Gaza Turmoil
Live Reporting
US weapons manufacturers set to rake in huge profits
Two of the US’s largest weapons manufacturers — Lockheed Martin Corp and RTX Corp — are in for a major boost in sales as the US demands more pricey military equipment to send to Ukraine and Israel.
On Wednesday, US President Biden signed a law that designates $27 billion in new military aid to Israel, as well as $61 billion to Ukraine.
That means the US will need to buy and restock pricey military equipment, including missiles and drones produced by RTX Corp and interceptors that arm the Patriot defence system produced by Lockheed Martin Corp.
Lockheed’s CEO Jim Taiclet told investors earlier this week that the new demand will “provide a strong underpinning for future growth” in the upcoming years.
Children among those buried in Gaza mass graves
Some of the bodies found in mass graves at Nasser Hospital belong to children, said Palestinian Civil Defence member Mohammed Mughier, who provided photographic and video evidence of several of their remains.
“Why do we have children in mass graves?” he said, adding that the evidence shows Israeli soldiers committed “crimes against humanity”.
‘Biden has betrayed the soul of our nation’: Muslim rights group
President Joe Biden and many members of Congress have “passed the moral point of no return” by unconditionally providing billions of dollars in military aid to Israel as it continues to kill and maim Palestinians in Gaza, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says.
“By signing legislation that gives Benjamin Netanyahu another $17bn blank check for his genocide, President Biden has betrayed the soul of our nation and disregarded the will of the American people, who overwhelmingly support a ceasefire and oppose unconditional aid to Israel,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement.
“Giving the Israeli government billions more in weaponry despite all of those war crimes is unconscionable … Concrete steps to end the occupation that has trigged cycles of violence for generations … must end once and for all, here and now.”
Two children among those killed in Rafah strike
Two people killed in an overnight strike on a home in Rafah were young children, identified in hospital records as Sham Najjar, six, and Jamal Nabahan, eight.
They are among more than 14,500 children killed in the enclave since Israel’s war on Gaza began, with thousands more wounded.
This means more than 2 percent of Gaza’s entire child population has been killed or maimed during the war, according to the humanitarian group Save the Children.
The tragedy keeps unfolding’: Attack drones kill 2 in Rafah
A surge in attack drones flying over Rafah has taken place over the past couple of hours. At least two people have been hit in what appear to be targeted killings – one in the western part of the city and the other in the east. They were killed when the drones fired missiles about half an hour apart.
At the same time, the Israeli military continues to pound areas in central Gaza. People were told to evacuate to the Wadi Gaza area, only to find themselves caught in the line of fire. Four people have been reported killed in Wadi Gaza. Injuries have also been reported at the Nuseirat camp and surrounding areas.
The tragedy keeps unfolding. The destruction is overwhelming. Everywhere you go, you see rubble-filled roads.
Greek military vessel intercepts 2 Houthi drones
The ship – part of the EU’s naval mission in the Red Sea – engaged the drones launched by Yemen’s Houthi group towards a commercial vessel.
“On Thursday morning Greek frigate Hydra, while it was escorting a merchant ship in the Gulf of Aden, fired at two drones,” an unnamed Defence Ministry official told Reuters. “It destroyed one while the second moved away.”
Greece supplied a frigate to the EU’s mission, which is called Aspides, launched in February to thwart attacks by the Houthis against Israel-linked ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis say their attacks are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza facing relentless Israeli bombardment.
Israeli airpower pounds Gaza as ground forces poised for Rafah invasion: Monitors
The Israeli Air Force carried out more than 50 strikes on targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, war monitors report, as military officials reiterated that their forces are “fully prepared” for a ground invasion of Rafah.
According to the latest battlefield update from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP), Israeli officials have said that the Rafah invasion order needs only the “approval” of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A plan for the evacuation of civilians from Rafah – where some 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering – was said to be on Netanyahu’s desk, the US-based defence think tanks report. While no timeline for the ground invasion of Rafah has been given, the evacuation operation is expected to take about a month.
Also on Wednesday, the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement carried out rocket attacks from Gaza against three towns in southern Israel.
Hamas willing to lay down arms if two-state solution implemented: Report
A top Hamas official, Khalil al-Hayya, has said the group was willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and transform into a political party if a two-state solution is implemented, The Associated Press news agency has reported.
Al-Hayya, who made his comments in an interview with the AP in Istanbul, said Hamas wants to participate in the formation of a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank.
“All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their state, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces have turned into the national army,” he said.
Al-Hayya also said Israel’s planned ground invasion of Rafah would not succeed in destroying Hamas.
Israeli forces “have not destroyed more than 20 percent of [Hamas’s] capabilities, neither human nor in the field,” he said.
“If they can’t finish [Hamas] off, what is the solution? The solution is to go to consensus,” he added.
Police make 94 arrests at University of Southern California antiwar protest
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has confirmed the arrests of 94 people participating in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza at the University of Southern California.
LAPD Captain Kelly Muniz said 93 people were arrested on trespass violations, while one other arrest was for assault with a deadly weapon, though she did not provide details.
Police said there were no reports of injuries during the tense standoff earlier between police and pro-Palestinian and antiwar student protesters at the university’s campus.
US not in favour of ‘independent’ investigation of Gaza mass graves
You will notice that from the White House’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, we never heard the word “independent”.
That is the major difference between the US’s call for an investigation into the mass graves compared to that of other world leaders and of the UN High Commissioner [for human rights].
In fact, the US deputy ambassador to the UN told Al Jazeera earlier that the United States is not ready to endorse an independent investigation, but rather, the US would be talking to countries … and looking at photographs.
So there is still a lot of distance between what the US is calling for and what many other world leaders are calling for.
And as far as accountability, certainly, we are very far from that step.
Texas governor says antiwar student protesters ‘belong in jail’
Governor Greg Abbott has said that students protesting against the war in Gaza “belong in jail” in a post on X.
“Arrests being made right now and will continue until the crowd disperses,” the Texas governor added, as dozens of state troopers and police surrounded students at the University of Texas at Austin.
Abbott claimed the protesters were engaging in anti-Semitism, although he did not provide evidence of his allegations in the post.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) described Abbott’s response to the protests as “unconstitutional”.
“The First Amendment applies to the State of Texas, whether Greg Abbott likes it or not”, CAIR said in a post on X.
Abbott issued an executive order in March requiring that Texas universities punish anti-Semitism on campus using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which includes claiming that the “existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.
Israeli shelling, raids in central and northern Gaza
Israeli artillery have shelled several sites in Deir el-Balah and Wadi Gaza in the central Gaza Strip, Wafa reports.
In eastern Jabalia and Gaza City, in the north of the Gaza Strip, there are reports of artillery shelling and Israeli raids, especially in the Zeitoun neighbourhood and in the northwestern side of Gaza City, Wafa also reports.
Gaza could surpass famine thresholds in six weeks, UN official says
GENEVA (Reuters) - The Gaza Strip could surpass famine thresholds of food insecurity, malnutrition and mortality in six weeks, an official from the World Food Programme said on Wednesday (Apr 24).
"We are getting closer by the day to a famine situation," said Gian Caro Cirri, Geneva director of the World Food Programme (WFP).
Israel gears up for Rafah civilian evacuation ahead of promised assault
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has procured tens of thousands of tents for Palestinian civilians it intends to evacuate from Rafah in the coming weeks ahead of a promised assault on the city it sees as the last bastion of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israeli sources said on Wednesday (Apr 24).
Abutting the Egyptian border, Rafah's population has been swollen by more than a million Palestinians who fled the half-year-old Israeli offensive through the rest of Gaza.
University of Texas professor witnesses police attack on pro-Palestinian student protest
Speaking from Austin, Texas, Professor Jeremi Suri said he had just finished teaching a class at the university’s history department when he saw a group of about 200 students demonstrating peacefully on a grass lawn.
“These students were shouting ‘free Palestine’, that’s all. Maybe they had one or two signs. They were saying nothing anti-Semitic. They were saying nothing that was threatening. And as they were standing and shouting, I witnessed the police – the state police, the campus police, the city police – an army of police almost the size as the student group … many were carrying guns, many were carrying rifles, and then, within a few minutes, this group of police stormed into the student crowd and started arresting students,” Suri told Al Jazeera.
The students “were loud, but they were peaceful”, he said, “and the police just started attacking them. And that led to more shouting. More students then arrived when they saw this and the situation became more violent”.
“But it became more violent because the police had attacked the students, not the other way around”.
Death toll rises to 5 after Israel bombs Rafah home
Three people have been killed in an Israeli bombing of a home “filled with people” in the eastern parts of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa is now reporting that five people were killed in the attack on the home which belonged to the Jamal family.
The dead and injured were taken to the nearby Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital, Wafa reports.
A number of people were also injured in a separate Israeli bombing of a home east of Rafah, Wafa said.
Israeli officials continue to threaten an imminent ground invasion of Rafah, where more than 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering.
![Smoke rises following Israeli strikes on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip April 22, 2024. [Mahdy Zourob/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024-04-22T181927Z_1269630011_RC2IB7AJN9NI_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-1713852774.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80)
Massive Israeli air strikes end weeks of relative calm in Gaza
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes pounded the northern Gaza strip for a second day on Wednesday (Apr 24) in a fierce assault that has shattered weeks of comparative calm, and Israel said it was moving forward with plans for an all-out assault on the southern city of Rafah.
After an abrupt Israeli pullback at the start of this month, Palestinians at both ends of the Gaza Strip were again fleeing for their lives from bombing they described as some of the war's worst.
