Spain’s RTVE runs Gaza message despite threat of fines

Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE has run a video message about Israel’s war on Gaza in advance of the Eurovision final.

Earlier, we reported the European Broadcasting Union threatened RTVE with punitive fines if its commentators mentioned Gaza during the broadcast of the singing competition.

RTVE ran a short text onscreen without any sound that read, “When human rights are at stake, silence is not an option. Peace and Justice for Palestine.”

The move was welcomed by Oscar Puente, Spain’s transportation minister. “Amen,” he wrote on X alongside the clip.

Amen. pic.twitter.com/JAIokdZz4L

— Óscar Puente (@oscar_puente_) May 17, 2025

At least 24 killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza’s al-Mawasi

Many others have been injured in the Israeli attack on homes and tents sheltering displaced people in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The dead and injured were taken to the Kuwaiti field hospital and to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Israel accused of ethnic cleansing after more than 140 killed in Gaza in 24 hours

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/17/israel-gaza-ethnic-cleansing-palestinian-death-toll

Israel says intensified bombings are part of campaign expansion to ‘achieve all of the war goals in Gaza’


_{Israeli tanks and bulldozers on the border with Gaza}

Israeli strikes in Gaza have killed more than 300 people since Thursday, Palestinian health officials said, one of the deadliest periods in the war since ceasefire talks broke down in March. The intensified bombing campaigns came as Israel’s total blockade on humanitarian aid has prompted fears of a famine in the Palestinian territory.

You mean since Israel broke the ceasefire...

The escalation in attacks was condemned by the UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, on Friday, who said the bombing campaign was meant to displace Palestinians and that it was equivalent to ethnic cleansing.

“This latest barrage of bombs … and the denial of humanitarian assistance underline that there appears to be a push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” he said.

Turk’s comments were also echoed by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who called for a permanent ceasefire while speaking at an Arab League summit in Baghdad on Saturday.

Rest of the article is more of summary of recent events.

Main events on May 17th

Israel says it intercepted missile from Yemen

The military says it shot down one missile launched from Yemen.

In a statement on X, it said sirens were activated across central Israel following the launch of the projectile.

Israel’s Channel 12 also quoted the military as saying that a second missile from Yemen was attempted but failed to launch.

Yemen’s Houthis have continued to fire missiles at Israel in a campaign they say is in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, although they have agreed to a ceasefire with the US to halt attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

Israel’s main airport suspends flights after missile attack from Yemen: Report

According to Israel’s Channel 12 broadcaster, the Ben Gurion International Airport has temporarily halted landings and takeoffs following the latest missile launched from Yemen.

It is unclear how long the suspension will last.

How The Houthis DEFEATED Trump

Israeli attacks kill 19 in Gaza’s Jabalia and az-Zawayda

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that at least 10 people have been killed and several others wounded in an Israeli strike that hit a house in the Jabalia al-Balad area in northern Gaza.

We are also getting reports that nine other people were killed while several more were wounded in a separate Israeli bombing in the town of az-Zawayda in central Gaza.

Several children were reportedly among the casualties in the latest strikes.

Israeli forces killed 115 people in north Gaza within 12 hours on Friday: Report

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor says Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza marks one of the “most extensive and lethal assaults” since the beginning of the war.

It accused Israeli troops of committing new massacres and “adopting a scorched-earth policy involving the total destruction of remaining neighbourhoods and infrastructure”.

The group said its field team documented the killing of more than 115 Palestinians in northern Gaza alone in less than 12 hours since dawn on Friday. The casualties followed Israeli air attacks on at least 10 residential homes in Tal az-Zaatar in Jabalia and al-Salatin in Beit Lahiya.

“These homes were completely destroyed with residents inside, resulting in the deaths of dozens of civilians, including women and children, in what amounts to a series of mass killings reflecting an escalating pattern of systematic violence against civilians in the Strip,” it added.

_{Palestinians mourn their loved ones at the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on May 16}

Death toll from Israel’s attacks since midnight rises to 78

Medical sources said that the death toll from Israel’s attacks since midnight has now risen to 78.

This comes as the death from Israel’s attack on a home in central Deir el-Balah also rose from three to four.


Palestinians in north Gaza flee as Israel intensifies air raids

_{Palestinians flee their homes after Israeli air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip May 17}

What’s happened in Gaza since Israel abandoned truce deal?

Continuing war on Gaza ‘a disaster for Israel’, protester says

As we’ve been reporting, family members and supporters of Israeli captives have held a rally in Tel Aviv, urging their government to end the war on Gaza and secure the release of those remaining in Gaza.

Here’s what some of them said.

“We’re coming every Saturday to demand the government to stop the war and bring back our brothers and sisters from captivity in Gaza,” said Noa Alon, 42.

“I came to support the families of the hostages and to protest against the war continuation because I think that it is a disaster for Israel,” said Tami Dvir, 60.

Pictures from the protest showed the protesters holding banners that said, “58 more to go”, “Trump make us whole again”, “government betraying its people”, and “Bibi is a traitor”.

Hamas slams Israeli attacks on displaced Palestinians

The Palestinian group says “brutal” air raids by the Israeli army targeted tents of displaced people in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis.

Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza, killing at least 78 Palestinians since the early hours of the day, including 36 people sheltering at the al-Mawasi tent camp.

Hamas said on Telegram that targeting the tents of the displaced and burning them with civilians inside is “a brutal crime that embodies the fascism of the war criminal Netanyahu’s government and its flagrant violation of all humanitarian laws and norms”.

“By granting the terrorist occupation government political and military cover, the US administration bears direct responsibility for this insane escalation in the targeting of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, including children, women, and the elderly,” it said.

The group renewed its call to all “Arab and Islamic countries to assume their responsibilities and urgently intervene” to stop the genocide in Gaza.

Death toll from Israeli attacks hits 101

Sources in Gaza tell Al Jazeera that a total of 101 people have been killed in Israel’s attacks across the Strip since dawn on Sunday. At least 44 of the casualties were in southern Gaza, while 42 were in the north of the enclave and 15 in central Gaza, according to the sources.

Israel targeting north Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital: Health Ministry

The hospital in northern Gaza has come under intensified strikes since the early hours of the day, according to a ministerial statement on Telegram.

“A state of panic and confusion has prevailed among patients, the wounded, and medical staff, hindering the provision of emergency healthcare,” the Health Ministry in Gaza said.

It added that two patients were injured while trying to leave the hospital, adding that the Israeli siege prevents wounded people from reaching the hospital amid ongoing killings.

Israel is intensifying its systematic campaign to target hospitals, the statement said, reminding that the attacks have also put the European Hospital in Khan Younis out of service.

Al-Mawasi has become a killing box for desperate families

It has started to feel like, given the large number of entire Palestinian families being wiped out across Gaza, the Israeli army is at war with these families.

We count more and more families in multiple generations being wiped out in one instant.

In particular, al-Mawasi in the west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza has evolved into a killing box, a death trap for the already displaced and traumatised people.

We have 36 people killed in that area, where people were seeking shelter and protection. That shelter and protection have been non-existent for the past 19 months, but out of desperation, many families keep moving to the area, which has been largely designated as a safe zone by the Israeli military.

We have seen documented cases in which people were killed just a short period after they arrived in this area.

Israeli attacks have killed 125 Palestinians today

The number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza over the past few hours has now jumped to at least 125, including many children, according to medical sources.


_{Palestinians inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli strike on a tent camp sheltering displaced people near Khan Younis in southern Gaza}

Israel kills 3 more journalists in Gaza

At least three Palestinian journalists were among those killed in extensive Israeli bombing across the Gaza Strip in recent days, according to our Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues. The journalists were identified as Aziz al-Hajjar, Nour Qandil, and Abdul Rahman al-Abadleh.

According to Quds News Network, al-Hajjar was killed with his wife and children in the Bir an-Naaja neighbourhood in northern Gaza.

Qandil was killed alongside her husband and their infant daughter in an attack on their home in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, according to Quds News.

The network also confirmed the death of al-Abadleh, who had been missing for two days. The report said he was killed in an attack on al-Qarara town in southern Gaza.

More than 230 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since October 7, 2023, in what has been described as the deadliest conflict ever for journalists.

‘Situation really dire, we’re running out of everything’: Doctor

We’ve spoken to Victoria Rose, a consultant plastic surgeon who, having worked at Nasser and European hospitals last year, returned to Gaza a few days ago. Here’s what she said about what she’s encountered at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis:

“The conditions are very different from when we visited last year, both in the medical supplies that we have, but also in the state of the population.

“When we drove in, the state of the landscape hadn’t changed hugely. We were last here in August, and by that stage, I think most of the buildings had already been flattened, so we were driving past the same piles of rubble that we’d driven past before.

“But the real difference when we came to Nasser was the lack of supplies.

“We haven’t had any medical or food aid into the country now for 76 days, so we are relying on NGOs trading their surpluses with each other – to the extent that yesterday we sent a team back to the European Gaza Hospital, which was bombed earlier this week, to see if they can scavenge any of our instruments and medical supplies.

“Some NGOs have a little bit more items than others, so there is some trading going on for what you’ve got a little bit more of, so that you can get something that you’ve got nothing of – but it really is small-level bartering just to keep us going for a little bit longer.

“It’s really dire and we’re running out of basically everything that we’ve had.”

‘This is unnecessary deaths of children’

“We had a young girl yesterday that came in. She’d been run over by a truck. She had quite significant injuries, and she passed away later that evening of overwhelming sepsis,” Rose said.

“Now that child would have survived in the UK because we would have the facilities on our paediatric intensive care unit to support her systemically. We don’t have any of that here. This is unnecessary deaths of children.”

She also said the lack of access to food and clean water due to the Israeli blockade has been hitting the children “a lot harder”.

“You can see that in the population as you walk through the streets. The children are all underweight, they’re very small, they’re very cachectic. The adults have coped slightly better, but all of my colleagues that I know that were here with me in August all look a lot thinner than they did when I last saw them.”

Rose noted that “the real issue” is the inability of the body to heal due to the lack of certain vitamins, minerals and sustained nutrition.

“You’re also far more susceptible to infection, and that’s the problem that we’re seeing. We are bringing people back day after day with unhealed wounds and advancing infections, and life-threatening sepsis is what is killing the patients at the moment.”

She added: “It gets harder every time you lose a child. It’s not something that you get used to. It makes you very angry that this is still going on.”

North Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital out of service: Health Ministry

The Israeli military’s intensified siege of the Indonesian Hospital and its surroundings has taken it out of service, the ministry says on Telegram.

The ministry added that all the public hospitals in northern Gaza are now out of service after the destruction of Beit Hanoon Hospital and Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Anyone who moves at Indonesian Hospital being shot at, hospital director says

More details are emerging about the Israeli bombing of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza.

The hospital’s director, Marwan al-Sultan, said the facility is now under siege and anyone who moves is being shot at. Even the intensive care unit has taken gunfire, he said, calling the situation “catastrophic”.

He said the hospital can no longer provide services and called on international organisations to press for medical teams’ safety.

Not only is the Israeli military using heavy artillery and heavy machine guns, but it is deploying quadcopters. These sky predators are roaming around the health facility, intimidating the medical staff and patients.

What we are seeing is an aerial siege of the hospital. No one can get in. No injured people are able to be transported there. Everyone inside is trying to survive these difficult conditions.

Gaza’s health authorities call for blood donations

Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the enclave, is “in an urgent and dire need for blood donations of all blood types”, according to a statement on the Health Ministry’s Telegram channel.

This is “due to the severe shortage in the blood bank’s stock due to the current circumstances”, it said, referring to the recent intensified Israeli strikes across the Strip.

Gaza total death toll rises

Gaza Health Ministry says the death toll from the Israeli aggression has risen to 53,339, while 121,034 people have been injured since October 7, 2023. It added that 361 injured were taken to hospitals in the past 24 hours.

In a statement on Telegram, the ministry said among those killed were five Palestinians whose bodies were recovered from under the rubble after recent attacks.

‘Hundreds of families erased from civil registry’: Gaza’s Civil Defence

A Civil Defence spokesman says more than 200 people are missing under the rubble and emergency teams are unable to reach them.

“Hundreds of families have been erased from the civil registry due to the Israeli bombing,” the spokesman said in a statement on Telegram.

“Those who do not die from Israeli bombing in Gaza die of hunger,” he added.

Three out of 4 Gaza Civil Defence vehicles ‘out of service’; services to stop ‘within 72 hours’

The intensity of Israeli air strikes continues to increase, rendering Gaza’s Civil Defence unable to respond to emergency calls, the service says in a statement on Telegram.

The organisation said it is experiencing a “shortage of essential resources, most critically fuel, heavy rescue equipment, spare parts, and vehicle repair supplies”.

“As a result, we announce that 75 percent of civil defence vehicles are now out of service across all governorates of the Gaza Strip due to the unavailability of the necessary fuel to operate them,” it said.

The statement added that Israel “continues to block the entry of fuel, even in minimal quantities, required to keep our humanitarian services running”.

It warned that all vehicle services might stop “within the next 72 hours” if fuel is not delivered to the enclave.

North Gaza hospitals in ‘a catastrophic situation’

Sakher Hamad, director of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, says dozens of injured people are flooding into the hospitals in the region.

“There is no coordination for evacuating the [Kamal Adwan] hospital, and what is happening is a risk,” Hamad told Al Jazeera.

The enclave’s Health Ministry announced earlier that all public hospitals in northern Gaza are “out of service” after the Indonesian Hospital, the only functional facility in the region, was raided by Israeli forces.

Gaza’s children ‘stronger than adults, but can’t fight hunger’

While children in Gaza have shown enormous strength throughout the horrors of the war, the pain they endure, including from hunger, has become “overwhelming”, says Afeef Nessouli, a volunteer with medical group Glia International who often visits the Strip’s orphanages.

“They are suffering in a way they don’t understand and maybe have never had a full explanation as to why they are living in such an unfair, unjust manner,” he told Al Jazeera.

_{Palestinians, mostly children, wait in long lines with empty pots in their hands to get food aid distributed by the World Food Programme at the Nuseirat refugee camp on April 26}

Gaza proves global system ‘incapable of resolving issues’: Iran’s foreign minister

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the crisis in Gaza has once again demonstrated that “the pillars of the international system are incapable of resolving such issues”.

It also showed “that the fate of the [Middle East] region cannot and should not remain at the mercy of extra-regional powers”, he said during a speech at the Tehran Dialogue Forum.

“What is currently presented by these powers as the ‘regional reality’ is, in fact, a reflection of deeply constructed narratives and interpretations, shaped solely based on their own interests,” Iran’s top diplomat said.

He said these narratives must be redefined and corrected from within the region itself. “West Asia is in dire need of a fundamental reassessment of how it views itself,” Araghchi said.