Palestinian Health Ministry says 73 people killed while waiting for aid in Gaza – as it happened | Syria

• The Palestinian health ministry reported on Sunday that at least 73 people waiting for aid had been killed across Gaza in Israeli attacks.

• The largest toll was in northern Gaza, where at least 67 Palestinian people were killed while attempting to access aid entering northern Gaza through the Zikim crossing with Israel, according to health officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

• At least 58,895 Palestinian people have been killed and 140,980 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in an updated death toll. Around 130 Palestinian people were killed and 495 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry said.

• The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for the city of Deir al-Balah – a crowded part of central Gaza full of displaced Palestinian people with nowhere safe to flee relentless bombardments.

• A fragile calm returned to southern Syria’s Sweida province on Sunday, after fighters withdrew following a week of violence estimated by a war-monitor to have killed over 1,000 people. The uneasy calm was reported by local residents after Syria’s Islamist-led government said Bedouin fighters had withdrawn from the predominantly Druze city (you can read more in this story).

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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 75, is recovering from a bout of food poisoning, his office has said.

He fell ill overnight and was found to be suffering from intestinal inflammation and dehydration, for which he is receiving intravenous fluids, a statement said.

“In accordance with his doctors’ instructions, the prime minister will rest at home for the next three days and will manage state affairs from there,” his office added.

Netanyahu was fitted with a pacemaker in 2023 and last December he had his prostate removed after he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection.

Here are some of the latest images coming out of the newswires from Gaza:

At least 58,895 Palestinian people have been killed and 140,980 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Around 130 Palestinian people were killed and 495 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry said.

It added in its post on Telegram:

A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, as ambulances and civil defense crews are unable to reach them until now.

The Palestinian Health Ministry has said 73 people were killed while waiting for aid at locations across Gaza on Sunday.

The largest toll was in northern Gaza, where at least 67 Palestinians were killed while attempting to access aid entering northern Gaza through the Zikim crossing with Israel, according to the Health Ministry and local hospitals in a report carried by the Associated Press.

More than 150 people were wounded, some critically, hospitals said. It was not immediately clear whether they were killed by the Israeli army or armed gangs or both. But some witnesses said that the Israeli military shot at the crowd.

The Israeli military didn’t immediately make any comment.

Geneva Abdul is a reporter and feature writer for the Guardian who focuses on foreign policy and diplomatic affairs

The UK government is facing a legal challenge over its decision not to medically evacuate critically ill children from Gaza in the way they have done for young people caught up in other conflicts.

The legal action, being taken against the Foreign Office and Home Office on behalf of three critically ill children in Gaza, argues that UK ministers have failed to take into account the lack of treatment options for children in the territory before denying medical evacuations.

It also says the position not to medically evacuate children from Gaza stands in stark contrast to Britain’s historical record in such circumstances, which has evacuated children during the conflict in Bosnia and, most recently, Ukraine.

“The UK government has explained its failure to facilitate medical evacuations from Gaza on the basis that it supports treatment options in Gaza and the surrounding region and that there are visas available for privately funded medical treatment in the UK. However, these mechanisms are profoundly inadequate to meet the urgent needs of children in Gaza,” said Carolin Ott from the law firm Leigh Day, who is leading the action and is being supported by the charity Children Not Numbers.

You can read the full story here:

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, has demanded that Israel lift its siege on Gaza, writing in a post on X that the agency has not been able to bring in any food for over four months.

“Some people go for days without eating,” Unwra wrote.

Despite having both supplies and logistical systems in place, the agency, which has been banned by Israel, says access to the territory remains blocked.

Unrwa has historically been the major distributor of aid in Gaza and has provided education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region.

But Israel ended all contact and cooperation with Unrwa operations in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem in November, claiming the agency had been infiltrated by Hamas, an allegation that has been contested. The Unrwa ban came into effect in late January.

Israel wants the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to replace a system coordinated by the UN and international aid groups. Along with the US, it accuses Hamas of stealing aid, without offering evidence.

Critics have argued that the GHF is a tool for the Israeli and US governments to politicise humanitarian aid and to distribute it in ways that will depopulate sectors of Gaza in apparent violation of international law.

Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least 54 Palestinian people, including 51 aid seekers, since dawn, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

There have been almost daily reports of Palestinians being killed by Israeli forces while seeking aid since the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began its operations in May.

Palestinian witnesses and health officials say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds heading toward desperately needed food, killing hundreds of Palestinian people in recent weeks.

More than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are living through a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and the entire population is at risk of famine, according to food security experts.

Israel imposed a total aid blockade for 11 weeks starting in March, and the trickle of food, fuel and medical supplies allowed in since May has not relieved extreme hunger.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 71 children have died of malnutrition during Israel’s war, and 60,000 others were suffering from symptoms of malnutrition.

Some news from Gaza now. The Israeli military has issued evacuation orders in central areas of the territory which are packed with displaced Palestinian people with nowhere safe to flee bombardments.

The Israeli military dropped leaflets from the sky ordering people in several districts in southwest Deir al-Balah to leave their homes and head further south.

“The (Israeli) Defense Forces continues to operate with great force to destroy the enemy’s capabilities and terrorist infrastructure in the area,” the military said, adding that it had not entered these districts during the war.

Israeli sources told Reuters that the reason the army has so far stayed out of these districts is because they suspect Hamas might be holding hostages there. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages in captivity in Gaza are believed to still be alive.

Most of Gaza’s population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during Israel’s war, with repeated Israeli evacuation calls covering large parts of the territory.

Israel has been using evacuation orders to pursue the “deliberate and massive forced displacement” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, according to a 2024 report by Human Rights Watch, which says the policy amounts to crimes against humanity.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has said the death toll from violence in the country’s south involving Druze fighters and their Bedouin rivals, as well as government forces, armed tribes and Israel, had topped 1,000.

The war monitor said those killed since last Sunday included 336 Druze fighters and 298 civilians from the religious minority group, 194 of whom were “summarily executed by defence and interior ministry personnel”.

Among those killed also included 342 government security personnel and 21 Sunni Bedouin, three of them civilians “summarily executed by Druze fighters”. Another 15 government forces were killed in Israeli airstrikes, according to the SOHR.

We have not been able to independently verify these figures yet.

The Syrian Red Crescent said on Sunday they are sending 32 trucks to Sweida loaded with food, medicine, water, fuel and other aid, after the fighting left the province with power cuts and shortages.

The health ministry is also sending a convoy of trucks, according to reports.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR has warned of water shortages due to electricity outages and said many hospitals are struggling to cope with the influx of people injured from the clashes.

Here is Marco Rubio’s full post published on X yesterday as US-brokered negotiations sought to avert further Israeli military intervention in Syria:

The US has remained heavily involved over the last three days with Israel, Jordan and authorities in Damascus on the horrifying & dangerous developments in southern Syria.

The rape and slaughter of innocent people which has and is still occurring must end. If authorities in Damascus want to preserve any chance of achieving a unified, inclusive and peaceful Syria free of ISIS and of Iranian control they must help end this calamity by using their security forces to prevent ISIS and any other violent jihadists from entering the area and carrying out massacres.

And they must hold accountable and bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks. Furthermore the fighting between Druze and Bedouin groups inside the perimeter must also stop immediately.

US special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said this morning that Syria stood at a “critical juncture”, adding that “peace and dialogue must prevail – and prevail now”.

In a post on X, he wrote:

President Trump’s decision to lift sanctions was a principled step, offering the Syrian people a chance to move beyond years of unimaginable suffering and atrocities.

The international community has largely rallied behind the nascent Syrian government, watching with cautious optimism as it seeks to transition from a legacy of pain to a future of hope.

Yet, this fragile ambition is now overshadowed by profound shock, as brutal acts by warring factions on the ground undermine the government’s authority and disrupt any semblance of order.

All factions must immediately lay down their arms, cease hostilities, and abandon cycles of tribal vengeance. Syria stands at a critical juncture – peace and dialogue must prevail – and prevail now.

His comments came a day after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, urged the Syrian government’s security forces to prevent jihadists from entering and “carrying out massacres” in the south, and called on Damascus to “bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks”.

The government is headed by Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa. He is the former leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group which led the military operation to topple the former president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, in December.

Witnesses, Druze factions and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have accused government forces of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses, including summary executions, when they entered Sweida earlier in the week.

The Reuters news agency has spoken to residents who say there is a “tense calm” in Sweida after the Islamist-led government declared that Bedouin fighters had withdrawn from the predominantly Druze city.

Kenan Azzam, a dentist, told Reuters residents were still, however, struggling with a lack of water and electricity.

“The hospitals are a disaster and out of service, and there are still so many dead and wounded,” he said by phone.

Syrian government troops are amassed at a security checkpoint outside of Swedia city, preventing factional fighters from entering.

The Druze, who follow an offshoot of Shia Islam, are an Arabic-speaking religious minority in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. They make up the majority of the population of the southern Sweida province in Syria. Many Druze who live in Israel are loyal to the Israeli state because of participation in the country’s military service.

As my colleague William Christou notes in this story, the Druze have been negotiating with the Islamist-led authorities in Damascus since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in an attempt to achieve autonomy.

The interim government, led by the Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has had strained relations with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities since it toppled al-Assad, who belonged to the Alawite religious minority, in December.

On Saturday, al-Sharaa urged Sunni Muslim Bedouin tribes to “fully commit” to the ceasefire aimed at ending clashes with Druze-linked militias.

This week’s fighting marks the most serious outbreak of violence since government forces battled Druze fighters in Sweida province and around Damascus in April and May, leaving more than 100 people dead.

Welcome to our continuing live coverage of the Middle East, with a particular focus on Syria.

Bedouin fighters and their allies have reportedly continued to clash with Druze fighters in the Syrian province of Sweida after the southern city was recaptured by Druze fighters.

This is despite an order by the Syrian government to put down their arms in a conflict that has killed more than 900 people since last Sunday.

The Syrian interior ministry said yesterday evening that clashes in Sweida had been halted after the intervention of its forces in the city.

Sweida was “evacuated of all tribal fighters, and clashes within the city’s neighbourhoods were halted”, Syria’s interior ministry spokesman Noureddine al-Baba said in a post on Telegram.

It came after the Syrian presidency announced a ceasefire and urged an immediate end to hostilities.

The deal, approved by Israel as part of a US-mediated agreement, included a halt to Israeli military airstrikes as long as the Druze citizens were protected. Fighting nonetheless reportedly persisted in some parts of Sweida province.

Armed tribes had clashed with Druze fighters on Friday, a day after the army withdrew under Israeli bombardment and diplomatic pressure.

Syrian leader Ahmad al-Sharaa has accused Israel of enflaming Syrian factional tensions and pushing the country into “a dangerous phase” with its “blatant bombardment of the south and government institutions in Damascus”.

For context: Israel had bombed government forces in both Sweida and Damascus earlier this week to force their withdrawal after they were accused of summary executions and other abuses against Druze civilians.

We will have more on the volatile security situation in Syria throughout the day so stick with us.