Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, says the fighting is currently raging in and around Khan Younis, also in the south.

“The city of Khan Younis had been the theatre for the Israeli military operations since last December with the Israeli forces trying to impose its full military control of the city” he said.

Earlier, we reported that the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, claimed nine Israeli soldiers were killed in the az-Zanna district in eastern Khan Younis and five in the Amal neighbourhood.

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that Israeli soldiers are currently engaged in “brutal and fierce combat at close range” in Khan Younis. He said Israeli military are also launching air raids against the city and are in the process of destroying three tunnel networks originating there.

On X, the UK’s Foreign Office says that a ship from the country’s navy will be transferring humanitarian aid into Gaza.

It added that the maritime corridor between Cyprus and Gaza, first announced by the US last month, will be set up in “early May”. The UK also announced 9.7 million pounds (about $12.25m) in “aid, equipment and expertise” for the corridor.

Its post says that the UK is “doing everything possible to get more aid into Gaza”. Israel’s closest allies, such as the UK and the US, have been criticised for not applying enough diplomatic pressure on Israel to get it to stop blocking aid into the Gaza Strip.

A @RoyalNavy ship will help get life-saving UK aid into Gaza as part of an international effort to set up a humanitarian maritime corridor in early May.

We are also pledging £9.7 million for aid, equipment and expertise to help set up the maritime corridor from Cyprus to Gaza. pic.twitter.com/3OyFb8kUIR

— Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) April 6, 2024

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon has stated that “the military campaign in Gaza has reached its limit” during a demonstration in Haifa in northern Israel.

Israel’s Shin Bet, or Shabak as it is known in both Hebrew and Arabic, is the internal intelligence service and one of the three branches of the Israeli General Security Service.

“Our soldiers are forced to re-occupy places that were occupied a few weeks ago, and become police forces for a population full of rage and hatred. They are forced to kill hungry civilians who attack them when they are protecting humanitarian aid convoys,” Ayalon said.

He called for Hamas to be defeated “with a combination of a political process that will lead to a moderate regional coalition under American and Saudi leadership”. He is quoted as saying such a coalition would require “a process leading to a historic compromise with the Palestinian people”.

Haaretz stated that Ayalon called Netanyahu’s decision not to discuss “the day after” the war a disaster, adding, “Without a political goal, the war becomes a continuous battle that no one knows the end of.”

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“Unlivable.” That’s how Canada’s immigration minister, Marc Miller, described the situation in the Gaza Strip in late December.

As conditions continued to deteriorate, Miller announced that the Canadian government was launching a special visa programme to allow citizens and permanent residents to bring extended family members from Gaza to Canada.

But more than three months later, not a single Palestinian applicant has left the Gaza Strip as a result of the visa programme.

A statement released by Hamas’s military wing says its fighters ambushed three Israeli tanks in az-Zanna area, in the east of Khan Younis city.

The district has been under heavy bombardment and artillery shelling for the past month. People who managed to get there and inspect it report about 95 percent of residential buildings, infrastructure, and public facilities have been – not partially or severely – but completely destroyed.

The Qassam Brigades says it killed nine soldiers there and four more in a separate attack. The Israeli army issued a statement saying four of its soldiers were killed in Gaza on Saturday.

The Israeli military is operating in the western part of Khan Younis, specifically in al-Amal neighbourhood and within al-Amal Hospital where extreme fighting is ongoing. Civil defence crews and witnesses say civilians are trapped in the area.

In Gaza today, scalpels have to be reused in surgeries, but they’ve become too blunt to do what they are supposed to do. Medics often carry out surgical procedures without painkillers. Nearly all patients suffer from malnutrition so their wounds don’t heal.

Read here the testimony of Riyadh Almasharqah, a doctor who spent two weeks in the strip’s European Hospital.

In Jabalia, a refugee camp near Gaza City, families scour the rubble for mallow leaves to make a thin broth to break the daily Ramadan fast. Wael Attar, a father of young girls, says his children constantly ask for real food, but there’s none to be found.

“Life has become miserable. They tell me, ‘Father, you are feeding us mallow, mallow, mallow every day. We want to eat fish, chicken, canned food. We are craving eggs, or anything,'” said Attar.

The family shelters in a school as part of the 1.7 million people displaced in Gaza. The UN and aid partners warn of “imminent famine” for 1.1 million people or half the population.

Tens of thousands of Israelis, including opposition leader Yair Lapid, protested against the Netanyahu government in Tel Aviv and other cities demanding “elections now”. “They will not deter us, nor will they force us to stop protests until all the kidnapped people return and this terrible government falls,” said Lapid.

People chanted “Police, police who exactly are you guarding?” and “Ben-Gvir is a terrorist”, referring to Israel’s minister of national security, the Haaretz newspaper reported.

Organisers of the antigovernment protests in Tel Aviv say that 100,000 people participated in the demonstrations, according to the Israeli media.


_{Israelis light a fire as they protest outside the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Saturday}

CIA Director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani have joined Egyptian mediators for indirect truce talks in Cairo.

Hamas reiterated its core demands are a complete ceasefire in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Stop-start talks have made no headway since a weeklong truce in November saw some Israeli captives exchanged for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.

Washington blames the lack of a deal on Hamas’s refusal to release sick and other vulnerable captives. Qatar says Israeli objections to the return of displaced Palestinians in Gaza are the main obstacle.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says 33,175 Palestinians have been killed and 75,886 wounded since Israel launched its war on the coastal territory in October. The toll includes at least 38 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said.

More than 14,000 children and about 9,220 women have been killed in six months of war.

“We have arrived at a terrible milestone,” the UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement marking six months, while noting “the immediate prospect of a shameful man-made famine”.

Griffiths called the prospect of further Israeli escalation in Gaza “unconscionable”.


A man holds the body of his baby killed in Israeli attacks in Rafah

The avg number of daily deaths has been going down since the killing of the aid workers. There are also undocumented deaths of course, but maybe the bombing campaign is slowing down. However deaths from starvation will soon take over if no drastic intervention occurs. Famine is expected to set in in May.


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