Live: Gaza death toll nears 50,700

Israeli forces have killed at least 11 Palestinians in Gaza since dawn, Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting, citing medical sources.

Of that figure, at least nine were killed in escalating Israeli bombardment of southern Gaza's Rafah.

Israel has detained two British members of parliament and refused entry to the officials who were visiting as part of a parliamentary delegation, British Foreign Minister David Lammy said in a statement late on Saturday.

Sky News, citing a statement from the Israeli immigration ministry, says that the detained parliamentarians are Labour MPs Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed, who were rejected because they were suspected of plans to "document the activities of security forces and spread anti-Israel hatred".

Yang represents the Earley and Woodley constituency, while Mohamed is the MP for Sheffield Central. Both had flown to Israel from Luton on Saturday, Sky News said.

"I have made clear to my counterparts in the Israeli government that this is no way to treat British Parliamentarians, and we have been in contact with both MPs tonight to offer our support," Lammy said.

"The UK government's focus remains securing a return to the ceasefire and negotiations to stop the bloodshed, free the hostages and end the conflict in Gaza," he further added.

Reporting by Reuters

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, here are the latest updates:

• Israeli bombardment has been pummelling Khan Younis and Gaza City, killing at least 19 Palestinians since dawn.

• Israeli forces have also been blowing up houses in Rafah and Beit Lahia.

• Two British MPs have been detained by Israel. The Israeli immigration ministry said they were suspected of plans to "document the activities of security forces and spread anti-Israel hatred."

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed he is set to visit the White House on Monday to discuss several issues, including tariffs, Israel-Turkey relations and the “Iranian threat”.

• UNICEF has closed around 21 malnutrition treatment centres in Gaza due to Israeli attacks.

Our live blog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

• At least 60 Palestinians have been killed and another 162 wounded in Israeli attacks across the enclave in the last 24 hours, Gaza's health ministry is reporting.

• Israeli forces have killed at least 30 Palestinians in fresh attacks on Gaza since dawn.

• Unrwa chief Phillipe Lazzarini has said, citing a report by UNICEF, that at least 100 children have been killed in Israeli attacks daily since strikes resumed on 18 March.

• Unicef has sounded the alarm: more than a million children in Gaza have been cut off from life-saving aid for over a month.

• New video evidence relating to the killing of 15 Palestinian rescue workers by Israeli forces has emerged, contradicting the Israeli account of the attack on a medical convoy in Rafah last week. 

• Hamas has said in a statement that the new footage that has emerged showing Israeli forces attacking Palestinian medics is "irrefutable visual evidence" that  proves the "systematic targeting of humanitarian personnel" by the army and constitutes "a premeditated murder under international law".

• Martin Griffiths, the former UN humanitarian chief and current executive director of Mediation Group International, has condemned Israel’s killing of 15 aid workers in Gaza as “almost certainly a war crime”.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is heading to the White House on Monday for a surprise visit to meet US President Donald Trump, according to Israeli and White House officials speaking anonymously to Reuters.

• US warplanes have pounded Yemen’s Saada province once again, leaving one person dead and four others wounded in Hafsin, west of the city.

A UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution that would have established a mechanism to help with the investigation of crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories was watered down following backroom pressure from the US, a US official and a source briefed by a European diplomat told Middle East Eye.

The final wording of the resolution, adopted by the council this week, invites the UN General Assembly only “to consider establishing” such a body.

However, earlier drafts of the resolution would have seen the establishment of the mechanism, an initiative that experts say has been powerful in the investigation of serious crimes in Syria and Myanmar.

Before the resolution passed, the chairs of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggested in a 31 March letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that any member state or UN entity supporting such a mechanism could face US sanctions.

Read more: US pressured Palestinian Authority to drop investigative power from UN resolution

Donald Trump has taken to Truth Social to brag about a US air strike in Yemen, claiming it wiped out Houthi fighters. The US president, posted a video of an air strike that left a gaping crater at the scene.

“These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack. Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis! They will never sink our ships again!” Trump proclaimed.

Abdulrahman al-Ahnomi, a senior Houthi media official, dismissed Trump’s claim outright, insisting the victims were Yemeni villagers, not fighters.

“The US president is showing off his terrorism before the world,” he wrote on X. “Targeting a tribal gathering is not a victory, but a reflection of the US’s failure to identify any real targets.”

Washington continues its campaign against the Houthis, who have been disrupting Red Sea shipping in solidarity with Gaza.

Several prominent Muslim scholars have issued a rare religious decree or "fatwa", calling on all Muslims and Muslim-majority countries to wage "jihad" against Israel after 17 months of devastating war against Palestinians residing in the besieged enclave.

Ali al-Qaradaghi, the secretary general of the International Union Of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), an organisation previously led by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, called on all Muslim countries on Friday “to intervene immediately militarily, economically and politically to stop this genocide and comprehensive destruction, in accordance with their mandate”.

“The failure of the Arab and Islamic governments to support Gaza while it is being destroyed is considered by Islamic law to be a major crime against our oppressed brothers in Gaza,” he said in the decree comprising some 15 points.

Qaradaghi is one of the region’s most respected religious authorities and his decrees carry significant weight among the world’s 1.7bn Sunni Muslims.

A "fatwa" is a non-binding Islamic legal ruling from a respected religious scholar, usually based on the Quran or the Sunnah - the sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad.

Read more: Muslim scholars issue 'fatwa' calling for 'jihad' against Israel as strikes pummel Gaza

US warplanes have pounded Yemen’s Saada province once again, leaving one person dead and four others wounded in Hafsin, west of the city.

Yemeni media report confirmed that American jets carried out four raids on the area. The attack adds to the growing list of US-led air strikes targeting Yemen, for it's support of Gaza. 

The Palestinian Authority says video footage showing Israeli forces killing 15 emergency workers in Gaza shatters Israel’s claims that it does not deliberately attack the healthcare system.

“This shocking video is not just a tragic scene, but irrefutable evidence of the occupation’s brutality, its blatant violation of international laws and conventions, and its deliberate attempt to cover up the crime by burying the victims in mass graves and erasing the truth,” the Foreign Ministry said.

“This is a fully documented crime, part of the ongoing genocide and forced displacement campaign against our people.”

The footage captures the final moments of Palestinian medics, wearing reflective uniforms and inside a clearly marked ambulance, as Israeli forces gunned them down in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood on 23 March.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a trilateral summit with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II to address Israel's war on Gaza.

The meeting, Macron said, is a direct response to Gaza's urgent situation and forms part of his upcoming visit to Egypt, at the invitation of President el-Sisi. Macron shared the news in a post on X, emphasising the need for urgent action.

The BBC’s news verification service, Verify, digitally reconstructed a residential tower block in Mandalay earlier this week to show how it had collapsed in a huge earthquake on 28 March in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia largely cut off from the outside world. 

The broadcaster painstakingly pieced together damage to other parts of the city using a combination of phone videos, satellite imagery and Nasa heat detection images. 

Verify dedicated much time and effort to this task for a simple reason: to expose as patently false the claims made by the ruling military junta that only 2,000 people were killed by Myanmar’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake. 

The West sees the country’s generals as an official enemy, and the BBC wanted to show that the junta’s account of events could not be trusted. Myanmar’s rulers have an interest in undercounting the dead to protect the regime’s image.

The BBC’s determined effort to strip away these lies contrasted strongly with its coverage - or rather, lack of it - of another important story this week. 

Read more: The graver Israel's atrocities in Gaza, the quieter the BBC grows

Israel’s military has moved into a new “security corridor” stretching across southern Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed the newly established Morag Corridor on Wednesday, hinting it would isolate Rafah—currently under evacuation orders—from the rest of Gaza.

A statement from the Israeli military on Saturday confirmed that troops from the 36th Division are now stationed within this corridor. Maps released by Israeli media show the corridor cutting through Gaza’s narrow coastal strip, running from east to west.

Named after a once-existing illegal Jewish settlement, Morag lies between Rafah and Khan Younis, and Netanyahu suggested the corridor would create a buffer zone between the two cities. Critics, however, have quickly labelled it a land grab.

Israel has also reclaimed control over the Netzarim Corridor, which effectively isolates Gaza City and the northern third of the Strip from the southern regions. The Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors form an uninterrupted route from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea.

Germany prides itself on being a denazified liberal democracy. 

Yet its unconditional support for Israel is not merely a political position but the core principle of its Staatsrason - a national doctrine holding that support for Israel is central to post-Holocaust Germany, and thus the very foundation of the German state's legitimacy.

This position is inherently contradictory, as liberal democracy, by definition, cannot be reconciled with support for genocide carried out by a fascist apartheid state - let alone one openly aligned with far-right regimes. It demands a serious reality check.

The reality became glaringly evident when the German Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Felix Klein, withdrew from an upcoming conference set to be held in Jerusalem on combating antisemitism, upon discovering that fascist figures were among the guests.

Read more: Germany's support for Israel's far-right alliance shatters its 'denazified' facade

An Israeli drone strike killed one Palestinian, and wounded several others in Bani Suheila, a town in Gaza's Khan Younis governorate, Al Jazeera reported.

The region is under intense bombardment, with Israeli forces continuing their heavy assault. Earlier, at least six Palestinians were killed in an attack on the Qizan Abu Rashwan neighbourhood, raising the death toll in this latest round of violence to at least 30.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is heading to the White House on Monday for a surprise visit to meet US President Donald Trump, according to Israeli and White House officials speaking anonymously to Reuters.

The meeting, which could mark the first in-person diplomatic push to resolve the tariff issue, follows a phone call between Netanyahu and Trump on Thursday, where the Israeli leader raised concerns over recently announced tariffs.

Although Netanyahu's office has yet to confirm the visit, it is expected to cover a range of issues. These include Turkey’s growing influence in Syria, Iran, and the ongoing war with in Gaza.

The visit, first reported by Axios, comes at a time of rising tensions and shifting geopolitical alliances in the region. 

Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court over charges of war crimes in Gaza.