Main events on April 17th
- Israeli attacks across Gaza killed at least 32 Palestinians on Thursday, medical sources tell Al Jazeera, with at least 15 people killed in strikes on tents housing displaced people.
- Hamas’s Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, has said the group is ready to release all the captives within a ceasefire deal that would see Israel end the war and withdraw its troops from the enclave.
- Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said Israel will not halt the war before achieving “complete victory”, as he called for the “voluntary exit and rehabilitation of Gazans in another country”.
- The humanitarian system in Gaza is “facing total collapse” due to Israel’s seven week long blockade on aid and supplies, the heads of 12 major aid organisations have warned.
- The Israeli army has shot and killed two Palestinians and wounded a third, claiming the trio “hurled rocks towards vehicles on the highway” in the occupied West Bank.
- The US military’s assault on Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen has continued, including a strike on the Ras Isa port in Hodeidah governorate, which has killed 17 people, according to Houthi-affiliated media.
Portrait of a Palestinian boy wins the World Press Photo of the year
The horrors of the war in Gaza are very much present at the opening of the world press exhibition here in Amsterdam, especially because the winning photo, just as last year, is a photo from Gaza.
It shows a 9-year-old boy, Mahmoud, who was severely wounded trying to escape an Israeli attack. He was actually going back to try to encourage his family to run faster when it happened, and he lost both his arms.
After the incident, he was evacuated to Qatar, where Samar Abu Elouf, the photographer, met him. The photo was taken in Doha.
She took it very quickly as she didn’t want to disturb him too much, and it turned out to be a photo that attracted a lot of people’s attention, because it’s a beautiful picture of a very beautiful boy, but then you realise that both his arms are missing.
The jury has also said it gives a dehumanising war with industrial-scale destruction a face, and that’s what this photo does, without actually showing the violence itself.
Mahmoud Ajjour (9), who was injured during an Israeli attack on Gaza City in March 2024, finds refuge and medical help in Doha, Qatar, June 28, 2024 [Credit: © Samar Abu Elouf, for The New York Times]
