DEIR-AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Local health officials said Israeli strikes killed at least 85 Palestinians across he Gaza Strip overnight and into Thursday, bringing the total to nearly 600 killed since Israel shattered a truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages and brought relative calm since late January.
Hours later, Hamas fired three rockets at Israel without causing casualties, in the first such attack since Israel broke the ceasefire on Tuesday.
Zaher Al-Waheidi, the head of the records department at the Gaza Health Ministry, said Israeli bombardments have killed at least 592 people in the past three days.
The Israeli military said it was again enforcing a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City. Palestinians were not being ordered to leave northern Gaza but can no longer enter, the military said, and are only allowed to move south on foot using the coastal road. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had returned to what remains of their homes in the north during the ceasefire.
Early Friday, Israel’s Cabinet unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to fire the head of the country’s Shin Bet internal security service. The late-night decision to sack Ronen Bar deepens a power struggle focused largely over who bears responsibility for the Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza.
It also could set the stage for a crisis over the country’s division of powers. Israel’s attorney general has ruled that the Cabinet has no legal basis to dismiss Bar.
Israeli ground forces, meanwhile, are pushing into Gaza near the northern town of Beit Lahiya and the southern border city of Rafah, the military said Thursday. The operations come a day after Israel moved to split Gaza in two by retaking part of the strategic Netzarim corridor that divides Gaza’s north from south.
The military ordered Palestinians to evacuate an area in central Gaza near the city of Khan Younis, saying it would operate there in response to Thursday’s rocket fire from Hamas. The Palestinian militant group said it targeted Tel Aviv. One rocket was intercepted and two fell in open areas, according to the army.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels also launched two missiles at Israel, one early Thursday morning and another in the evening, the military said. Both were intercepted before reaching Israeli airspace, according to the army, and no injuries were reported. Air raid sirens rang out and exploding interceptor rockets were heard in Jerusalem. There have been three such attacks since the United States began a new campaign of airstrikes against the Houthis earlier this week.
A ‘bloody night’ for hard-hit Gaza
Gaza’s Health Ministry said overnight Israeli strikes killed at least 85 people, mostly women and children. The ministry’s records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The Indonesian Hospital said it received 19 bodies after strikes in Beit Lahiya, near Gaza’s northern border, which was heavily destroyed and largely depopulated earlier in the war.
“It was a bloody night for the people of Beit Lahiya,” said Fares Awad, head of the Health Ministry’s emergency service in northern Gaza, adding that rescuers were still searching the rubble. “The situation is catastrophic.”
Israel’s military said Thursday its airstrikes in Gaza had killed the head of Hamas’ internal security apparatus and two other militant commanders. Israel has said it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it operates in densely populated areas. A United Nations-backed group of human rights experts accused Israel last week of “disproportionate violence against women and children” during the war in Gaza.
One of the strikes early Thursday hit the Abu Daqa family’s home in Abasan Al-Kabira, a village outside Khan Younis near the border with Israel. It was in an area the Israeli military ordered evacuated earlier this week, encompassing most of eastern Gaza.
The strike killed at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead. Those killed included a father and his seven children, as well as the parents and brother of a month-old baby who survived along with her grandparents.
“Another tough night,” said Hani Awad, who was helping rescuers search for more survivors in the rubble. “The house collapsed over the people’s heads.”
War in Gaza has no end in sight
US President Donald Trump’s administration reiterated its support for Israel, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying, “The president made it very clear to Hamas that if they did not release all of the hostages there would be all hell to pay.”
Israel, which cut off the supply of food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinians, has vowed to intensify its operations until Hamas releases the 59 hostages it holds — 24 of whom are believed alive — and gives up control of the territory.
Hamas says it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the ceasefire agreement mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
Hamas says it’s willing to hand over power to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority or a committee of political independents but will not lay down its arms until Israel ends its decades-long occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state.
Shin Bet chief’s dismissal deepens Israeli political turmoil
Netanyahu said Sunday he would seek Bar’s dismissal, saying he had lost faith in his security chief.
But critics say the move is a power grab by Netanyahu against an independent-minded civil servant.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated across the country in recent days in support of Bar, including a mass gathering outside Netanyahu’s office late Thursday in the pouring rain.
A Shin Bet report into the Oct. 7 attack acknowledged failures by the security agency. But it also said that policies by Netanyahu’s government created the conditions for the attack.
Netanyahu is also upset that the Shin Bet has launched an investigation into connections between some of his close aides and the Gulf state of Qatar. His office said Bar’s dismissal would take effect on April 10 or before then if a replacement is found.
Bar did not attend the meeting but sent a letter to the Cabinet ahead of time protesting the firing.
He said the dismissal was meant to hinder the agency from further investigating the failures of Oct. 7 and undermining the investigation into whether Qatar influenced the prime minister’s office.
“This is a direct danger to the security of the state of Israel,” Bar wrote.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. Most of the hostages have been freed in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages and recovered the bodies of dozens more.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 49,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not say how many were militants, but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war at its height displaced around 90 percent of Gaza’s population and has caused vast destruction across the territory.
Strikes in Gaza kill 85 overnight, bringing the total since Israel broke ceasefire to nearly 600
https://arab.news/nawp6
Strikes in Gaza kill 85 overnight, bringing the total since Israel broke ceasefire to nearly 600

- Medics say Israeli strikes targeted several houses in northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip
Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill at least 40

- Eight people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Abu Mahadi family home in Jabalia
- An Israeli strike on the Al-Agha family home killed five people in an area of Khan Yunis in the south
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes on Monday killed at least 40 people across the Palestinian territory, which has been under an Israeli aid blockade for more than 50 days.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18. A ceasefire agreement that had largely halted the fighting for two months before that collapsed over disagreements between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose 2023 attack triggered the war.
Civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir told AFP that 40 people had been killed since dawn on Monday.
They included eight people who were killed in an Israeli strike on the Abu Mahadi family home in Jabalia, in the north of the territory.
“They were sleeping in their homes, feeling safe, when missiles hit... this scene makes the body shiver,” said Abdul Majeed Abu Mahadi, 67, who added that his brother was killed in the attack.
“If a person looked at this scene, they would have seen children, women and elderly men cut into pieces, it makes the heart ache, but what can we do?“
The civil defense agency reported that another 10 people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Al-Ghamari family home in the Al-Sudaniya area northwest of Gaza City.
A strike on the Al-Agha family home killed eight others in an area of Khan Yunis in the south, it added.
Fourteen others were killed in four separate strikes across the territory, the civil defense said, including one that hit a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Shafii camp, west of Khan Yunis.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that at least 2,222 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,314.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel says its renewed military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
Iran minister blames ‘negligence’ for port blast that killed 65

- Iran’s state TV showed images of firefighters still dousing the flames Monday, and said the damage would be assessed after the fire was fully brought under control
TEHRAN: Iran’s interior minister on Monday blamed “negligence” for a massive explosion that killed 65 people at the country’s largest commercial port, with firefighters still battling a blaze at the facility two days later.
The blast occurred on Saturday at the Shahid Rajaee Port in Iran’s south, near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which one-fifth of global oil output passes.
“The death toll has reached 65 in this horrific incident,” Mohammad Ashouri, governor of the southern Hormozgan province where the port is located, told state television, adding that the fire has not been fully extinguished yet.
Officials have said more than 1,000 people were injured. The province’s crisis management director, Mehrdad Hassanzadeh, said most had already been released after treatment.
On Monday, Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni told state TV that “culprits have been identified and summoned,” and that the blast was caused by “shortcomings, including noncompliance with safety precautions and negligence.”
Momeni, who has been in the area since hours after the blast, stated that the “investigation is still underway.”
Iran’s state TV showed images of firefighters still dousing the flames Monday, and said the damage would be assessed after the fire was fully brought under control.
Heavy charcoal-black smoke continued to billow over low flames at part of the site, above which a firefighting helicopter flew, pictures from the Iranian Red Crescent showed.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered a probe into the incident.
It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion but the port’s customs office said it likely resulted from a fire that broke out at the hazardous and chemical materials storage depot.
CCTV images on social media showed it began gradually, with a small fire belching orange-brown smoke among a few containers stacked outside, across from a warehouse.
A small forklift truck drives past the area and men can be seen walking nearby.
About one minute after the small fire and smoke become visible, a fireball erupts as vehicles pass nearby, with men running for their lives.
President Masoud Pezeshkian visited hospitals treating the wounded on Sunday in the nearby city of Bandar Abbas.
Since the explosion, authorities have ordered all schools and offices in the area closed, and have urged residents to avoid going outside “until further notice” and to use protective masks.
The New York Times quoted a person with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters, as saying that what exploded was sodium perchlorate — a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles.
Defense ministry spokesman Reza Talaei-Nik later told state TV that “there has been no imported or exported cargo for military fuel or military use in the area.”
Iran’s ally Russia has dispatched specialists to help battle the blazes.
Authorities have declared Monday a national day of mourning, while three days of mourning began Sunday in Hormozgan province.
The blast occurred as Iranian and US delegations were meeting in Oman for high-level talks on Tehran’s nuclear program.
While Iranian authorities so far appear to be treating the blast as an accident, it also comes against the backdrop of years of shadow war with regional foe Israel.
According to The Washington Post, Israel launched a cyberattack targeting the Shahid Rajaee Port in 2020.
Israeli authorities order Palestinians to stop building homes in Al-Jib town

- Residents were ordered to halt construction on three homes and caravans for livestock
- The stop-work order is a decree that often triggers a demolition order
LONDON: Israeli authorities issued stop-work orders for several Palestinian structures being built in Al-Jib town, north of occupied East Jerusalem.
On Monday, authorities stormed Al-Jib and notified residents to halt construction on three homes and caravans for raising livestock, according to the Wafa news agency. The stop-work order is a decree that often triggers a demolition order.
The majority of village territory, located 9 km north of Jerusalem, falls within Area C where the Palestinian Authority is in charge of educational and health services, while Israel remains responsible for security and construction.
Israel restricts Palestinians from expanding in Area C, and inside Jerusalem, it rarely grants building permits to residents of the city. Al-Jib is surrounded by several Israeli settlements, the biggest of which is Giv’at Ze’ev.
The Palestinain Authority-affiliated Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission reported in March that Israeli authorities carried out 58 demolition operations in the occupied West Bank, affecting 87 structures. These included 39 inhabited homes, six uninhabited houses, and 26 agricultural properties in the cities of Nablus, Tulkarm, Jerusalem, and Salfit.
Houthis say alleged US airstrike that hit Yemen prison holding African migrants kills 68

DUBAI: The Houthis on Monday alleged a US airstrike hit a prison holding African migrants, killing at least 68 people and wounding 47 others. The US military did not acknowledge carrying out the strike.
The strike was in Yemen’s Saada governorate, a stronghold for the Houthis.
It will likely renew questions from activists about the American campaign, known as “Operation Rough Rider,” which has been targeting the militia as the Trump administration negotiates with their main benefactor, Iran, over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.
The US military’s Central Command, in a statement early Monday before news of the alleged strike broke, sought to defend its policy of offering no specific details of its extensive airstrike campaign. The strikes have drawn controversy in America over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the unclassified Signal messaging app to post sensitive details about the attacks.
“To preserve operational security, we have intentionally limited disclosing details of our ongoing or future operations,” Central Command said. “We are very deliberate in our operational approach, but will not reveal specifics about what we’ve done or what we will do.”
It did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press about the alleged strike in Saada.
Graphic footage shows aftermath of explosion
Graphic footage aired by the Houthis’ Al-Masirah satellite news channel showed what appeared to be dead bodies and others wounded at the site. The Houthi-run Interior Ministry said some 115 migrants had been detained at the site.
The militia’s Civil Defense organization said at least 68 people had been killed and 47 others wounded in the attack.
Footage from the site analyzed by the AP suggested some kind of explosion took place there, with its cement walls seemingly peppered by debris fragments and the wounds suffered by those there.
A voice, soft in the footage, can be heard repeating the start of a prayer in Arabic: “In the name of God.” An occasional gunshot rang out as medics sought to help those wounded.
The International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, said it was “deeply saddened” by the deaths at the prison.
“It is imperative that all efforts are made to avoid harm to civilians and to protect those most vulnerable in these challenging circumstances,” it said.
US military says over 800 strikes conducted in campaign so far
Meanwhile, US airstrikes overnight targeting Yemen’s capital killed at least eight people, the Houthis said. The American military acknowledged carrying out over 800 individual strikes in their monthlong campaign.
The overnight statement from Central Command also said “Operation Rough Rider” had “killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders,” including those associated with its missile and drone program. It did not identify any of those officials.
“We will continue to ratchet up the pressure until the objective is met, which remains the restoration of freedom of navigation and American deterrence in the region,” it added.
The US is targeting the Houthis because of the group’s attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, a crucial global trade route, and on Israel. The Houthis are also the last militant group in Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” that is capable of regularly attacking Israel.
US discusses deadly port strike
The US is conducting strikes on Yemen from its two aircraft carriers in the region — the USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea and the USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea.
On April 18, an American strike on the Ras Isa fuel port killed at least 74 people and wounded 171 others in the deadliest-known attack of the American campaign. Central Command on Monday offered an explanation for why it hit the port.
“US strikes destroyed the ability of Ras Isa Port to accept fuel, which will begin to impact Houthi ability to not only conduct operations, but also to generate millions of dollars in revenue for their terror activities,” it said.
Meanwhile, the Houthis have increasingly sought to control the flow of information from the territory they hold to the outside world. It issued a notice Sunday that all those holding Starlink satellite Internet receivers should “quickly hand over” the devices to authorities.
“A field campaign will be implemented in coordination with the security authorities to arrest anyone who sells, trades, uses, operates, installs or possesses these prohibited terminals,” the Houthis warned.
Starlink terminals have been crucial for Ukraine in fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion and receivers also have been smuggled into Iran amid unrest there.
Sisi meets Burhan in Cairo to discuss restoring stability in Sudan

- 2 leaders also planned to consult on strengthening bilateral ties
DUBAI: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council President Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan met in Cairo on Monday to discuss ways to restore stability and promote development in Sudan.
The two leaders also planned to consult on strengthening bilateral ties and addressing various regional issues, Ahram Online reported.
Al-Burhan’s visit comes amid ongoing conflict in Sudan, where fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces has devastated the country.
Al-Burhan declared Khartoum “free” of RSF control in March after a major military push.
The war, which erupted in April 2023 over disputes regarding the RSF’s integration into the military, has left tens of thousands dead, with both sides accused of committing atrocities.
Sudan remains deeply divided, with the army controlling the north and east, while the RSF holds much of Darfur and parts of the south.