Gaza City, (Wafa, Al Jazeera, OCHA): More than 100 Palestinians were killed and 92 more injured by Israeli indiscriminate bombings in the last 24 hours in Gaza Strip according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza. The death toll of Palestinians from Israeli deadly attacks since 7 October 2023 has gone up to 31,988 including over 13,000 children and 74,188 Palestinians injured in Gaza Strip. 8,500 Palestinians are missing.

Israel has ordered Palestinians to evacuate al-Shifa Hospital, threatening to blow up the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip if they do not.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken holds discussions on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during a visit to Egypt.

Israeli forces are continuing attacks on homes near al-Shifa Hospital, according to Al Jazeera journalists on the ground, who added that the forces are preventing ambulances or civil defence crews from reaching those injured by the attacks.

At a European Union summit in Brussels, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to leaders to remain united in their respect for the United Nations Charter.

“The basic principle of international humanitarian law is the protection of civilians. We must stick to principles in Ukraine as in Gaza without double standards,” Guterres told reporters, standing alongside European Council President Charles Michel, who chaired the summit.

The United Nations has warned “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza. Israel, meanwhile, appears determined to launch a ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million people have sought refuge from the war.

It is Mother’s Day in the Gaza Strip, and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says one million children “are facing daily traumas” that leave their mothers worried about their future and very survival.

“My eldest daughter, in particular, is exhibiting heightened sensitivity. She cries often, at least once or twice a day. Even moments that start lightheartedly quickly transition to sadness,” one mother says in this UNRWA report.

The Red Crescent said, in a statement on X, that while the countries of the Arab world celebrate Mother’s Day, there are 37 mothers being killed every day in the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, which enters its 167th day.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) and the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Commission said that 28 Palestinian mothers held in Israeli jails are denied their right to celebrate this occasion with their children.

World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has shared on X a video of “one of many children and young people in northern Gaza who are starving and suffering from grievous injuries”.

Rafiq was rescued from under the rubble of his home. One leg was deformed while the foot had to be amputated.

“Life was beautiful,” the boy, whose bones were showing due to malnutrition, said. “I wish we could go back to how it was before.

The WHO head called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to allow the delivery of food and medical aid, saying air and sea deliveries were welcome but not enough to respond to the growing needs.

“Only the expansion of land crossings will allow large-scale aid deliveries to prevent famine,” he said.

Tedros added that the WHO was supporting the set-up of a nutrition stabilisation centre at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, in northern Gaza, and a second one in Rafah, in the south, to treat children with severe acute malnutrition at risk of imminent death.

He also said ongoing fighting in and around hospitals, including al-Shifa, made it impossible for the UN agency to distribute supplies. “Accessing al-Shifa is now impossible and there are reports of medical staff being detained,” he said. “A planned mission to al-Shifa today was cancelled due to a lack of security,” Tedros added.

“Once again, we ask Israel to open more crossings and accelerate the delivery of food, water and other humanitarian aid,” he said. “Once again, we call for medical facilities to be protected and not militarised, for the release of hostages and for an immediate ceasefire.”

Israel’s latest round of attacks throughout Gaza have killed and injured dozens of Palestinian civilians, according to Wafa news agency.

For the fourth day in a row, the Israeli occupation army continues a massive incursion and invasion into Al-Rimal neighborhood, and inside and around the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, amid missile and artillery shelling and gunfire, which led to the killing of dozens of Palestinians, while others were left with separate injuries as a large number of victims are still under the rubble.

Dozens of Palestinians were killed, and many others were injured, in an artillery shelling that targeted homes owned by Abu Hasira family, and others on Al-Rashid Street and its surroundings in Al-Mina area, west of Gaza City.

The Israeli Apache helicopter opened fire on houses surrounding Al-Shifa Hospital, west of Gaza City.

The western neighborhoods of Gaza City, Tal al-Hawa, al-Rimal, Sheikh Ajlin, and al-Shati camp are seeing intense artillery shelling.

An airstrike targeted a house in al-Shati Camp, west of Gaza City, killing and injuring dozens.

A number of citizens were killed when the Israeli army bombed a house owned by Saidam family in the Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Israeli warplanes also bombed a house owned by Kurd family next to the Jaffa Mosque in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, killing and injuring dozens.

Nine people were killed, and a large number are still trapped under the rubble, after Israeli aircraft bombed a house owned by Abu Al-Arabi family in the new camp, west of the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Israeli warplanes bombed for the fourth time on the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile Ansarallah group, known as the Houthis, began attacking ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea in November, a campaign they say is in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

“In the Red Sea, the Houthis seek to affect this vital channel for global trade with at least 50 attacks against commercial shipping and naval vessels,” US Assistant Secretary of Defense Celeste Wallander told a US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee hearing.

The US and UK have since January carried out strikes targeting the Houthis, but the military officer responsible for US forces in the Middle East said the group’s equipment that has been destroyed can be replaced with relative ease.

“Only two ships can resupply the vast majority of the equipment that we’ve destroyed so far of the Houthis,” General Erik Kurilla told the same hearing, without specifying the size of the vessels.

“We have to increase the international effort to be able to do the inspections on the vessels that are going into Hodeida,” he said, referring to a Houthi-controlled Yemeni port.

According to Israeli government 1,139 Israelis were killed by Hamas on 7 October in southern Israel and 134 Israelis and foreign nationals are still detained by Hamas in Gaza.

[Photo: Injured Palestinian child Musab al-Hamswith severe injuries to head, face, hands, and feet who lost 5 of his siblings, 3 siblings & his mother were injured in Israeli airstrike on Sheikh Ridwan neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on 21 03 2024. Photojournalist:  Mousa Salem /AA]