Live: Gaza death toll nears 50,700

The spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said on Friday that half of the Israeli captives in Gaza are being held in areas that the Israeli army has ordered to be "evacuated" in the coming days. 

"We decided not to transfer these prisoners from these areas and to keep them under strict security measures, but [it is] extremely dangerous to their lives," Abu Obeida said in a statement. 

"If the enemy is concerned about the lives of these prisoners, [it] must immediately negotiate for their evacuation or release. Those who warn are excused," he added. 

"The Netanyahu government bears full responsibility for the lives of the prisoners. If it were concerned about them, it would have adhered to the agreement." 

A spokesperson for the UN's humanitarian agency Ocha said on Friday that conditions in Gaza are "catastrophic" and Israel must re-open crossings to allow aid into the enclave. 

Ocha called on the international community to intervene to protect civilians in Gaza, adding that those who were forcibly displaced are also being bombed by Israel. 

Egyptian officials have accused Israel of stoking tensions by falsely claiming that troop movements in northern Sinai are in breach of the peace treaty between the countries.

One senior diplomatic source in Cairo told MEE that relations between Egypt and Israel were at their lowest point since the beginning of the war in Gaza as fears grow that Israel’s renewed assault is a prelude to the forced displacement of Palestinians from the enclave.

Israeli and Palestinian analysts also warned that Israel’s government may be seeking to incite conflict as part of a plan to sway public opinion against Egypt, both to facilitate ethnic cleansing in Gaza and to advance Israel’s broader regional strategic ambitions.

Assaf David, director of the Israel in the Middle East programme at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and a professor at the Hebrew University, told MEE: “The incitement is clear. I think Netanyahu’s administration is really insisting on the plan of ethnic cleansing.

“It Israeli public opinion changes on Egypt then that will be easier. So a confrontation with Egypt prepares the ground.”

Israeli ground forces advanced into the eastern Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City on Thursday amid heavy carpet bombing across the besieged enclave.

The Israeli military said its troops began operations in Shujaiya in northern Gaza to "deepen control" and expand the so-called "security zone", according to a statement on X.

It claimed to target "several militants" and "Hamas infrastructure", saying that troops were facilitating civilian evacuations from the conflict zone.

Despite these claims, local media reports indicate that the majority of victims have been children, women and the elderly.

At least 35 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's bombing of Gaza since dawn, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Southern Gaza saw the majority of attacks, with 29 people killed there.

Global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Friday it was appalled and saddened by the killing of one of its staff by an air strike in Gaza, the second within two weeks.

Hussam Al Loulou died in the strike on April 1 in central Gaza, alongside his wife and 28-year-old daughter, the organisation said.

Reporting by Reuters

The Trump administration moved forward with the sale of more than 20,000 US-made assault rifles to Israel last month, according to a document seen by Reuters and a source familiar with the matter, pushing ahead with a sale that the administration of former president Joe Biden had delayed over concerns they could be used by extremist Israeli settlers.

The State Department sent a notification to Congress on 6 March for the $24 million sale, saying the end user would be the Israeli National Police, according to the document.

The rifle sale is a small transaction next to the billions of dollars worth of weapons that Washington supplies to Israel. But it drew attention when the Biden administration delayed the sale over concerns that the weapons could end up in the hands of Israeli settlers, some of whom have carried out attacks on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel's plans to remove Palestinians from Gaza, ominously called "voluntary transfer", may seem like a shocking new idea. But it is as old as the Jewish state itself.

Insecurity about the country's origins has been baked in since 1948. In recent years, Israel's Defence Ministry has literally dispatched teams into Israeli archives to remove vast numbers of documents that prove the reality of the Nakba. 

Was this embarrassment, shame, hubris - or all of the above?

These are the actions of a guilty nation that can't face its own past, though many Israelis today are increasingly proud of the ethnic cleansing that took place in the late 1940s - and are determined to repeat it on steroids.

From the late 1960s, Israeli political and military leaders spoke in strikingly similar terms to Israel's far right and mainstream in the 2020s; removing Palestinians from Palestine was the overriding goal. 

Read more: Israel has always wanted to expel Palestinians. Now it's saying the quiet part out loud by Antony Loewenstein

One person was killed and several others injured in an Israeli drone strike targeting a motorcycle on al-Nasser Street in western Gaza City, Al Jazeera reported.

Meanwhile, Israeli artillery attacks on al-Sikka Street in Shujaiyya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, also left several Palestinians wounded, the report said.

A British-Gambian PhD student who fled the United States after immigration officers tried to deport him for his pro-Palestine activism has said his decision to leave was motivated by the "lawlessness" of the Trump administration.

"The decision to leave was very abrupt," Momodou Taal, a student at Cornell University, told Middle East Eye's Big Picture Podcast.

"It became increasingly clear to me that even with a court order, my safety was not going to be guaranteed."

Last month, Taal launched legal proceedings against US President Donald Trump to stop his attempt at deporting international students and scholars who support the Palestinian cuase and have been protesting against the war on Gaza.

Taal's attorneys said Trump officials had asked the 31-year-old to turn himself in and were planning to revoke his student visa. So he fled.

Read more: 'Trump's lawlessness': Cornell University student describes why he fled US

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the killing of Yusuf Bakr Zalou, a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager, who was shot by Israeli forces overnight, Wafa news agency reports.

The killing took place in a village west of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the report said, adding that Israeli soldiers took away his body.

An official from the Palestinian Red Crescent told Wafa that Israeli forces prevented his team from approaching the scene to provide assistance and ordered them to leave.

The Israeli military said it shot and killed the teenager for throwing rocks toward Road 375 adjacent to Husan. Soldiers who were operating in the area responded with fire, the statement said.

In another attack earlier today, Israeli settlers assaulted a Palestinian in the village of Qira in the central occupied West Bank, assaulting a local and setting his vehicle on fire, local sources told Wafa.

A woman and her daughter were killed in an Israeli artillery attack targeting displaced people in Gaza’s Shujayea neighbourhood, according to Al Jazeera.

At least 112 Palestinians were reported killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past day, mostly women and children.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) was created in 1994 after the Oslo Accords of 1993-1995. It is currently led by President Mahmoud Abbas.

It was intended as temporary five-year organisation to govern Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza ahead of the declaration of a Palestinian state.

But when the final-status negotiations failed in 2000, the PA became a permanent organisation, including its own security apparatus.

Three decades later, the authority has fallen short of those early hopes. It only controls parts of the West Bank and is hugely unpopular with Palestinians, who accuse it of supporting Israeli security crackdowns, failing to defend Palestinian freedom, and carrying out human rights abuses.

Read more: What is the Palestinian Authority and why does it matter?

Gaza's civil defence agency said on Friday that Israeli military operations had killed at least 30 people in the Palestinian territory since dawn.

The agency said there had been "30 martyrs in the Gaza Strip since dawn today, and the toll is not final". A single Israeli strike on Khan Yunis killed at least 25 people, a medical source at the southern city's Nasser Hospital told AFP.

The Israeli drone attack on an apartment building in the Lebanese port city of Sidon Friday morning that reportedly killed Hamas official Hassan Farhat also killed his son Hamza and daughter Jinan, according to a report by the Quds News Network.

عاجل| مصادر صحفية لبنانية: استشـــهاد القيادي في حركة حـــــماس حسن فرحات مع ابنه حمزة وابنته جنان جراء غارة الاحتلال التي استهدفت شقتهم فجر اليوم في حي دلاعة بمدينة صيدا. pic.twitter.com/78cLiCXouQ

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) April 4, 2025