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

A group of Canadian human rights lawyers and Palestinian Canadians who have lost loved ones in Gaza are planning to sue Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly to stop exports of military goods and technology to Israel, the Toronto Star reported.

The group is alleging that the government is in breach of domestic and international law.

Canada's domestic export law stipulates that military goods or technology exports must be suspended if there is a "substantial risk" they could be used to commit serious violations of international law.

Two female staff members at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights have been killed by Israeli bombing in the past week, the rights organisation B’Tselem announced on Tuesday. 

In a statement posted on X, the organisation said “B'Tselem shares in the deep sorrow of our friends and colleagues from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, for the killing of two of its female staff in Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip in recent days.”

One of those killed was identified as ;lawyer Nur Nasr Abu al-Nur, who was killed along with seven members of her family, including her two-year-old daughter, in an Israeli bombardment of her family's home in Rafah on 20 February. 

Another lawyer, Dana Yari was also killed on 22 February, along with around forty people, mostly her family members, in an aerial attack on the family's home in Deir al-Balah.
 

An elderly Palestinian man identified as Abd al-Rahman al-Dahdouh was pronounced dead due to hunger and dehydration. 

The number of Palestinians who have died due to malnutrition since the start of the war on Gaza has now risen to 17. 

In videos shared online, the body of Dahdouh is shown with his bones protruding due to the significant loss of weight. 

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday that Hezbollah was bringing Israel closer to military action, in comments made to senior US official Amos Hochstein.

He also added that Israel was "committed to the political efforts to reach an agreement".

Hochstein, an adviser to the US President Biden, is currently visiting Israel to hold talks with senior politicians.

The US Central Command announced on Tuesday in a statement that they have conducted a combined humanitarian assistance air-drop into northern Gaza with the Royal Jordanian Air Force.

"U.S. C-130s dropped over 36,800 US and Jordanian meal equivalents in northern Gaza, an area of great need, allowing for civilian access to the critical aid," the statement said.

Thousands of workers are set to be laid off from their jobs after the retail giant Alshaya Group, which owns the rights to Starbucks in the Middle East, was affected by the boycott. 

According to sources that spoke to Reuters, over 2,000 people will lose their jobs following the boycott. 

People familiar with the matter told the news agency that the cuts, which began on Sunday, amount to about four percent of Alshaya's total workforce of almost 50,000 people.

This is mostly concentrated in its Starbucks franchises in the Middle East and North Africa, however, boycotts against Starbucks have taken place globally. 

A prominent Palestinian doctor in Gaza has spoken out against Israelis threatening to have him killed in a Telegram channel.

Dr Mohammed Qudaih, who has been working across Gaza's hospitals since the start of the war, including in the Nasser Medical Complex, said on Tuesday that he was first made aware of the threats against him by one of his followers on Instagram.

In a post on the platform, he shared screenshots of Israelis responding to a video he had shared.

The Israelis posted menacing messages that read "rat meat must be very popular" and "still alive but not for long".

Other comments read: "Let them continue to grind themselves" and "you will all die, your lives will be burned".

Qudaih said that, despite the messages, he would continue to document the atrocities he witnesses on a daily basis.

"This will not scare me, and I will continue to present and communicate everything I see in front of me inside the surgical room," he said in a post. 

Nevertheless, he said the messages had been a growing cause of concern for him. Qudaih called on people to share the threats he is facing with major media outlets.

Read more: Israelis threaten to kill prominent Palestinian doctor on Telegram channel 

Hamas negotiators will remain in Cairo for another day at the request of mediators, keeping ceasefire talks going after two days with no breakthrough, an official from the Palestinian group said on Tuesday.

The Cairo talks have been billed as a final hurdle to reach the first extended ceasefire in Israel's five-month-old war on Gaza.

"The delegation will remain in Cairo on Tuesday for more talks. They are expected to wrap up this round later today," a Hamas official told Reuters.

Egypt's Qahera television also reported the talks had been extended for a third day, but said they were "facing difficulties".

Earlier, senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told Reuters that the group had presented its proposal for a ceasefire agreement to the mediators and was now waiting for a response from the Israelis, who have stayed away from this round.

Reporting by Reuters

An Israeli soldier is alleged to have posted a video of a Palestinian man's body and boasted about "running over him" with a tank.

Daniel Lurie, who according to his profile on X (formerly known as Twitter) is a 22-year-old Israeli reservist, posted a video on Monday featuring the dead body of a Palestinian seen through a tank window.

Alongside the video, Lurie wrote: "A second later I accidentally ran over him with a Merkava Mark 4 tank weighing 65 tons, 1500 horse power :)".

Lurie's X account has since been deleted, but his posts were compiled together in a thread by a social media user.

It is unclear where or when the video was taken, and Middle East Eye has not been able to independently verify the information contained within the thread.

Read more: Israeli soldier 'boasted about running over dead Palestinian man with tank' 

Egyptian human rights campaigners have expressed concern over the disappearance of a police officer who staged a one-man Palestine solidarity protest in Alexandria.

Abdel-Gawad Muhammad al-Sahlamy was arrested on Friday after waving a Palestinian flag and calling Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi a "traitor and an agent" in the coastal city's Sidi Gaber Square.

Video footage circulated online revealed Sahlamy, 45, standing atop a billboard, wielding the flag and shouting "I'm not afraid of you, Sisi!"

The Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) reported that Sahlamy had not been heard from for four days. 

In a statement, ENHR quoted a friend of Sahlamy who said that he was "breaking down" about the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza and had said that "the borders should be opened, this is injustice and people are dying".

Read more: Police officer 'disappeared' after demanding Egypt open Gaza border to let aid in

UN experts condemned the Israeli "flour massacre" last week, in which soldiers killed over 115 Palestinians gathered in Gaza City to collect aid.

In a press release on Tuesday, the group of UN special rapporteurs accused Israel of "intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October" and now targeting aid convoys and civilians seeking food from them.

"Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians," the UN experts said, raising the alarm over reports of children dying from malnutrition in Gaza. 

"When children start dying like this, you know that famine is probably already happening or just around the corner," they said.

"We have said before: we are alarmed to see an entire civilian population suffering such unprecedented starvation, so quickly and completely."

The experts added that the Thursday mass killing of aid seekers, which caused international uproar, followed a "pattern" of Israeli attacks against Palestinians trying to reach aid.

At least 14 other similar incidents were recorded between mid-January and the end of February, they said. 

The experts also said recent airdrops "will achieve little" and condemned using humanitarian aid as a "bargaining chip in negotiations" by Israel in ongoing talks to reach a ceasefire.

At least 17 members of the Faqawi family were killed by Israeli air strikes in Khan Younis late on Monday, as the total death toll rose to over 30,600.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that malnutrition in northern Gaza was "particularly extreme".

"The situation is particularly extreme in northern Gaza," said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for Gaza and the West Bank.

He said one in six children under two years of age were acutely malnourished in northern Gaza.

"This was in January. So the situation is likely to be greater today," Peeperkorn added.

Reporting by Reuters

India's embassy in Israel on Tuesday advised its nationals working in Israeli border areas to move to safer parts of the country.

The advisory comes a day after an anti-tank missile attack near Israel's boundary with Lebanon killed one foreign worker and seriously wounded two Indians.

Reporting by Reuters

Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim has said the ball is now in the US's court to pressure Israel into a ceasefire deal after the latest round of talks held between the group and mediators in Cairo ended on Tuesday with no breakthrough.

Naim told Reuters the group had presented its proposal for a ceasefire agreement to the mediators during two days of talks, and was now waiting for a response from the Israelis, who stayed away from this round.

"[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu doesn't want to reach an agreement and the ball now is in the Americans' court" to press him for a deal, Naim said.

Israel has declined to comment publicly on the talks in Cairo.

Reporting by Reuters