Israel-Palestine live: Unicef says over 13,000 children killed in Gaza

A protest broke out on Sunday in Amsterdam over the visit by Israel's President Isaac Herzog to attend the opening in the Netherlands' capital of the national Holocaust Museum. 

Protesters flooded the streets demanding an immediate ceasefire to Israel's over five months of bombardment of Gaza. 

Some chanted "never again is now", while others carried signs that read "detour to International Criminal Court", which is based in the Netherlands.
 

The Israeli military struck the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, on Sunday afternoon, killing and wounding several people.

The raid had targeted civilian homes in the refugee camp, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

The Palestinian Quds News Network news agency announced on Sunday that Israeli forces have targeted the family of its English editor-in-chief, Mohammad Abu Nasser. 

The attack took place in northern Gaza, with rescue efforts still cointinuing to save his mother, brother and sister.
 

Lebanon's Hezbollah on Sunday said it had fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel after Israeli strikes the night before killed five people in southern Lebanon, including three of its members.

Hezbollah said it had launched "dozens of katyusha-type rockets" in the morning on the Israeli village of Meron.

Located 8km from the border, Meron houses a major air control base that Hezbollah has targeted several times since the start of the year. 

Hezbollah said it had acted "in response to Israeli attacks against villages in the south and the homes of civilians".

Israel's Saturday attack on the Lebanese village of Khirbet Selm killed four members of the same family, including a pregnant woman, her husband and two sons, the three who were Hezbollah fighters.

Israel on Saturday slammed the decision by Canada and Sweden to resume aid to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, saying supporting Unrwa was a "serious mistake".

Several countries, including the United States and Britain, paused their funding to Unrwa in late January after accusations by Israel that a dozen of the agency's 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in the Hamas attack on southern Israeli towns on 7 October.

Canada and Sweden announced over the weekend they were resuming funding for the agency, which has been fundamental to humanitarian efforts in the Gaza Strip, where more than three quarters of the 2.2 million population have been displaced by Israel's military campaign.

The Israeli foreign ministry called on both governments to cut funding, saying the renewed aid showed that Canada and Sweden had chosen "to ignore the involvement of Unrwa employees in terrorist activity".

On Saturday, Sweden announced an initial payment of $20m after receiving assurances of extra checks on Unrwa's spending and personnel.

Canada said on Friday that it would resume funding to Unrwa "because of the dire humanitarian situation on the ground", but did not elaborate.

An Israeli strike on a house in southern Lebanon killed at least five people, four from the same family, and wounded nine on Saturday, the Lebanese state news agency reported.

"The attack against a house in the Khirbet Selm area killed a family of four," a couple and their two sons, and one other person, the NNA said, adding that the mother was also pregnant.

The father and the sons were Hezbollah fighters, the Lebanese group said in a statement mourning the family.

The strike destroyed the house, wounding at least nine others who lived nearby, it said.

Last week, a Lebanese couple and their son were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in Hula, a southern border village.

Israel and Lebanese movement Hezbollah have traded cross-border fire since the war on Gaza started in October. At least 312 people, including 56 civilians, have been killed in Israeli strikes, according to an AFP tally.

In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed.

More than 700 academics have signed a petition calling on the Israeli government to take urgent action to prevent further starvation in the Gaza Strip.

Among the signatories are professors Eva Illouz, Nadav Davidovitch, Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, Avishai Margalit and Oded Goldreich.

The academics said urgent action must be taken before "the humanitarian catastrophe gets out of control, causes mass death and becomes an indelible stain".
 

A member of Gaza's municipality emergency committee told Al Jazeera on Sunday that Israeli forces have destroyed at least 1 million sqm of roads in Gaza since the start of the war. 

They said the per capita share of water in the Gaza municipality is now two litres per day. 
 

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced on Sunday that Israeli forces killed 85 people in attacks, which also wounded at least 130 people. 
 

Israeli forces have arrested 20 Palestinian residents in occupied East Jerusalem on suspicion of incitement and supporting terrorism according to Israeli media.

The arrests come just hours before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan is set to begin. 

The Israeli police issued a statement saying that "from past experience, there are those who want to use the month of Ramadan to spread rumours and 'fake news,' while publishing a distorted version of reality on social networks."
 

Good morning Middle East Eye readers.

Israeli forces have intensified attacks across the Gaza Strip, as starvation is spreading more rapidly across Gaza.

Here are some of the latest updates from overnight and this morning. 

• At least 15 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, including women and children in the Nuseirat camp and the al-Mawasi area in south Gaza.
• Canada and Sweden have resumed their funding to the UN agency Unrwa, after accusing Israel of forcing some of its staff to make false allegations about their involvement in Hamas. 
• The number of those who have died in Gaza due to hunger and dehydration has now risen to 25. 
• The death toll in Gaza since the start of the war has reached 31,045 people, in addition to 72,654 people injured. 
• The Israeli army said that around 37 rockets from Lebanon have been downed by the army's defence systems. 

US President Joe Biden said in an MSNBC interview on Saturday that Israel’s threatened invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza would be his “red line” for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but then immediately backtracked, saying there was no red line and "I’m never going to leave Israel".

In a somewhat contradictory exchange with his interviewer, Biden said "they cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead as a consequence of going after" Hamas militants.

Biden and his aides have urged Netanyahu in strong terms not to launch a major offensive in Rafah until Israel crafts a plan for mass evacuation of civilians from the last area of Gaza it has not yet invaded with ground forces. More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million people are sheltering in the Rafah area.

“There's other ways to deal, to get to, to deal with… the trauma caused by Hamas,” Biden said, referring to the group’s 7 October attack in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed.

Good evening Middle East Eye readers.

MEE's live coverage from Gaza will shortly be closing for the evening.

Here are today's main developments.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced on Saturday that the death toll in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October had now reached 30,960. The ministry announced that 72,524 people had been wounded in the same timeframe. 

Some 82 Palestinians had been killed and 122 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

At least five people were killed, four from the same family, and nine wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in southern Lebanon, the country's official National News Agency reported.

Elsewhere on Saturday, an Israeli air strike on Gaza's Nuseirat camp killed at least 10 Palestinians. A search and rescue operation was underway to retrieve bodies from under a collapsed residential tower. 

The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency is at "risk of death" after a string of donors suspended their funding, Unrwa chief Philippe Lazzarini said. "The agency is at risk of death, it is risking dismantlement," Lazzarini told Swiss broadcaster RTS in an interview aired on Saturday.

Sweden stated on Saturday that it would be resuming aid to Unrwa with an initial sum of $20m after receiving assurances of extra checks on its spending and personnel.

Other developments on Saturday included:

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Ankara "firmly backs" Palestinian group Hamas. "No one can make us qualify Hamas as a terrorist organisation," he said in a speech in Istanbul.
   
• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he would push Spain's Congress of Deputies to recognise a Palestinian state before the end of his mandate in 2027. "We will do it because of moral conviction, because it's a just cause, but also because it is the only way that two states - Israel and Palestine - can live together and co-exist in peace and security," Sanchez said.
   
• Hundreds of Palestinian protesters in Umm al-Fahem city took to the streets to call for an end to the war on Gaza. The city, southwest of Nazareth, hosts the second-largest community of Palestinians inside Israel. The demonstration was one of the few that had taken place since the start of the war due to Israel's crackdown on protesters. 
   
• The US military and coalition forces downed at least 28 drones over the Red Sea on Saturday, the US Central Command said in a statement.

At least five people were killed on Saturday, four from the same family, and nine wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in southern Lebanon, the country's official National News Agency reported.

Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and Israel have traded deadly cross-border fire on a near-daily basis since war broke out in October between Israel and the Gaza militant group Hamas, a Hezbollah ally.

"The attack against a house in the Khirbet Selm area killed a family of four," a couple and their two children, and one other person, the NNA said, adding that the mother was also pregnant.

The strike demolished the house, wounding at least nine others who lived nearby, it said.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said that the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip near the Egypt border will cost $90bn.

In a speech in Cairo, Sisi said he "requested an estimate [from Egyptian state institutions] for the cost of rebuilding the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli bombing it witnessed", stressing that it "needs $90bn”, according to the Cairo News Channel.

He pointed out that "what happened in Gaza is a challenge to Egypt and the entire region."