Remember Rafah was a red line a year ago?
‘Rafah is gone’
The Israeli army assault to capture Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah is a major escalation in the war after Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas on March 18 and restarted its attack on the besieged Palestinian territory.
Rafah “is gone, it is being wiped out”, said a father of seven among the hundreds of thousands who fled the city to neighbouring Khan Younis.
“They are knocking down what is left standing of houses and property,” said the man who declined to be identified for fear of repercussions.
Nicaragua withdraws from Israel’s Gaza genocide case
Nicaragua has informed the International Court of Justice (ICJ) it decided to withdraw its application to join the genocide case against Israel for its conduct during the war on Gaza.
Neither the ICJ nor Nicaragua have stated an official reason for the move. The Central American nation broke ties with Israel in October, citing deadly military attacks against Palestinian civilians as the main reason.
PRESS RELEASE: on 1 April 2025, Nicaragua informed the #ICJ that it had decided to withdraw the its Application for permission to intervene submitted in the case #SouthAfrica v. #Israel. https://t.co/c1sGSUgvE4 pic.twitter.com/xj5Xv8kXln
— CIJ_ICJ (@CIJ_ICJ) April 3, 2025
Gaza rescuers ‘executed by gunshots either in the head or chest’
The Israeli military killed 15 medics and emergency workers in southern Gaza and buried the bodies with their ambulances and rescue vehicles last month.
Dr Ahmed al-Farra, director of paediatrics at Al-Tahreer Maternity Hospital in southern Khan Younis, saw the bodies coming into the medical facility after they were recovered a week later. He said Israeli soldiers would have easily seen they were targeting medics when they opened fire.
“The skies are filled with their planes, they can see a needle on the ground. So they could easily distinguish ambulances,” al-Farra told Al Jazeera.
“When the bodies came to the hospital, they were nearly decomposed. It had been around seven to eight days since the medics were executed. I saw three of them had their hands tied behind their backs.”
No shrapnel wounds on their bodies and no signs of physical damage caused by explosions were visible, he added.
“They were executed by gunshots either in the head or in the chest. They were unarmed and went to the al-Hashaashin area of Rafah to help people who were severely injured.”
Teenage Palestinian prisoner dies of complications from hunger
A 17-year-old Palestinian boy has died in Israeli custody as a result of complications from being starved, according to two rights monitors.
The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said the administration at Israel’s Megiddo Prison has “committed a complete and systematic crime” leading to the death of Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmed.
The teenager reportedly complained about being starved in a December medical examination that also found he suffered from scabies. He lost consciousness on March 22 and was transferred to the prison’s clinic, where attempts to revive him failed.
The rights monitors said many testimonies obtained from adult and child detainees have reflected a high “level of brutality” against Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
