Gaza | Pakistan

Indonesia on Wednesday accused Israel of flying a “propaganda” banner over the ruins of a hospital that had been built in Gaza with Indonesian funding. The Indonesia Hospital, in the north of the Gaza Strip near the fortified border with Israel, was opened in late 2015 after Indonesia’s Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, a humanitarian NGO, raised approximately $7.3 million in donations for its construction, according to state news agency Antara. It has since been destroyed, and Jakarta on Wednesday objected to the raising of a banner over the ruins that alluded to Israel’s 12-day “Rising Lion” military operation against Iran last year. “The use of military symbols and propaganda over the ruins of a destroyed hospital, especially when linked to a specific military operation, is a highly provocative act and cannot be justified,” the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on X. “This act is an insult to a humanitarian facility built from the solidarity of the Indonesian people for the Palestinian people.”...

As springtime temperatures rise in Gaza, a surge in rats, fleas and other pests has compounded the misery of hundreds of thousands of displaced people still living in tents after more than two years of war. With meagre shelter and almost no sanitation, Palestinians told AFP the vermin are invading their makeshift homes, biting children and contaminating food, in what aid agencies warned was a growing public health threat. “My children have been bitten. One of my sons was even bitten on the nose,” said Muhammad al-Raqab, a displaced Palestinian man living in a tent near the southern city of Khan Yunis. “I am unable to sleep through the night because I must constantly watch over the children,” the 32-year-old construction worker, originally from Bani Shueila, told AFP. With shelters erected directly on soft sand by the Mediterranean Sea, rodents can easily burrow under tent walls and wreak havoc inside, where people have established makeshift pantries and kitchens. “The rodents have eaten through my tent,” Raqa...

More than $71 billion will be needed over the next decade for recovery and reconstruction in war-ravaged Gaza, according to a European Union and United Nations assessment published on Monday. In their final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA), the United Nations and the European Union said that more than two years of war in the Palestinian territory “has led to unprecedented loss of life and a catastrophic humanitarian crisis”. “Recovery and reconstruction needs are estimated at around $71.4bn,” said the assessment, developed in coordination with the World Bank. Much of Gaza — including schools, hospitals and other civic infrastructure — has been reduced to rubble by an Israeli military offensive. The final assessment determined that $26.3bn would be required in the first 18 months to restore essential services, rebuild critical infrastructure and support economic recovery. “Physical infrastructure damages are estimated at $35.2bn, with economic and social losses amounting to $22.7bn,” a joint state...

Fourteen-year-old Fadel al-Naji used to be a keen footballer but is now largely confined to his home in Gaza City since both legs were severed in an Israeli drone attack in September. He sits sullenly on a couch with one hollow pant leg dangling and the other tucked into his waist beside his 11-year-old brother who lost an eye in the same strike. Fadel Al-Naji, 14, who lost both legs after being injured in an Israeli strike, sits at his home in Gaza City on April 10, 2026. — Reuters “He has become withdrawn and isolated,” said his mother Najwa al-Naji, showing old videos of him doing kick-ups on her phone. “It is as if he is dying slowly, and I wish that they would fit him with prosthetic limbs.” But those are in scarce supply for Gaza’s nearly 5,000 war amputees — a quarter of whom are children like al-Naji — because of Israeli restrictions on materials like plaster of Paris, seven aid and medical sources told Reuters. Israel cites security concerns as the reason for restrictions. Palestinian amputee Omar Ab...

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes killed more than a dozen people in Lebanon and Gaza on Saturday, while an Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, according to officials. The widespread violence came a day after plans were announced for potential ceasefire talks between Lebanon, Israel and the United States. Israeli strikes on a village near Sidon in south Lebanon on Saturday killed eight people and wounded nine others, five of them seriously, the Lebanese health ministry said. Lebanon’s health ministry also said a total of 10 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the country’s south on Saturday, with state media reporting Israeli raids on more than a dozen locations. Earlier in the day, officials said strikes killed 10 people in the Nabatiyeh district. The ministry said the dead included a member of the Lebanese civil defence and two paramedics from the Islamic Health Committee, decrying Israel’s “systematic” targeting of emergency workers. Hezbollah slams planned negotiations with I...

Gaza death toll rises to 72,328 despite ceasefire

The outgoing head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) supporting Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday he wanted an investigation into the killing of nearly 400 UNRWA staff during the conflict in Gaza. “I believe that we need to have a panel … a high-level panel of experts to look into the killing of our staff,” Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva. Speaking at a press conference on the last day on the job as UNRWA commissioner general, the 62-year-old Swiss national condemned the fact that “more than 390” of the agency’s staff had been killed since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023. “Many others have sustained life-changing injuries or have been arbitrarily detained and tortured,” he said. He said an investigation was needed not just into the killing of UNRWA employees but also of other UN staff, stressing: “There have been other UN colleagues who have been also killed. “And we have to look also at the extraordinary, large-scale destruction of the agency, of UN premise...

The envoys from US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” have met representatives of Hamas in Cairo in an effort to safeguard the Gaza ceasefire, under serious strain since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, three sources told Reuters. The weekend meeting is the first publicly reported since the start of the Iran war between Hamas and the board, a new international body personally headed by Trump, which has been tasked with overseeing post-war Gaza. Following the meeting, Israel announced on Sunday that it would soon reopen the sole crossing for pedestrians between Gaza and Egypt, shut since the Iran bombing campaign began. One of the sources said he believed the Israeli announcement was a direct result of the meeting between Hamas and the board. Prior to the war in Iran, Trump’s plan for Gaza was his flagship initiative for the Middle East. The sources said the Hamas representatives warned the board that they could back away from its previous promises under the Gaza ceasefire if Israel main...

• Israel’s Supreme Court freezes ban on foreign aid organisations in enclave • US public sympathy shifts to Palestinians over Israel, new Gallup poll reveals CAIRO: Relentless Israeli attacks killed at least seven Palestinians in Gaza on Friday, medics said, adding to a death toll of at least 600 people killed by Israeli fire since a US-brokered ceasefire agreement came into effect last October. Gaza’s health officials reported that in southern Gaza, five people were killed and several others were injured, some critically, in Israeli drone strikes. The strikes targeted two police checkpoints in Khan Yunis and in the Abu Hujair area northwest of the Bureij refugee camp later in the day, medics said. Separately, an Israeli airstrike against a group of Palestinians in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighbourhood in northern Gaza killed two people and wounded several others. Ban on NGOs frozen Meanwhile, Israel’s Supreme Court decided in a ruling published on Friday to freeze a government ban on 37 foreign NGOs working in Ga...

More than a dozen international humanitarian organisations have petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to block an imminent order that would force 37 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to cease operations in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, warning of catastrophic consequences for civilians. Organisations including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE were notified on December 30, 2025 that their Israeli registrations had expired and that they had 60 days to renew them by providing lists of their Palestinian staff. If they fail to do so, they will have to cease operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem, from March 1. The petition, described as unprecedented in its scale and joint nature, seeks an urgent interim injunction from Israel’s top court to suspend the closures pending full judicial review. The 17 petitioners, which include some of the NGOs hit by the ban, argue the Israeli measures are incompatible with an occupying power’s ob...

Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday that Hamas may soon be given a deadline to lay down its weapons. “We estimate that in the coming days, Hamas will be given an ultimatum to disarm and completely demilitarise Gaza,” Smotrich said in an interview with public broadcaster Kan. Israel invaded the Gaza Strip in 2023, in retaliation for Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack. Under the first phase of a US-sponsored ceasefire in Gaza intended to halt two years of Isreali onslaught in Gaza, the Israeli army withdrew to positions behind a so-called Yellow Line, but still controls over half of the territory. Both Hamas and Israel accuse each other of near-daily ceasefire violations, with the health ministry in Gaza reporting 615 people killed by Israeli forces since the truce started. The Israeli military says it has lost five of its soldiers during the same period. If Hamas does not comply with the Israeli ultimatum to disarm, the army “will have international legitimacy and American ba...

Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman on Saturday criticised the government for participating in the Boa­rd of Peace’s (BoP) first meeting over Gaza, terming it “unacceptable”. His remarks came after the inaugural BoP meeting on Thursday in Washington, where Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif praised the peacemaking efforts of United States President Donald Trump, who is heading the forum. Addressing the media in Lahore, the JI leader said it was “unacceptable at any cost” to ignore the country’s long-established policy on the Palestine issue. He emphasised that since the time of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s policy had remained clear and that any deviation from it would be intolerable. Rehman also opposed any plan to send Pakistani troops to Gaza as part of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) envisioned under Trump’s 20-point plan. He argued that the matter concerned Gaza’s internal affairs and should be handled only by local Palestinian police and security forces rather than forei...

GENEVA: Israel’s increased attacks and forcible transfers of Palestinians “raise concerns over ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the United Nations said on Thursday. The cumulative impact of Israel’s military conduct during the conflict in Gaza and blockade of the territory, has inflicted living conditions “increasingly incompatible with Palestinians’ continued existence as a group in Gaza”, said the UN human rights office. “Intensified attacks, the methodical destruction of entire neighbourhoods and the denial of humanitarian assistance appeared to aim at a permanent demographic shift in Gaza,” the office said in a report. “This, together with forcible transfers, which appear to aim at a permanent displacement, raise concerns over ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank.” The report covered Nov 1, 2024 to Oct 31, 2025. It highlighted the Israeli security forces’ “systematic use of unlawful force” in the occupied West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem. The report also pointed to “widespread”...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stressed on Thursday the need for an end to ceasefire violations in Gaza, saying that it was “very important” for long-lasting peace in the war-torn Strip. The premier expressed these views during the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace, which is led by US President Donald Trump, in Washington. “The people of Palestine have long endured the illegal occupation and immense suffering. And, to achieve long-lasting peace, it is very important that ceasefire violations must end to preserve life and advance reconstruction efforts,” PM Shehbaz emphasised in his address. “The people of Palestine must exercise full control of their land and their future, in line with the UN Security Council resolutions,” he added. PM Shehbaz further said, “We must work together towards a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination through the establishment of an independent, sovereign, and contiguous state of Palestine in line with relevant resolutions”. He expressed the hope that under Trump’s ...

US President Donald Trump on Thursday promised $10 billion and Muslim-majority nations offered funding and troops for Gaza at the inaugural Board of Peace meeting in Washington. Pakistan, however, was not named among the five nations who have committed troops for the International Stabilisation Force, which will be tas­k­ed with securing reconstruction zones and supporting a post-conflict governance arrangement in Gaza. Trump brought together allies from around the world — many authoritarians, with few Western democrats who traditionally ally with the United States — to hail his peacemaking at the first Board of Peace meeting. Presiding with a gavel over the meeting in the gleaming Washington building of the former US Institute of Peace, which has been gutted and renamed after the 79-year-old Republican, Trump hailed the “powerful people” who joined his board. “We will help Gaza. We will straighten it out. We’ll make it successful,” Trump said, holding up a document with pledges before the disco beats of his ...

Shehbaz Sharif heads to Washington for 1st ‘Board of Peace’ meeting Pakistan ready to send troops only for peace mission in Gaza Pak troops will not be part of any other role, such as disarming Hamas.

United States President Donald Trump on Sunday said that member states of the Board of Peace have “committed thousands of personnel” to join the International Stabilisation Force expected to deploy in the Gaza Strip. In a post on Truth Social, the US president said he would announce this development when the Board meets in Washington on February 19 at the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace. “We will announce that member states have pledged more than $5 billion dollars toward the Gaza humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, and have committed thousands of personnel to the International Stabilisation Force and local police to maintain security and peace for Gazans.” Trump wrote. He also stated that Hamas must uphold its “commitment to full and immediate demilitarisation”. “The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History, and it is my honour to serve as its Chairman,” Trump wrote. Earlier this week, Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Tahir Andrabi confirmed that Prime Minis...

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that Israeli strikes killed at least 12 people since dawn on Sunday, while a military official said the attacks were in response to ceasefire violations. Despite a US-brokered truce that entered its second phase last month, violence has continued in the Palestinian territory, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for violating the agreement. The civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue force, said one strike hit a tent of displaced people in northern Gaza and another targeted an area in the south. Five people were killed and several were injured when an air strike targeted a tent sheltering displaced people in Jabalia in the north, the agency said in a statement. Five more were killed and several were injured in a separate early morning strike in the southern city of Khan Younis, the agency said, adding that one more was killed in Israeli shelling in Gaza City. The agency also said that one person was killed by Israeli gunfire in Beit Lahia in north Gaza. The Al...

Pakistan dispatched another consignment of humanitarian supplies to Gaza on Thursday as part of measures to provide Palestinians with life-saving aid following Israel’s invasion of the enclave. The latest aid consignment was dispatched by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), with the support of Al-Khidmat Foundation. This is the second aid consignment sent by Islamabad within the last week. Earlier, on Monday, the 28th consignment was dispatched. Pakistan had sent the first aid consignment, including medicines and tents, for the people of Gaza on Oct 19, 2023, days after the Israeli bombardment began. The relief goods were dispatched through a chartered flight from Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore to Egypt’s Al-Arish airport for onward delivery to Gaza. Israel, which controls all access to the Gaza Strip, denies withholding supplies for its two million residents. Tel Aviv’s two-year relentless onslaught on the Gaza Strip killed more than 71,000 Palestinians, displaced most of its pop...

Pakistan has dispatched another 100-tonne consignment of humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said on Monday. Since the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas broke out on Oct 7, 2023, Pakistan has sent numerous aid items intended for the Gaza Strip, which was besieged at least until a ceasefire was secured in October 2025. According to NDMA, the consignment comprised 100 tonnes of tents and was sent with the support of Alkhidmat Foundation. This was the 28th relief consignment sent by Pakistan, bringing the total volume of humanitarian assistance sent to 2,727 tonnes. The relief goods were dispatched through a special flight from Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore to Egypt’s El Arish International Airport “for onward delivery to Gaza”, state-run Radio Pakistan reported. Punjab housing minister Bilal Yasin was a special guest at the dispatch, which was attended by officials of the NDMA and the foreign ministry, NDMA stated. Pakistan had first...