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SvennoJ on 18 March 2025
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Main events on March 18th

  • Despite international condemnation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza was “only the beginning” and that military force would continue until captives are freed.
  • Israeli police forcefully dispersed demonstrators in Jerusalem who were demanding an agreement for the release of captives held by Hamas and protesting against the resumption of Israel’s war on Gaza, Israeli media reports.
  • Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan said Israel was “delusional” to think it could alter the Gaza ceasefire by escalating attacks, adding that Israel’s actions “will create more instability in the region”.
  • Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree says the Yemen-based group fired two ballistic missiles at Israel’s Nevatim base in response to Israel’s renewed attacks on Gaza.
  • The US has launched new air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, hitting the city of Saada, according to local media.
  • Israel’s surprise attack on Gaza killed at least 174 Palestinian children on Tuesday, inflicting “one of the largest one-day child death tolls” in the enclave’s history, Defense for Children – Palestine, a rights group, said.
  • Amnesty International said the world cannot stand by and continue to allow Israel to inflict “staggering levels of death and suffering” on the people of Gaza.
  • The European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called on Israel to end its attacks, saying the EU deplores the end of the ceasefire and the killing of civilians in Israeli air strikes.

Emergency workers collect ‘pieces of flesh’ after Israeli bombing

Four hundred people have been killed, and there are still many missing and trapped under piles of rubble, as the attacks were very massive. Very intense.

As one Civil Defence crew member described to us, they had to literally collect pieces of flesh from nearby areas of people who were killed, including the bodies of children and women.

It’s very calm in the hospital, here in the courtyard, but inside its wards, it’s quite a struggle for the medical staff who have been working throughout the day, intervening and trying to hold as many cases as they can.

Many of the cases that are quite treatable are not going to be treated in the hospital here simply because doctors had to make a choice about which cases to pay attention to first.

They had to prioritise these cases simply because of the acute shortage of medical supplies.

So this is, by itself, an element that has been grinding down on the mental and the physical wellbeing of the medical staff and surviving family members in the hospital.


A Palestinian stands near a tent destroyed by Israeli attacks in the al-Mawasi area, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday

Israel blocking ‘life-saving’ health supplies at border says UN

In its latest situation report, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said that the hospital equipment left waiting to get into Gaza includes “20 ventilators for neonatal intensive care units and nine portable newborn incubators”.

Israel’s renewed bombardment is placing increased strain on health resources, OCHA added, noting that the general director of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Dr Munir Al Bursh, has called for field hospitals, beds and operation rooms to help meet demand following Israel’s renewed bombardment.

A joint UN assessment found that no hospitals in Gaza are fully functional and that 13 hospitals and four field hospitals remain non-functional, while Israel’s newest displacement orders cover areas where there are at least three primary healthcare (PHC) facilities and one field hospital.