Here’s how things stand on Friday, March 29, 2024:
Fighting and humanitarian crisis
- Eight people were killed and an unknown number injured during an Israeli attack on a house in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on Thursday.
- Israel is expanding a buffer zone in Gaza adjacent to the border fence, significantly enlarging the area declared by the army as a Palestinian no-go zone before the war, Haaretz reported on Thursday. The Israeli newspaper said a project director has been appointed by the army to oversee the expansion.
- Journalist Muhammad Abu Sakhil of Gaza’s al-Quds Radio has been shot and killed by Israeli forces near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Al Jazeera Arabic reported on Friday.
- The number of people killed in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7 has risen to 32,623, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health. At least 75,092 people have been injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
- Gaza’s Health Ministry said 71 Palestinians were killed and 112 wounded over the latest 24-hour reporting period.
Diplomacy and regional tensions
- Five members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and 33 civilians were killed during Israeli air strikes on the Syrian city of Aleppo on Friday, two security sources told the Reuters news agency.
- The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the air strikes were a clear violation of international law and the sovereignty of Syria.
- Warning sirens have sounded in the settlements of Kiryat Shmona, Tel Hai, Beit Hillel and Ma’ayan Baruch in northern Israel on Friday, according to local media. Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been exchanging fire over the Lebanon-Israel border since the day after the war in Gaza started.
- Japan is preparing to resume funding to the crisis-hit United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which coordinates the vast majority of aid to Gaza, according to its government.
Violence in the occupied West Bank
- Israeli air strikes have hit the Saad bin Abi Waqqas Mosque in the Jabalia refugee camp, injuring two Palestinians, Al Jazeera correspondents reported.
- The strikes caused a fire to break out in an electrical appliances store early on Friday.
- Israeli forces have arrested a resident in Nablus, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Thursday. Laith Jibril al-Sharbaji was arrested after the military searched his house and seized his vehicle, it said.
- The army also stormed the village of Madama, south of Nablus, and raided a number of homes.