Four people, including two children, have been killed as Israeli warplanes bombed a home west of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency Wafa is reporting, citing medical sources.

Videos posted by local journalists, verified by Al Jazeera, show rescuers using torchlight to search for survivors in the rubble of the collapsed multi-storey building.

شهداء وجرحى ودمار هائل إثر قصف إسرائيلي استهدف منزلا غرب مدينة برفح جنوب قطاع غزة#حرب_غزة #فيديو pic.twitter.com/gpbkyxQHTk

— الجزيرة فلسطين (@AJA_Palestine) April 2, 2024

Israeli strikes kill, injure dozens overnight in Gaza

Israeli attacks kill 71, injure 102 in Gaza in last 24 hours

Aftermath of Israeli air strikes on overcrowded Rafah



Emergency workers recover bodies at the site of the Israeli strike

Israeli forces arrested Palestinian at Al-Aqsa Mosque, raid West Bank towns

Israeli forces detain 40 Palestinians in occupied West Bank

Number of Palestinians detained by Israel rises to 9,312

HaMoked has received new data from the Israel Prison Service.
IPS now holds 9,312 Palestinian "security" inmates.
Note that 40% of Palestinians are now held in detention without trialhttps://t.co/EIkWLaEsDD pic.twitter.com/dCmC669bTE

— HaMoked (@HaMokedRights) April 2, 2024

Some positive news, doesn't last long

Japan restores UNRWA funding: Report

Jodie Ginsberg from the Committee to Protect Journalists says the announcement by Benjamin Netanyahu of his intention to ban Al Jazeera follows a similar pattern of media interference, including the killing of media workers.

“We’ve seen this kind of language before from Netanyahu and Israeli officials in which they try to paint journalists as terrorists, as criminals. This is nothing new,” Ginsberg told Al Jazeera.

“It’s another example of the tightening of the free press and the stranglehold the Israeli government would like to exercise. It’s an incredibly worrying move by the government.”

Netanyahu wrote on X on Monday that “Al Jazeera harmed Israel’s security, actively participated in the October 7 massacre, and incited against Israeli soldiers.”

The Save the Children charity has accused Israel of restricting the flow of much-needed humanitarian relief as the population of Gaza faces the threat of famine. “Life-saving supplies which could be used to treat malnourished children are being delayed and denied entry by the Government of Israel,” it said in a statement.

“Essential food and medical items are obstructed from entering Gaza for days, weeks, or even months. Others are being denied entry altogether by the Israeli authorities, with reports of oxygen cylinders, ventilators and water purifiers being turned away at the border.”

Country Director Xavier Joubert said: “Starvation must never be used as a weapon of war – 27 children have already been killed by starvation and disease. If the world fails to act now countless more children will be added to that number.”

World Central Kitchen (WCK) has confirmed that seven of its team members were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza. The seven aid workers killed are from Australia, Palestine, Poland and the United Kingdom, as well as a dual citizen of the US and Canada, WCK said.

The aid workers were “traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle,” the statement said.

“Despite coordinating movements with the [Israeli army], the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route,” WCK added.

The organisation had initially reported that five staff had been killed in the attack.

WCK CEO Erin Gore said: “I am heartbroken and appalled that we – World Central Kitchen and the world – lost beautiful lives today because of a targeted attack by the [Israeli military].

“The love they had for feeding people, the determination they embodied to show that humanity rises above all, and the impact they made in countless lives will forever be remembered and cherished,” Gore said.

“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” said Gore. “This is unforgivable”

The statement added that WCK is pausing our operations “immediately” in the region and would “make decisions about the future of our work soon”.

According to a post shared on social media before the attack, WCK was operating more than 60 kitchens in central and southern Gaza, cooking hundreds of thousands of meals each day.

World Central Kitchen is devastated to confirm seven members of our team have been killed in an IDF strike in Gaza. Read our full statement on the loss of our team members here: https://t.co/gsijamzfMU pic.twitter.com/PtQCxX5XrW

— World Central Kitchen (@WCKitchen) April 2, 2024

Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom shared a video showing World Central Kitchen (WCK) chefs preparing a beef and vegetable stew in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah before she and four others were killed in an Israeli attack.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, who spoke with the aid workers hours before the attack, says that WCK workers are “well recognised in the Gaza Strip” and have been working with at least 100 local kitchens to prepare hot meals and food parcels for months.

Earlier we reported that Jose Andres, the Spanish-American chef who founded WCK, said that the organisation had “lost several of our sisters and brothers in an [Israeli] air strike in Gaza”.

According to the most recent UN food security assessment, an estimated 1.1 million people – about half of the Gaza Strip’s total population – are experiencing “catastrophic” hunger in Gaza due to the Israeli siege of the territory and restrictions of the flow of humanitarian aid.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in Gaza was “completely unacceptable” and he is demanding “full accountability”.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has requested a “call-in from the Israeli ambassador”, Albanese said.

‘Israel committing war crime after war crime in broad daylight’: Australian senator

Cyprus condemns killings of World Central Kitchen workers

Norwegian Refugee Council condemns aid worker killings

We are mourning with our colleagues in WCK.
7 of their aid workers were killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza.
WCK had informed the IDF of their movement.
Nowhere else are so many aid workers killed.
There must be an immediate ceasefire. Enough now.https://t.co/uBNSx5vocf

— Jan Egeland (@NRC_Egeland) April 2, 2024

The Israeli military’s attack on the World Central Kitchen aid convoy is devastating – targeting one of the most prominent humanitarian organisations in Gaza coordinating much-needed food delivered through the recently established maritime corridor.

As we’ve heard from the directors, the charity has now suspended its operations in Gaza and is considering future work inside the enclave. This could lead to negative repercussions for the humanitarian situation in the desperate north, where the group was distributing aid.

The attack further shows that Israel, despite repeatedly saying it is facilitating aid within Gaza, is at the same time attacking aid workers, aid seekers, and now the very organisations responsible for distributing humanitarian relief.

From a Palestinian perspective, this could be a possible step by the Israeli military to push humanitarian organisations to stop operating inside Gaza. That would give the military more flexible operational mobility on the ground in the north and force residents to flee from there.

Netanyahu: Aid workers killed by ‘unintended’ Israeli strike

The Israeli military’s statement regarding the strike on the aid convoy that killed seven humanitarian workers in Gaza, including six foreign nationals, is one of its longest statements we’ve seen in the past six months.

This goes to show when foreign nationals are involved, Israel has to respond and it has to respond quickly.

If the victims were all Palestinians, as we’ve seen countless times, we wouldn’t get a statement like this. We’d get a simple, terse statement like we’ve seen before saying: “We’re investigating and we’ll get back to you if we have anything more.”

The fact the victims of the strike were foreign nationals means there’s an enormous amount of international pressure to come up with something. However, it’s now up to the international community whether they accept this as simply a fait accompli.

Cyprus’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Theodoros Gotsis says 100 tons (90 tonnes) of aid were unloaded before World Central Kitchen suspended operations after seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli strike earlier today.

About 240 tons (220 tonnes) of aid will be turned back.

Cypriot Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said the charity is suspending its operations in Gaza out of respect for the victims as well as to review its security protocols.

Cyprus has played a key role in establishing a maritime aid corridor to Gaza from its port city of Larnaca.

Alex Fort, a logistics coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, says the attack on the aid workers in Gaza is another example of how “international humanitarian law is not respected despite several deconfliction mechanisms in place to avoid such a tragedy”.

“Clearly, today it’s not possible to work in a safe way on the whole of the Gaza Strip. Humanitarian aid workers, health workers are directly targeted – and this is completely unacceptable,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking from the occupied East Jerusalem.

Fort said that this was not the first time such a “tragic” attack had happened since the start of the war, noting that MSF has faced such incidents several times that led “to the death of five of our colleagues”.

“This needs to stop and each incident needs serious investigation. For us, for example, all incidents we had, we requested serious investigation and we never get any feedback from the Israeli authorities,” Fort added.

“Aid workers are risking their life every day to provide assistance to the population and they are clearly part of the whole collective punishment that the civilian people of Gaza are facing every day.”

The organisation, which runs the second largest humanitarian operation in Gaza after UNRWA, has said it is suspending its work in the besieged coastal enclave following yesterday’s attack on World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers by Israeli forces.

“The killing of WCK humanitarians, occurring less than a month after the still-unexplained killing of Anera staff member Mousa Shawwa, alongside the loss of numerous other aid workers and their families, has led our team to conclude that delivering aid safely is no longer feasible,” Anera said in a statement.

“The ongoing targeting of humanitarian workers and the lack of adequate safety measures demand thorough investigation and immediate action. Israel bears the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the unhindered delivery of urgent humanitarian assistance and basic services to those in need,” it said.

Iran has promised to respond to a suspected Israeli missile attack on its consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus, which killed seven people, including Brigadier-General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and his deputy, General Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi.

Hossein Akbari, Iran’s ambassador to Syria, said Tehran’s response would be “decisive”.

_{Members of Syria Civil Defence stand near a damaged site after what Syrian and Iranian media described as an Israeli air attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1, 2024}

Saudi Arabia condemns ‘targeting’ of Iranian consulate in Damascus

Lebanon denounces Israeli attack on Iranian consulate in Syria

“We are in a multi-front war, in the offence and defence,” said Defence Minister Yoav Gallant at a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, reports The Times of Israel.

We will “act everywhere, every day to prevent the force build-up of our enemies”, he said. Israel’s goal is to “make it clear to anyone who threatens us – all over the Middle East – that the price for such action will be a big one”, Gallant added.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard commanders killed in Syria are not ordinary men. And their assassination is being seen as a test for the Iranian system.

Whatever Iran decides to do, it’s going to be difficult to manoeuvre. If Iran doesn’t respond strongly enough, many here believe it will be seen as a sign of weakness, not only to Israel and the United States, but also to a number of its proxies in the region.

If Iran does react strongly, it could risk a full-out confrontation with the US. It’s really a tricky moment, and how Iran decides to move forward will be pivotal, not only for its standing in the region, but also the future of the establishment in this country.

So far, we know there have been a number of high-level meetings. The Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, held a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council during which it decided on an “appropriate response”.

All the rhetoric coming from Iranian officials as well as the supreme leader indicates there will be a strong response. What that means and how it plays out remain to be seen. But what is certain is that, internally, there is strong pressure for the Revolutionary Guard to make this a moment to show force.

The deadly attack on Iran’s consular office in Damascus could trigger a spillover of the Gaza war across the region, an escalation Tehran has sought to avoid, analysts say. Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group called the deadly strike “a significant escalation”.

“By targeting an Iranian diplomatic facility, Israel has crossed a line. Iran’s dilemma is that failure to respond could signal weakness to Israel, but retaliation risks a harsher US or Israeli action,” said Vaez.

Bassam Abu Abdallah, who heads the Damascus Centre for Strategic Research and is close to the Syrian government, said before Monday “there were rules of engagement, but now it’s an all-out war between Israel and the resistance axis”.

“It is now clear that the trend is towards escalation. We could start to see increased attacks against US bases in Syria, Iraq or elsewhere.”

The United States is “outraged” over the attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers – one of them a US citizen – in Gaza, White House spokesman John Kirby has said. “We were outraged to learn of an [Israeli military] strike that killed a number of civilian humanitarian workers yesterday from the World Central Kitchen,” Kirby said.

But the White House said there is no evidence that Israel struck the aid workers deliberately, despite the fact that a full Israeli investigation is still pending.

Israeli forces deliberately hit aid workers convoy, Al Jazeera concludes

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/2/al-jazeera-sanad-probe-finds-israeli-forces-deliberately-hit-wck-convoy

_{Upon analysing images of the second and third targeted vehicles, signs of a projectile entering from the top and exiting through the bottom of the cars are evident, suggesting that the cars were targeted from the air}

On Monday at 10:43pm (19:43 GMT), journalists reported an Israeli shelling targeting a vehicle on Rashid Street in the central Gaza Strip resulting in casualties. This matches the account of a displaced individual interviewed by Al Jazeera, who confirmed multiple bombings between 11:00 and 11:30pm (20:00 – 20:30 GMT).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that the attack had been executed by Israeli forces, saying they had “unintentionally [hit] innocent people in the Gaza Strip … it happens in war.”

WCK said in a statement on Tuesday that its workers had been leaving the Deir el-Balah warehouse after delivering 100 tonnes of food aid and that “despite coordinating movements with the [Israeli army], the convoy was hit”.

The shelling targeted three vehicles belonging to WCK, one at a time – two armoured and one unarmoured – killing seven relief workers of various nationalities, including a Palestinian driver, Saif Abu Taha, from Rafah.

Hasan al-Shorbagi, a displaced Palestinian who lives with his family near the bombing site, about 4.7km (2.9 miles) from the warehouse, told Al Jazeera the first car was hit by a projectile, completely burning it. This is consistent with the image of the burned armoured car.


A charred vehicle is shown at coordinates 31°25’00.43″ N 34°19’44.78″ E

According to al-Shorbagi’s testimony, the injured were transferred from the first targeted car to another armoured vehicle to expedite their transport.


A statement from WCK confirmed that the convoy left its warehouse in Deir el-Balah – shown on Google Maps at coordinates 31°24’54.7″N 34°22’05.1″E – and headed towards Rashid Street. This distance along the route from the warehouse to Rashid Street was about three kilometres (1.9 miles) and the first car was targeted about 1.7km (one mile) down the road.

The Sanad investigation found that the second vehicle was targeted approximately 800 metres (2,525 feet) away from where the first was hit.

The third car was targeted about 1.6km (nearly a mile) away from the second car, based on its location after being bombed.

Images taken from the bombing sites show that the vehicles were clearly marked on their roofs and windshields as belonging to WCK, indicating that they were in compliance and there had been prior coordination between WCK and the Israeli army about the movements.

Analysis of images of the second and third targeted vehicles showed signs of a projectile entering from the top and exiting through the bottom, suggesting that the cars were targeted from the air.

Jeremy Konyndyk, who also served as a US international development official in the Biden and Obama administrations, calls the Israeli strike on World Central Kitchen staff a war crime and “part of a clear pattern”.

In a post on X, he says the pattern is of the Israeli army “striking humanitarians routinely since early in the war, while refusing repeated calls to set up a functional deconfliction system that would actually protect humanitarians”.

“President Biden and his senior officials know it. But they’ve done little beyond scold the Israelis over it while continuing to send weapons. This is the inevitable result,” Konyndyk added.

You don't strike a deconflicted convoy repeatedly, hitting three vehicles in succession over the course of a kilometer of road, by accident.

You do that by fostering a military culture that treats Gaza as a free fire zone with total impunity for gross attacks on civilians.

— Jeremy Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) April 2, 2024

After an Israeli attack killed seven people working for the World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid group in Gaza, Israeli President Isaac Herzog “expressed his deep sorrow and sincere apologies” during a phone call with the Spanish-American chef and founder of the NGO, Jose Andres.

In a post on X, the Israeli president’s office said Herzog apologised for “the tragic loss of life of WCK staff” and said he sent his “condolences” to their families and loved ones.

“The President reiterated Israel’s commitment to ensuring a thorough investigation of the tragedy,” his office said.

The statement comes following widespread international condemnation of the incident, and after calls for a thorough and transparent probe.

Where are the apologies to the UN and UNWRA for killing their aid workers, the apologies to the press for all their lives lost, the apologies to medical workers killed and mistreated all over Gaza. Fuck of with your apology, sorry not sorry, you belong in jail at the ICC.

This attack is only the latest by the Israeli army on humanitarian workers and the aid they labour to distribute, and throughout its war on Gaza it has been accused by governments, the UN and major NGOs of deliberately blocking aid at the borders of the besieged enclave.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the deaths World Central Kitchen staff brings the number of aid workers killed in Gaza since October 7 to 196.

A recent feature of Israel’s war has been attacks on Palestinians seeking aid, specifically in north Gaza, which have killed dozens and wounded hundreds, including members of a committee of local tribal officials who were organising the distribution of aid and were in contact with the Israeli army.

Under these harsh restrictions and constant attacks, Gaza is teetering on the brink of famine, and nowhere is the situation more serious than in northern Gaza, according to a recent UN-backed report issued last month by the world’s hunger monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

As Philippe Lazzarini, director of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, puts it, this famine in Gaza is entirely “man made”, and requires “a complete reversal in policies from the Israeli Government”. The consensus of world humanitarian organisations, including Lazzarini’s, is that all of the Gaza Strip’s border crossings need to be opened to allow through the thousands of aid trucks waiting, and an immediate ceasefire is required to prevent what could be the worst humanitarian disaster of this already catastrophic war.

The United Arab Emirates is pausing humanitarian aid efforts through a maritime corridor from Cyprus to Gaza pending further safety guarantees from Israel and a full investigation into the deaths of aid workers in Gaza, a UAE official has told Reuters.

The UAE has financed the aid shipments by sea to Gaza and WCK has organised them. A UAE foreign ministry statement condemned the deaths of the aid workers and called for an “urgent, independent and transparent investigation.” The UAE said it holds Israel responsible.