Congress will release several spending bills today, including one that includes more sanctions on Russia and Iran, House Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview with Fox News.

The bills, which could be voted on by the end of the week, will also allocate more funding for US allies Israel and Ukraine, but the amount of spending “is still being decided”, Johnson said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says it found the massive explosives inside schools after Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza’s city of Khan Younis. UNWRA found “significant challenges in operating safely due to the presence of unexploded ordnance [UXOs], including 1,000-pound [450kg] bombs inside schools and on roads”.

Earlier this month, the UN said it would take “millions of dollars” and “many years” to decontaminate Gaza from unexploded munitions.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi says the international community should stop Netanyahu from “stealing” attention away from Gaza by escalating his confrontation with Iran.

In remarks during a news conference with his German counterpart in Berlin, Safadi said Iran had responded to the attack against its consulate and had announced that it “did not want to escalate further”.

“We are against escalating. Netanyahu wants to draw attention away from Gaza and focus on his confrontation with Iran,” Safadi added.

Gaza’s “once-vibrant health system” and aid efforts have been decimated by Israel, and the population faces “famine, malnutrition, and infectious disease outbreaks”, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and its partners warned in a statement.

Projections by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health indicate that even with an immediate ceasefire, up to nearly 12,000 people would die in Gaza as a result of disease, the statement also read.

“No hospitals in Gaza are fully functioning any longer. IRC staff and partners in Gaza continue to witness devastation in the health facilities that are left,” said Dr Seema Jilani, IRC’s senior health technical adviser for emergencies.

“While there have not been large-scale epidemics in Gaza for over a decade, the population has now been left vulnerable to infectious diseases such as flu, COVID, pneumonia, bacterial dysentery, cholera, polio, measles and meningitis,” she added.

The IRC reiterated its call for an immediate ceasefire and unfettered aid access to prevent the total collapse of public health in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Children in Gaza have become the faces of the continuing war as their stories paint a “harrowing picture” of the human consequences of the conflict, a UNICEF official says.

“Children are wearing a tremendous share of the scars of this war,” UNICEF communications specialist Tess Ingram – who left Gaza on Monday after spending two weeks there – told a UN press briefing in Geneva.

More than 12,000 children were injured in Gaza since October 7, 2023, she said, and this is “almost certainly an underestimate”.

“With at least 70 children injured every day, we need the number of medical evacuations to increase so children can access the care they urgently need. And with one child killed or injured every 10 minutes, above anything else we need a ceasefire.”

A lasting truce “is the only way to stop the killing and maiming of children”.

The United States is readying more sanctions on Iran after its aerial attack on Israel, according to news site Axios.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will announce the measures during the opening press conference of the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings in Washington, DC, it said, citing an advance copy of the secretary’s remarks.

Yellen will also push finance ministers of other countries to introduce their own sanctions against Iran for “coordinated action”.

“Treasury will not hesitate to work with our allies to use our sanctions authority to continue disrupting the Iranian regime’s malign and destabilizing activity,” it quotes Yellen’s prepared remarks as saying.

“The attack by Iran and its proxies underscores the importance of Treasury’s work to use our economic tools to counter Iran’s malign activity.”

Israel’s war on Gaza took a larger toll on economic growth in the final three months of 2023 than previously thought.

The economy contracted an annualised 21.0 percent in the fourth quarter over the third quarter, the Central Bureau of Statistics said. It followed a 19.4 percent decline in its preliminary estimate, which was revised to a 20.7 percent contraction last month.

The war has led to steep declines in the fourth quarter in exports (-22.5 percent), private spending (-26.9 percent), investment in fixed assets (-67.9 percent), and imports (-42.4 percent).

Government spending, however, jumped 83.7 percent. On Monday, the bureau reported the annual inflation rate rose to a more than expected 2.7 percent in March from 2.5 percent in February.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported in its latest situation update that the amount of aid entering Gaza has remained relatively stable since April, with an average of 181 trucks reaching the enclave daily.

This volume is far below the operational capacity of Gaza’s open border crossings and fails to meet Israel’s stated goal of facilitating the entry of 500 aid trucks per day, said UNRWA.

Aid flow into northern Gaza, where hunger is most pervasive, is especially strained, with UNRWA unable to reach the area since January 23, the agency added. Throughout Gaza, “food insecurity” has increased by 80 percent since December, UNRWA said.

“Israel continues to impose unlawful restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance, and to carry out widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN human rights office, at a press briefing in Geneva.

Israel, which denies hindering humanitarian relief to Gaza, has faced increased international pressure to let more supplies into the Gaza Strip since it hit an aid convoy on April 1, killing international relief workers.

“Those delivering or trying to access humanitarian assistance must never be attacked,” said Shamdasani.

She also voiced concern over escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank, calling on Israeli forces to “immediately end their active participation in and support for settler attacks” on Palestinians.

Israeli forces arrest 25 Palestinians in West Bank since yesterday

Another ‘bloody’ night across Gaza

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says Israeli forces arrested some 100 journalists since October 7. At least 40 of them remain in Israeli custody, the syndicate said. Most of the journalists were beaten at the moment of arrest, it added.

According to the syndicate, many of detained journalists were held under administrative detention, a controversial and vague legal process that allows Israel to imprison Palestinians without charge or trial.

At least 11 people have been killed in an Israeli attack on the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported. Most of those killed were children, Wafa said, adding that several people were also wounded.

The camp is densely populated and has become even more congested after thousands of families were forced to flee their homes in Gaza’s north after Israel began its assault on the enclave.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah, said the attack on Maghazi took place during “rush hour”. He said the attack hit a playground that is frequently visited by displaced children.

“Dozens” of wounded people have been transported to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, Mahmoud said.

Several people have been reported killed in an attack on Gaza’s most southern city of Rafah. A strike hit a residential building in central Rafah, according to our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic.

Gaza’s Civil Defence said an Israeli jet attacked a house in the Yabna refugee camp, killing and wounding “a number” of people. Civil defence crews are still trying to pull out the bodies of those killed and injured from under the rubble, it said.

More than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for a ground operation into Rafah, despite international calls saying such a move would be “catastrophic”.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society says Israeli authorities are holding the bodies of 26 Palestinian detainees. The NGO said the figure stands after the body of 59-year-old Abdulhalim Abdulkarim Amer was released by Israeli authorities earlier today.

Amer died in Israeli custody on April 13. He is the 16th Palestinian to die in Israeli custody since Israel’s assault on Gaza began more than six months ago. The father of seven was arrested with his son on March 17, for allegedly entering Israel for work without a permit.

Israel routinely withholds the bodies of Palestinians, which human rights groups say amounts to collective punishment of bereaved families. International law considers the practice a violation of human rights.