Closing summary
The UN agency for Palestine refugees (Unrwa) said that 14,500 Palestinian children have been killed since the start of Israel’s war on the territory last October. “One child gets killed every hour. These are not numbers. These are lives cut short. Killing children cannot be justified,” the agency wrote in a post on X.
At least 45,338 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,764 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement issued earlier today.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is said to have reached an agreement with former rebel faction chiefs to dissolve all groups and consolidate them under the defence ministry.
Israel has instructed its diplomatic missions in Europe to try to get the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen designated as a terrorist organisation.
Al Jazeera is reporting that at least 20 patients and staff at the Kamal Adwan hospital in in northern Beit Lahiya were injured after the Israeli army detonated remote-controlled explosives in the health facility. Gaza’s health ministry was quoted as saying that Israeli bombing is targeting all the departments of the hospital “around the clock without stopping”. Munir Al-Bursh, director of Gaza’s health ministry, said the Israeli army had ordered officials at the Indonesian hospital to evacuate it on Monday, before storming it in the early hours of Tuesday and forcing those inside to leave.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that there is “some progress” in efforts to reach a hostage and ceasefire deal in Gaza.
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Updated
Mona Chalabi is data editor at Guardian US
Worldwide, 104 journalists and media workers were killed in 2024 – and more than half of them were in Palestine.
Journalists there have faced death more than their colleagues in any other country, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
Research by the IFJ, a non-partisan organization representing the rights of media workers, found that 55 journalists were killed in Palestine this year, compared with 49 in the rest of the world. Their figures do not include journalists who have been arrested (75 Palestinian journalists have been imprisoned since October 2023, and just 30 of them have been released) nor does it include those who are injured (approximately 49) or missing (at least two).
Since Israel has prohibited the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza, only Palestinians are able to report on violence and human rights abuses committed in the territory.
For those Palestinian journalists who have not been killed by the Israeli military, working conditions are still near-impossible. Over 90% said they had lost equipment essential for reporting and that they were without essential protective gear such as helmets according to a survey by ARIJ, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism.
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