Here’s how things stand on Saturday, March 16, 2024:
Fighting and humanitarian crisis
- At least 36 people have been killed after Israeli forces hit a house near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
- The government media office in Gaza said most people killed in the attack were children, adding that pregnant women were also among the dead.
- The Open Arms aid ship, which set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday with 200 tonnes of aid, has started unloading its cargo in Gaza.
- Japan has said it will join a project to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza via a Mediterranean maritime corridor, which was launched this week by Cyprus, the European Union, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
- Dominic Allen, a representative for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for Palestine, who recently visited the Emirati hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, said conditions in the facility’s maternity ward are deeply disturbing.
- “The doctors are reporting that they no longer see normal-sized babies,” Allen told Al Jazeera. “What they do see though tragically is more stillborn babies and more neonatal deaths.”
- UNICEF, the UN’s children agency, said 31 percent of children under the age of two in northern Gaza have acute malnutrition, compared with 15.6 percent in January.
Diplomacy and regional tensions
- Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed as “ridiculous” Palestinian group Hamas’s new proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, Israel will still send a delegation, led by the head of its Mossad intelligence agency, to join truce talks in Qatar.
- Netanyahu said a military plan for a ground invasion of Rafah, where about 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering, has been approved. The UN and countries including Germany and the Netherlands have warned Israel against going ahead with the plan.
- The United States needs to see a clear and implementable plan for Rafah, including to get civilians out of harm’s way, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is heading to Jordan and Israel on a two-day visit to the region with discussions on increasing humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza on the agenda.
Violence in the occupied West Bank
- Armed Israeli settlers physically assaulted Palestinian shepherds and farmers in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, and prevented access to their grazing fields. A 14-year-old Palestinian boy was injured in the attack.
- Several Israeli NGOs warned the UN in Geneva that the war in Gaza is contributing towards a “crisis” in Israeli prisons. Advocates say there are a record number of Palestinian detainees facing “systemic abuse” and torture.
