
The UN says 137,000 buildings, or 55pc of Gaza’s structures, have been damaged or destroyed since the conflict began eight months ago.
June 4: Israeli forces launch deadly airstrikes on central Gaza as they advance into the Bureij refugee camp. An attack on a shelter near Deir el-Balah kills at least seven, including children, Al Jazeera reports.
Doctors in Gaza report a sharp rise in miscarriages, with up to 10 daily as the WHO says Gazans are drinking sewage water and facing severe hunger.
June 5: The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital has appealed for aid as it now functions on a single generator in a besieged enclave where Israeli strikes are relentless. With no aid coming into the strip, the UN agency for Palestinians warns Gazans can face extreme starvation by mid-July.
Gaza’s health ministry says at least 36 people were killed and 115 injured across the enclave in the last 24 hours.
June 6: At least 40 Palestinains are killed in Israeli airstrikes on a UN-run school sheltering displaced civilians in central Gaza. Israel says it targeted Hamas fighters but the UN agency for Palestinian Refugees says the attack took place “without prior warning”, adding that the area was “protected premises under international law”.
June 7: Israeli tanks launch raids in Rafah, wounding several trapped residents, Reuters reports. At the same time, journalists say Israeli strikes are now focusing on areas in central Gaza, including areas designated as safe. Attacks on “safe” zones are a repetitive Israeli tactic. The UN adds Israel to its list of offenders for violations against children.
June 8: Central Gaza resembles a death zone — bodies are scattered across the streets. The Gaza media office says more than 266 Palestinians have been killed and over 400 wounded in Israel’s latest military assault. The attacks — some of the worst since October — by air, land and sea hit Nuseirat and Deir el-Balah in central Gaza overnight, with doctors describing the scenes inside Al-Aqsa Hospital as a “complete bloodbath”.
Later, residents of the Nuseirat camp tell Al Jazeera how Israeli soldiers disguised themselves as displaced Palestinians to bomb the neighbourhood.
June 10: Israeli forces withdraw from Dier al-Balah in central Gaza but hospitals are flooded with bodies. In southern Rafah, five Palestinians are killed and 30 injured in an airstrike. However, treating patients is difficult at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis because of power outages.
June 11: Almost 3,000 children in Gaza have been cut off from treatment for moderate and severe acute malnutrition, Unicef says in a statement. According to the UN agency, this is putting the children at risk of death as “harrowing violence and displacement” — perpetuated by Israel — continue to impact access to healthcare facilities and services for desperate families. By doing this, Israel is not just causing physiological harm to Palestinians but also psychological harm, where helpless parents are having to see their children die before their eyes.
June 12: It is day 250th of Israel’s war on Gaza. The health ministry says over 15,000 children have been killed in the Strip since Oct 7. The toll includes Hanan Al-Zaanin, an 8-year-old Palestinian girl, who died from severe malnutrition caused by the Israeli blockade of essential aid.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera footage shows Israeli soldiers killing unarmed Palestinians along al-Rashid Street, a coastal road marked as a safe zone for movement between northern and southern Gaza.
June 13: The UN chief says children are being “killed and maimed in unprecedented numbers in devastating crises”, notably in the Gaza Strip. He says 2023 has witnessed a historic rise in the number of children’s deaths and injuries.
Israel continues its attacks on the Gaza Strip, including attacks on homes in the central Nuseirat refugee camp that killed five people and injured at least 17 others.
June 14: Palestinians in north Gaza are forced to live on bread, and even leaves, as starvation prevails across the enclave due to stalled aid. Food supplies are also running out in southern Gaza where Israel has extended its military operation and created a public health crisis for displaced Palestinians.
Medical sources tell Al Jazeera that 25 Palestinians were killed in Gaza. An infant was killed in a strike on Gaza City’s al-Tuffah in which 30 additional people were injured.
On the other hand, the WHO has expressed concern over the escalating health crisis in the West Bank where the Israeli military continues to raid entire villages and towns, killing dozens.
June 15: The UN warns 50,000 children in Gaza require urgent treatment for malnutrition and the population faces “catastrophic” levels of hunger because of Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid. WFP’s Carl Saku, speaking to Al Jazeera, says the main challenge faced by the team is not getting food to the borders but distributing it inside Gaza.
Another testimony to the perils of Palestinians living in Gaza is shared by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) as the group’s logistician says that despite the shelling and destruction, he has been looking for food for the last four months so that he and his children can survive, but they “still haven’t found anything”.
June 16: As unabated attacks continue in Gaza, Palestinians say Israel is waging an “economic war” in the West Bank. Since October 7 last year, Israel has imposed economic curbs on the Palestinian Authority, withholding tax revenues it collects on its behalf. This money is used to pay for the West Bank’s imports which include essential goods like water, fuel and food.
Nine Palestinians, including at least five children, were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
June 17: Gaza’s media office accuses Israel and the United States of worsening famine-like conditions in the enclave by withholding humanitarian aid for political pressure. The UN agency for Palestinian Refugees adds that the strip has become the most dangerous place for aid workers with 193 UN colleagues killed in Israeli strikes since Oct 7 — the highest toll in the agency’s history.
Meanwhile, AP reports Israeli attacks are wiping out entire families, sometimes killing four generations at a time, while Al Jazeera notes the military continues to systematically demolish homes and leave areas uninhabitable.
June 18: Israeli air strikes hit refugee camps in Central Gaza in the early hours of the morning, leaving several people killed and injured, Al Jazeera reports. More than 17 Palestinians are also killed in overnight attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Humanity & Inclusion (HI), an organisation that provides humanitarian relief for people with disabilities, said its warehouse in Rafah was “completely bulldozed” by the Israeli army, destroying all of the humanitarian and medical supplies inside.
June 19: At least nine Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid near the Karem Abu Salem border crossing in Rafah are killed in an Israeli strike.
A UN-backed commission finds that the Israeli military’s use of heavy weapons constitutes a deliberate attack on civilians. Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, states that Israel has committed crimes against humanity, including forced starvation and murder and inhuman and cruel treatment of Palestinians.
June 21: The International Committee of the Red Cross in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory says “heavy-calibre projectiles” land just metres from its office and residences in Gaza. Under international humanitarian law, Israel is bound to ensure conditions that allow the delivery of humanitarian aid in the besieged strip.
At least 25 Palestinians have been killed, 50 wounded in an Israeli attack on tents of displaced people in Gaza’s al-Mawasi, says the health ministry.
June 22: Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, calls the Israeli army “immoral” alongside being “one of the most criminal armies in the world”.
At least 101 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in the last 24 hours, Al Jazeera reports. Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s Shati refugee camp and Tuffah neighbourhood kill over 40 people, the enclave’s media office says.
June 23: At least eight people are killed after Israel bombs an aid centre that was the main headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in the besieged enclave. The air strike hit the main gate of the organisation’s compound in the northern Gaza City. The facility distributes the little humanitarian aid that gets into Gaza. Videos show the building completely demolished and bodies wrapped in blankets laid out beside the road, waiting to be taken away.
In Beit Lahiya, two more babies die of malnutrition, bringing the death toll from hunger and thirst to at least 31, health officials at Kamal Adwan Hospital tell Al Jazeera.
June 24: Israel again targets Palestinians gathered to collect food supplies. At least eight people are killed in an airstrike near the Bani Suheila traffic circle in southern Gaza. They were waiting for aid trucks.
As the death toll in Gaza since Oct 7 crosses 37,000, Save the Children says as many as 21,000 children are unaccounted for since Israel launched its war. In a statement, it says thousands of missing Palestinian children are believed to be trapped beneath the rubble of destroyed homes, detained by Israeli forces, buried in unmarked graves or lost from their families.
In the West Bank too, Israeli forces are escalating arrest campaigns against Palestinian children, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society says, adding that at least seven children were arrested in the territory over the past 24 hours.
June 25: At least 32 people are killed and 139 wounded in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the last 24 hours. According to the enclave’s civil defence spokesperson, the “occupation forces” deliberately targeted five displacement camps across the strip. Al Jazeera obtains leaked clips from a camera attacked by an Israeli army dog, showing it attacking an elderly Palestinian woman in her home in northern Gaza.
On the other hand, the UN says ten children in Gaza are losing one or both of their legs on an average per day. It adds that the shortage of essentials in the besieged enclave has forced children to wait in long queues to bring back small amounts of water home. These desperate conditions amount to trauma for children — all in ages where they should be in schools studying — who can be seen crying for food and water in videos on social media.
June 26: Israel’s attacks in Gaza kill 60 Palestinians and wound 140 in the last 24 hours, the health ministry says. In Beit Lahiya, north of the enclave, the devastation caused by relentless Israeli bombardment “defies imagination”, according to the civil defence department. Meanwhile, an Israeli air strike in Jabalia camp kills three Palestinians. According to residents and media, the casualties were among a group of people who had gathered outside a store to get an internet signal and communicate with relatives elsewhere in the enclave.
Displaced Palestinians in tents across the enclave face heat without showers or a functioning health system amid rising temperatures, malnutrition and disease.
June 27: Another child dies of malnutrition in northern Gaza overnight while six people are killed and several wounded by Israeli bombing on residential areas of Gaza City, Palestinian health officials say.
In other areas of the enclave, Palestinians are once again displaced after Israel issues evacuation orders 30 minutes into an operation. These notices will uproot 78pc of Gaza in the coming days.
June 28: As the Israeli military attacks Rafah, at least 60,000 Palestinians are displaced from Gaza City, according to UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. The agency official describes living conditions in Gaza as “extremely dire”, with Palestinians forced to live in bombed-out buildings or camps near piles of waste.
At least five Palestinians, including a girl, are killed in overnight Israeli attacks on two houses in Deir el-Balah. The civil defence says three of its medics were killed by Israeli aircraft and 12 others wounded while they carried out rescue efforts in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Kadwan Adwan Hospital warns it will cease operations in the coming hours without urgently needed fuel for its generators, putting the lives of patients, including babies in the nursery unit, at risk.
June 29: Forty Palestinians are killed and over 200 wounded in deadly Israeli attacks across the strip. In Gaza City, Israeli forces attack a water distribution point, killing four members of a family including a child. Separately, the Palestine Red Crescent evacuates its headquarters in Khan Younis due to “direct shelling”.
June 30: The death toll in Gaza is now nearing 38,000 as the Gaza health ministry says that the few functional hospitals in the enclave could lose power in 48 hours if they don’t receive fuel, causing life-saving medical equipment to stop working, Al Jazeera reports.
Header image: Funeral of Palestinian twins Wesam and Naeem Abu Anza, who were born during the conflict between Israel and Hamas and were killed in Israeli air strikes, in Rafah. — Reuters