Gaza | Pakistan

Reuters video showed rescuers battling flames and removing bodies from the Gaza family home after strike

The recovery plan for war-battered Gaza, under US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP), has been significantly scaled back and, instead of reconstructing the entire territory, now envisions a small pilot project in the south of the besieged territory, the British publication The Guardian reported on Thursday. The board was initially proposed in September 2025 and formally established in January. Under its charter, the US government serves as its official depository and Trump has designated the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace in Washington as the Board’s headquarters. A UN Security Council resolution adopted in mid-November last year authorised the board, along with cooperating states, to establish an international stabilisation force in Gaza following a ceasefire that began in October under a Trump-backed plan accepted by Israel and Hamas. According to the publication, the new pilot project now aims to construct a small temporary camp for a fraction of Gaza’s population, with a Palestinian administ...

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher at the Prime Minister House on Tuesday, where they discussed humanitarian cooperation, disaster preparedness and the situation in Gaza.

Over 1,100 Palestinians killed since Gaza ceasefire, officials say, as truce halts major fighting but not violence

Israeli fire killed 9-year-old Tala Abu Matar in central Gaza, medics said; military gave no immediate comment

An Israeli strike in Gaza prior to the kickoff of the FIFA World Cup clash between Argentina and Egypt killed a top Palestinian aid official who helped organise screenings of the game across the strip, according to media reports. The Associated Press said the blast that killed Mohamed al-Wahidi, an official with Egypt’s relief arm in Gaza, turned “what was supposed to be a moment of celebration — the live screening of a potential upset against Argentina by an Arab team — into a reminder of how the near-daily Israeli strikes are continuing to kill civilians despite a truce reached in October”. The report also quoted Dr Mohamed Abu Selmiya, the director of Shifa Hospital, as saying that the strike that killed al-Wahidi on Tuesday hit a car in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City at dusk. He said three others were killed in the attack, including the driver, Ahmed Daghmush, 33, and two brothers, 10-year-old Hamza al-Deri and 8-year-old Fari, According to the publication, the Israeli military said that al-Wahidi wa...

A United Nations inquiry on Wednesday expressed concern at reports of abuse against a prominent Palestinian doctor seized by the Israeli military in Gaza in December 2024, who is still being held in Israel. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, called for the immediate release of Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the Gaza Strip. Rights groups and Abu Safiya’s lawyer have said his life is in imminent danger, and he continues to be held without charge, according to the Physicians for Human Rights Israel, an Israeli rights group. “The actions of the Israeli Prison Service guards towards Palestinian detainees raise grave concerns of violations of international law that likely amount to international crimes. “Dr Abu Safiya’s medical condition is the direct result of these actions,” the UN inquiry said in a statement. An Israel Prison Service (IPS) spokesperson said on Wednesday, “The allegations and character...

Palestinian group Hamas announced on Monday the dissolution of the body that has governed the Gaza Strip for nearly two decades, clearing the way for a technocratic committee to implement civilian rule. The move marks a significant political shift by Hamas, which has run Gaza since it seized control from Palestine’s Fatah group in 2007 after winning legislative elections the previous year. Since a ceasefire took effect in Gaza last October between Hamas and Israel, the group has repeatedly said it is prepared to step aside from day-to-day governance, but the thorny issue of its disarmament remains unresolved. “The head of the government’s emergency committee Mohammed al-Farra has officially submitted his resignation,” Ismail al-Thawabta, head of Hamas’ government media office told AFP. “He has also decided to dissolve the committee to facilitate the administrative and governmental transition to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).” The NCAG was created by the Board of Peace that US Pr...

More than 90pc of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed and more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 1,000 days since Israel started bombarding the besieged enclave following the retaliatory Hamas attack of Oct 7, 2023, according to the local government’s media office. The Palestinian government’s media office released key statistics on the destruction and death toll on Thursday, marking 1,000 days since the start of the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. As of July 2, Israel has seized control of more than 80pc of the Gaza Strip, while 2.4 million people in the territory were being subjected to genocide, starvation and ethnic cleansing, the statement said. A plume of smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City on October 7, 2023 during an Israeli air strike. — AFP/File Of those killed by the Israeli military, more than 21,500 were children and more than 12,500 were women. More than 1,000 of the children killed were under the age of one, the statement said. “More than 520 infants were born and subsequent...

UNITED NATIONS - The continued expansion of areas under Israeli control in Gaza since October’s ceasefire agreement is placing civilians at greater risk and severely constraining humanitarian operations, the UN and humanitarian partners warned on Wednesday.

Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children in what has become a key factor in an ongoing “genocide” in Gaza, United Nations investigators charged on Tuesday, in a report slammed by Israel. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said it had found evidence that “Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces”. This, it said, was a key factor in establishing “the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the larger Palestinian group in Gaza”. The three-member investigative team, which does not speak for the UN itself, first determined in a report last September that Israel had committed “genocide” during its assault in Gaza — a finding Israel flatly rejected. In Tuesday’s follow-up report, they said the intense scale and systematic nature of Israeli military operations had continued, resulting in the “unprecedented” death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children. There were “reasonable grounds” to conclude t...

GAZA CITY: Gaza health officials said Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least 11 people, including four members of the same family, in the latest violence to rock the Palestinian territory despite a ceasefire. Hamas accuses Israel of daily truce violations and the Gaza Strip continues to suffer severe bloodshed, with efforts to permanently halt the destructive assault on the enclave still at a standstill. An overnight Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City killed four members of the Al-Safadi family, including the husband, wife and their two daughters, according to the civil defence agency, a rescue service that operates under Hamas authority. It said the strike also injured 12 others. Apartment bombing leaves four family members dead Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital confirmed receiving the bodies of four members of the Safadi family, including two children. “Around 2 o’clock, my cousins were asleep when a missile struck them. They have no connection to Hamas, nor ...

UNITED NATIONS - Gaza remains in a perilous state, Pakistan told the UN Security Council as the 15-member body shifted its focus back to the dire humanitarian situation in the war-shattered enclave, which had been overshadowed by wider regional developments.

Since Sunday morning, Israeli forces have carried out airstrikes and gunfire across Gaza, says medics

The United Nations warned on Friday that an Israeli plan to take control of 70 per cent of Gaza will increase suffering among children already hit by the impacts of severe overcrowding. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the military to take control of more territory in the Gaza Strip, flouting the terms of a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October. He said the military had controlled 50pc of the Palestinian territory under the terms of the ceasefire, then advanced to take over 60pc. “My directive is to move to… 70pc,” he said. The United Nations children’s agency Unicef warned that this would deepen the health crisis among children in the territory, suffering from acute lack of food, water and hygiene. Israel controls the flow of aid into the territory along with all entry points into Gaza, which has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007. Even before Israel’s assault in Gaza that began in 2023, the territory was already very densely populated. Now “people have been crammed into a...

US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has no cash in its official Gaza reconstruction fund, despite member countries pledging billions of dollars, a source familiar with the board told AFP on Wednesday. Trump first conceived of the board to rebuild Gaza, where Israel and Hamas agreed to a US-backed ceasefire in October in a bid to halt two years of devastating war. But he quickly raised eyebrows by sending out wide invitations, including to Russian President Vladimir Putin and to countries far removed from traditional Middle East diplomacy. Since the board was set up, its fund — administered by the World Bank and endorsed by the United Nations — has received no money from donors, the source familiar with the Board of Peace told AFP. The source said money had not been deposited because the fund was designed for the reconstruction and development phase, which has not yet been reached. Israeli military operations in Gaza have continued despite the ceasefire, with at least 910 people killed since then, accor...

Trump proposed rebuilding Gaza after an October US-backed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas

Israel said on Wednesday it had killed the new head of Hamas’s armed wing in Gaza, Mohammed Odeh, in a strike the day before, after killing his predecessor in a similar attack this month. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz claimed the “commander of the armed wing of the Hamas terrorist organisation in Gaza was eliminated yesterday”. Hamas has not yet commented. “In the Prime Minister’s name and in my own, congratulations to the IDF and the Shin Bet on the brilliant execution,” Katz claimed in a post on X. “We committed ourselves to eliminating everyone who led the October 7 massacre, and that is what we will do: they are all marked for death, wherever they may be.” After announcing the strike on Tuesday, Katz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a joint statement that Odeh had “served as head of Hamas intelligence during the October 7 massacre and was appointed approximately one week ago as successor to Ezzedine al-Haddad”. Haddad was killed by an Israeli strike on May 15. “Odeh was responsible for...

MADRID: Around two thousand protesters took to the streets of the Spanish city of Bilbao on Sunday to condemn the Basque police’s treatment of activists from a Gaza aid flotilla on their return from detention in Israel. When a relative of one of the six returning activists tried to approach them at Bilbao airport on Saturday, a police officer forcefully prevented him from doing so, leading to scuffles between both sides, images from state broadcaster TVE showed. Images showed police striking people with batons and pinning others to the ground while being jeered by onlookers. Before this, activists appeared to have blocked the exit for other passengers and police tried to move them. Four people were arrested for serious disobedience, resisting arrest and assaulting law enforcement officers, the Basque regional police force, the Ertzaintza, said in a statement on Sunday. Two of those arrested were activists who had just arrived from Turkiye, TVE reported. The police force also launched an investigation into the...

New Zealand activist Mousa Taher, who was part of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud humanitarian aid flotilla, which was attacked and intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters, said he was subjected to humiliating treatment and torture after being detained. Activists from the flotilla spoke to Anadolu after arriving at Istanbul Airport aboard three Turkish Airlines flights. Taher said that after previously being detained by Israeli forces in Greece, he travelled first to Istanbul and then to Marmaris before once again setting sail toward Gaza. “The Israeli occupation forces really tortured me this time,” he said. Pointing to injuries on his face and leg, Taher said Israeli soldiers recognised him and addressed him by name because it was his second attempt to join the flotilla. He said that when Israeli forces intercepted the boat he had joined for the second time, they forced him and another activist to strip on board, while other passengers were not subjected to the same treatment. New Zealand activist...