Key events
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza kill at least 17 Palestinian people – officials
Israeli airstrikes on the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 17 Palestinians early on Monday, according to local health officials.
An airstrike hit a home in Beit Lahiya, killing 10 people, including a Palestinian prisoner, Abdel-Fattah Abu Mahadi, who had been released as part of the ceasefire. His wife, two of their children and a grandchild were also killed, according to the Indonesian hospital, which received the bodies.
Another airstrike hit a home in Gaza City, killing seven people, including two women, according to the Gaza health ministry’s emergency service. Two other people were injured.
Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure on both the domestic and international front, has been accused of manipulating Israel’s war on Gaza to achieve his own political ends.
The Israeli leader is on trial for corruption charges and his opponents say he is deliberately finding reasons to prolong the assault so he can cling on to power as prime minister.
This includes shattering the January ceasefire deal with Hamas by launching a deadly wave of airstrikes on the territory last month, which families fear makes the return of Israeli hostages (alive) less likely.
At least 68 people killed after US bombs Yemen detention centre, Houthi rebels say
Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Monday alleged a US airstrike hit a prison holding African migrants, killing at least 68 people. The US military had no immediate comment, the Associated Press reported.
Graphic footage aired by the Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel showed what appeared to be dead bodies and others injured at the site in Yemen’s Saada governate, a stronghold for the Houthis.
The Houthi-run Interior ministry said about 115 migrants had been detained at the site. African migrants from Ethiopia and other nations risk crossing war-torn Yemen for a chance to work in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. The Houthis said 68 people had been killed. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the death toll.
The airstrike is likely to renew questions from activists about the American campaign against the Houthis, known as “Operation Rough Rider,” which has been targeting the rebels as the Trump administration negotiates with their main benefactor, Iran, over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.
The US military’s Central Command, in a statement early Monday before news of the alleged strike broke, sought to defend its policy of offering no specific details of its extensive airstrike campaign. The strikes have drawn controversy in America over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the unclassified Signal messaging app to post sensitive details about the attacks.
“To preserve operational security, we have intentionally limited disclosing details of our ongoing or future operations,” Central Command said. “We are very deliberate in our operational approach, but will not reveal specifics about what we’ve done or what we will do.”
We will be bringing you more details as they come in. In other developments:
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Israel will come under sustained legal pressure this week at the UN’s top court when lawyers from more than 40 states will claim the country’s ban on all cooperation with the UN’s Palestinian rights agency Unrwa is a breach of the UN charter. The five days of hearings at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague have been given a fresh urgency by Israel’s decision on 2 March to block all aid into Gaza, but the hearing will focus on whether Israel – as a signatory to the UN charter – acted unlawfully in overriding the immunities afforded to a UN body.
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A “new inferno” has been unleashed on Gaza after the restart of war in the Palestinian territory, the director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Monday. “Gaza is experiencing and enduring… death, injury, multiple displacements, amputations, separation, disappearance, starvation and denial of aid and dignity on a massive scale, and just when the all important ceasefire led people to believe they had survived the worst, a new inferno was unleashed,” Pierre Krahenbuhl told a Doha conference on security.
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Rescuers in Khan Younis retrieved the bodies of four Palestinian people who were killed in an Israeli attack on a house in the southern Gaza city yesterday evening, according to reports.
