Israel says downs missiles fired from Yemen

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 42 people Friday in the Palestinian territory, devastated by war and under a total Israeli aid blockade for two months.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18 after the collapse of a ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting.
Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir told AFP.
AFP footage in the aftermath of a strike on Bureij camp showed Palestinians searching for casualties in the rubble of a flattened building.
“They gave us no warning, no phone call — we woke up at midnight to smoke, rubble, stones, and shrapnel raining down on us,” said Mohammed Al-Sheikh, standing among collapsed concrete slabs.
“We pulled out martyrs — bodies and limbs from under the rubble.”
Another six people were killed in a strike targeting the Al-Masri family home in the northern city of Beit Lahia, civil defense official Mughayyir added.
In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more, the civil defense agency reported.
Across the Gaza Strip, at least 21 other deaths were reported in similar attacks, the agency said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418.
The war erupted after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
That attack 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.
The Israeli government says its renewed campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives, although critics charge it puts them in mortal danger.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza on March 2, days before the collapse of the ceasefire which had come into effect on January 19.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the humanitarian response in Gaza was on the “verge of total collapse.”
“This situation must not — and cannot — be allowed to escalate further,” its deputy director of operations, Pascal Hundt, said in a statement.

LONDON: Lawyers representing the UK government have told the UN’s top court that Israel must allow aid supplies back into Gaza.

Speaking at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Sally Langrish, legal advisor to the UK’s Foreign Office, said Israel must also give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to Palestinian prisoners and insisted that the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees was impartial.

Her comments on Thursday were made on the fourth day of hearings at the ICJ, which was asked last year by the UN General Assembly to give an advisory opinion on Israel’s legal obligations on the operations of UN agencies and international organizations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The hearings, which finish on Friday, have centered around Israel’s cutting off of aid supplies to Gaza and come amid dire warnings about the collapse of emergency food and water supplies to Palestinians.

“Israel must facilitate full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian provision to the population of Gaza, including food, water and electricity, and must ensure access to medical care in accordance with international humanitarian law,” Langrish told the court.

David Lammy, the UK’s foreign secretary, this week said Israel’s decision to block aid deliveries to Gaza was a “horrendous” decision that was causing dire suffering. 

On Friday, the Red Cross warned that aid operations in Gaza were on the “verge of total collapse,” describing scenes of starving children and fights over water. 

The stating of the UK’s legal position at the ICJ also came as the British government confirmed it was in talks with France and Saudi Arabia over officially recognizing the Palestinian state.

Spain, Norway and Ireland recently added themselves to the 160 countries that already recognize Palestine.

The UK was among the 137 countries to vote in favor of the UN General Assembly resolution in December to request the ICJ opinion. The US and 10 other nations voted against and 22 abstained.

The resolution was in response to Israel passing a law that effectively banned the main UN organization delivering aid to Palestinians, UNRWA, from operating in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel claims that workers at the agency took part in the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 that sparked Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.

Langrish said the allegations of any UNRWA staff involvement in the “barbaric” Hamas attack must be thoroughly investigated. But she said the UK “supports UNRWA’s continued work and commitment to the principle of neutrality.”

She also highlighted Israel’s obligations under international law to allowing the Red Cross access to Palestinian prisoners.

Langrish said there had been “credible reports of ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli custody” since the war started and that Red Cross access was aimed at ensuring they are treated humanely.

That Hamas had also not allowed Red Cross access to the hostages held in Gaza was also “completely unacceptable,” she said, but added that this could not be used to justify Israel denying Red Cross access to Palestinian detainees since.

The ICJ’s opinion is expected to take months to be delivered.

At least 42 people were killed in Gaza on Friday, AFP reported, with the number of Palestinians killed in the conflict now more than 52,000. The Hamas attack in October 2023 killed 1,218 people.