May 29, 2025
Dave DeCamp
Gaza’s
Health Ministry said Thursday that Israeli attacks killed at least 62
Palestinians over the previous 24-hour period as relentless US-backed strikes
pounded targets across the Strip.
The Health Ministry said another five bodies of Palestinians killed by previous Israeli attacks were recovered from the rubble. The ministry’s numbers are based on dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals, but it said its figures didn’t “include hospitals in the North Gaza Strip Governorate due to the difficulty of accessing them.”
Israeli attacks on Thursday included heavy strikes on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, which killed at least 23 Palestinians. In Jabalia, northern Gaza, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli strikes hit a home and a kindergarten sheltering displaced people, killing at least seven, including women and children.
WAFA also reported that at least ten people were killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza City. In the southern city of Khan Younis, Israeli attacks reportedly killed a man and his pregnant wife.
Also on Thursday, the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) opened a third aid distribution point in central Gaza near the Israeli-controlled Netzarim Corridor. The aid scheme has been widely condemned by the UN and other aid agencies that operate in Gaza as insufficient to feed the starving population after an 11-week total blockade.
Al Jazeera reported that many Palestinians who arrived at the new distribution point were unable to leave due to Israeli military activity. “Many of the people who showed up at the site are trapped right now and unable to leave the area due to the presence of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles [and] the ongoing shooting,” said Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that since Israel resumed its genocidal war on March 18, at least 3,986 Palestinians have been killed, and 11,451 were injured. The numbers account for dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals and morgues.
Since October 7, 2023, the ministry’s death toll has reached 54,249, and the number of wounded has climbed to 123,492, figures that don’t account for thousands missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege.
At
least 70 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks since the early hours of
Thursday.
The Gaza Health Ministry called Israel’s push, which forced the hospital out of commission, a “continuation of the violations and crimes” against the medical sector in the territory.
Al-Awda was the last operating hospital in northern Gaza, according to health officials. Shutting down the hospital came amid continued Israeli forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, the latest order late on Thursday impacting large numbers of people north and east of Gaza City.
“The Health Ministry calls on all concerned sides to ensure protection for the health system in the Gaza Strip, as guaranteed by international and humanitarian laws,” the ministry said in a statement.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said 97 people, including 13 patients, are still at the hospital. The United Nations agency is planning a mission on Friday to transfer the patients to another facility.
“Due to impassable roads, the hospital’s medical equipment cannot be relocated,” WHO said in a statement.
“With Al-Awda’s closure, there is no remaining functional hospital in North Gaza — severing a critical lifeline for the people there.”
WHO pleaded “for the hospital’s protection and staff and patients’ safety”.
Israel has been besieging and bombing hospitals across Gaza, killing more than 1,400 medical workers, as well as patients and the displaced taking shelter, since the beginning of the war, according to local authorities.
‘We haven’t seen any food or flour in five days’
The closure of al-Awda Hospital comes as the humanitarian crisis becomes more catastrophic by the day in Gaza, with Israel continuing its suffocating blockade on the enclave.
An effort, backed by the United States and Israel, to distribute limited food supplies at specific sites run by a shadowy organisation, known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, continued to be marred by chaos on Thursday.
“We have come a long distance, around 10km [6.2 miles] to take this box tainted with blood,” Palestinian resident Saher Abu Tahoon told Al Jazeera in central Gaza.
“We need this box because there’s no food to eat. We haven’t seen any food or flour in five days. We went to get food for our children from a very faraway place. I can’t even carry this box because I am too tired, and I am too hungry.”
Multiple explosions were heard and Israeli gunfire was reported near a distribution centre in central Gaza earlier on Friday.
Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said Palestinians who walked to the newly opened aid site at the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza were unable to leave due to Israeli military activity in the area.
“Many of the people who showed up at the site are trapped right now and unable to leave the area due to the presence of Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles [and] the ongoing shooting,” Mahmoud said.
“They’ve been sending appeals to the Red Cross to coordinate their departure from the area. It’s becoming very risky for them to walk on their own.”
Israel has been pushing to bypass and sideline the United Nations from the aid distribution process, a self-serving approach critics say would further weaponise humanitarian assistance in the territory.
“The problems are that the insecurity continues, and frankly, they are not making it easy for us to deliver humanitarian goods,” Dujarric said.
There are 600 aid trucks on the Gaza side of the Karem Abu Salem crossing (called Kerem Shalom by Israel), but Israel has blocked the world body from retrieving the supplies for the past three days, he added.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said “starvation is threatening the future of the children” in the Palestinian enclave.
“What’s urgently needed is a political will to allow the UN and partners to provide assistance at scale without hindrance or interruption,” Lazzarini said in a post on X. “Allow us to do our work.”
Amid the dire humanitarian conditions, Israel maintained its relentless bombardment on Thursday, killing at least 70 Palestinians in attacks across Gaza, according to medical sources.
The Palestinian Civil Defence said an Israeli strike on a residential building in Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City left approximately 30 people missing under the rubble.
“Due to the lack of heavy equipment, it is not possible to recover the missing individuals from under the rubble,” the Civil Defence said in a statement.
“Therefore, we call on the international community and human rights organizations for immediate and urgent intervention to protect civilians and innocent people in the Gaza Strip.”
May 28, 2025
Brett Wilkins
The vigil at Harvard University took place as UNICEF said that at least 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or wounded in Gaza during 600 days of Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockades.
Community members concluded a 24-hour vigil at Harvard University on Wednesday during which the names of almost 12,000 children slain in Gaza by Israeli forces were read aloud, signifying only a partial list of child casualties documented by the United Nations Children’s Fund, which found that at least 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or wounded in the embattled enclave during 600 days of U.S.-backed genocidal slaughter.
They All Have Names – a coalition of parents, educators, students, healthcare workers, faith leaders, and other community members – gathered at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts to hold the vigil ahead of Harvard University’s commencement ceremonies on Thursday.
According to the Harvard branch of Students for Justice in Palestine, it took nearly an hour-and-a-half just to read the names of infants killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023. Victims’ names were read in ascending order of their ages.
“At least 17,400 children have been killed in Gaza since October 7,” said Dr. Lara Jirmanus a family physician and clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. “They include at least 825 babies who could not celebrate their first birthday; 895 one-year olds; 3,266 preschoolers; 4,032 between the ages of 6 and 10; 3,646 middle schoolers; and 2,949 teenagers.”
“We gather today to remember them, their hopes, and dreams,” Jirmanus added. “And to remember that we have the power to stop this unspeakable catastrophe, by demanding our elected officials stop sending arms for genocide.”
The vigil occurred against a backdrop of continued genocide denial and aspersions of casualty data provided by the Gaza Health Ministry – figures that Israeli military officials have repeatedly found to be accurate, and that peer-reviewed research published in The Lancet, one of the world’s preeminent medical journals, has determined to likely be a vast undercount.
Jirmanus told Common Dreams that the names of around 12,000 children killed in Gaza between October 2023 and October 2024 were recited during the vigil at a rate of about 500 names per hour.
As the vigil took place, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)—which has called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child” – announced its latest estimate that 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or injured in Gaza since Israel began attacking and besieging the strip in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
All told, the Gaza Health Ministry says that at least 191,285 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.
Among those maimed by Israel’s onslaught are thousands of children who have had one or more limbs amputated, often without anesthesia due to the Israeli blockade. Many surviving Palestinian children have also lost one or both parents. Some have lost their entire families. A new acronym has even been coined to describe some of these orphans: WCNSF, or “wounded child, no surviving family.”
“In a 72-hour period this weekend, images from two horrific attacks provide yet more evidence of the unconscionable cost of this ruthless war on children in the Gaza Strip,” UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.
“On Friday, we saw videos of the bodies of burnt, dismembered children from the al-Najjar family being pulled from the rubble of their home in Khan Younis,” Beigbeder noted. “Of 10 siblings under 12 years old, only one reportedly survived, with critical injuries.”
“Early Monday, we saw images of a small child trapped in a burning school in Gaza City. That attack, in the early hours of the morning, reportedly killed at least 31 people, including 18 children,” he continued.
“These children – lives that should never be reduced to numbers—are now part of a long, harrowing list of unimaginable horrors: the grave violations against children, the blockade of aid, the starvation, the constant forced displacement, and the destruction of hospitals, water systems, schools, and homes,” Beigbeder added. “In essence, the destruction of life itself in the Gaza Strip.”
Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.
The Harvard vigil took place as Israeli occupation forces pressed ahead with Operation Gideon’s Chariots, a campaign of conquest, indefinite occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for new Israeli settlements.
They All Have Names noted:
Conditions in Gaza are more catastrophic than ever, as Israel has blocked humanitarian aid for nearly three months, only recently allowing a few trucks of aid, which the U.N. warned was “nowhere near enough.” Using starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors without Borders, and an independent U.N. commission have all concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
As officials in Gaza report hundreds of deaths—mostly of children and elders—from malnutrition and lack of medical care, even Israeli officials are speaking out against what former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently called a “war of extermination.”
Extermination and forced starvation are among the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity for which current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The other Hague-based global tribunal, the International Court of Justice, is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa and backed by dozens of countries, either individually or as members of regional blocs.
The 24-hour vigil also took place as U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican administration – which continues to offer billions of dollars in arms as well as diplomatic support for Israel even as it acknowledges the mass starvation Gaza – wage a rhetorical and financial war against Harvard.
While the administration claims its moves to strip Harvard of federal funding and contracts and block international students from attending the nation’s oldest university are responses to its failure to adequately address alleged antisemitism on campus, many critics argue Trump is targeting the Ivy League school over its defiance of the president’s “war on woke” and to bend other powerful institutions to his will.
“While we are relieved that Harvard has not conceded to all of the Trump administration’s demands, we continue to be alarmed by the university’s repressive measures which have been aimed at silencing dissent and protest against genocide, and eliminating teaching and research about Palestine,” vigil co-organizer Sandra Susan Smith, who is a professor of criminal justice at Harvard Kennedy School, said Tuesday.
“We call on Harvard to defend free speech, academic freedom, and to adopt an ethical investment policy to ensure that it is not funding human rights abuses with its $50 billion endowment,” she added.
Vigil participants and UNICEF both called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
“The children of Gaza need protection. They need food, water, and medicine. They need a cease-fire,” said Beigbeder. “But more than anything, they need immediate, collective action to stop this once and for all.”
Dave DeCamp
At least 23 were killed by heavy
Israeli strikes on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza
The Health Ministry said another five bodies of Palestinians killed by previous Israeli attacks were recovered from the rubble. The ministry’s numbers are based on dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals, but it said its figures didn’t “include hospitals in the North Gaza Strip Governorate due to the difficulty of accessing them.”
Israeli attacks on Thursday included heavy strikes on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, which killed at least 23 Palestinians. In Jabalia, northern Gaza, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli strikes hit a home and a kindergarten sheltering displaced people, killing at least seven, including women and children.
WAFA also reported that at least ten people were killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza City. In the southern city of Khan Younis, Israeli attacks reportedly killed a man and his pregnant wife.
Also on Thursday, the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) opened a third aid distribution point in central Gaza near the Israeli-controlled Netzarim Corridor. The aid scheme has been widely condemned by the UN and other aid agencies that operate in Gaza as insufficient to feed the starving population after an 11-week total blockade.
Al Jazeera reported that many Palestinians who arrived at the new distribution point were unable to leave due to Israeli military activity. “Many of the people who showed up at the site are trapped right now and unable to leave the area due to the presence of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles [and] the ongoing shooting,” said Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that since Israel resumed its genocidal war on March 18, at least 3,986 Palestinians have been killed, and 11,451 were injured. The numbers account for dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals and morgues.
Since October 7, 2023, the ministry’s death toll has reached 54,249, and the number of wounded has climbed to 123,492, figures that don’t account for thousands missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege.
Dozens of people remain at the
medical centre, the last functioning hospital in the north of the Palestinian
territory.
A Palestinian man shows blood stains on his palm after he carried casualties among people seeking aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Khan Younis, May 29 [Hatem Khaled/Reuters]
Israel has ordered the
closure of al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, leaving health officials
scrambling to relocate dozens of people who remain at the medical facility, as
deadly bombardment and starvation rack the besieged enclave.
The Gaza Health Ministry called Israel’s push, which forced the hospital out of commission, a “continuation of the violations and crimes” against the medical sector in the territory.
Al-Awda was the last operating hospital in northern Gaza, according to health officials. Shutting down the hospital came amid continued Israeli forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, the latest order late on Thursday impacting large numbers of people north and east of Gaza City.
“The Health Ministry calls on all concerned sides to ensure protection for the health system in the Gaza Strip, as guaranteed by international and humanitarian laws,” the ministry said in a statement.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said 97 people, including 13 patients, are still at the hospital. The United Nations agency is planning a mission on Friday to transfer the patients to another facility.
“Due to impassable roads, the hospital’s medical equipment cannot be relocated,” WHO said in a statement.
“With Al-Awda’s closure, there is no remaining functional hospital in North Gaza — severing a critical lifeline for the people there.”
WHO pleaded “for the hospital’s protection and staff and patients’ safety”.
Israel has been besieging and bombing hospitals across Gaza, killing more than 1,400 medical workers, as well as patients and the displaced taking shelter, since the beginning of the war, according to local authorities.
‘We haven’t seen any food or flour in five days’
The closure of al-Awda Hospital comes as the humanitarian crisis becomes more catastrophic by the day in Gaza, with Israel continuing its suffocating blockade on the enclave.
An effort, backed by the United States and Israel, to distribute limited food supplies at specific sites run by a shadowy organisation, known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, continued to be marred by chaos on Thursday.
“We have come a long distance, around 10km [6.2 miles] to take this box tainted with blood,” Palestinian resident Saher Abu Tahoon told Al Jazeera in central Gaza.
“We need this box because there’s no food to eat. We haven’t seen any food or flour in five days. We went to get food for our children from a very faraway place. I can’t even carry this box because I am too tired, and I am too hungry.”
Multiple explosions were heard and Israeli gunfire was reported near a distribution centre in central Gaza earlier on Friday.
Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said Palestinians who walked to the newly opened aid site at the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza were unable to leave due to Israeli military activity in the area.
“Many of the people who showed up at the site are trapped right now and unable to leave the area due to the presence of Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles [and] the ongoing shooting,” Mahmoud said.
“They’ve been sending appeals to the Red Cross to coordinate their departure from the area. It’s becoming very risky for them to walk on their own.”
Israel has been pushing to bypass and sideline the United Nations from the aid distribution process, a self-serving approach critics say would further weaponise humanitarian assistance in the territory.
“The problems are that the insecurity continues, and frankly, they are not making it easy for us to deliver humanitarian goods,” Dujarric said.
There are 600 aid trucks on the Gaza side of the Karem Abu Salem crossing (called Kerem Shalom by Israel), but Israel has blocked the world body from retrieving the supplies for the past three days, he added.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said “starvation is threatening the future of the children” in the Palestinian enclave.
“What’s urgently needed is a political will to allow the UN and partners to provide assistance at scale without hindrance or interruption,” Lazzarini said in a post on X. “Allow us to do our work.”
Amid the dire humanitarian conditions, Israel maintained its relentless bombardment on Thursday, killing at least 70 Palestinians in attacks across Gaza, according to medical sources.
The Palestinian Civil Defence said an Israeli strike on a residential building in Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City left approximately 30 people missing under the rubble.
“Due to the lack of heavy equipment, it is not possible to recover the missing individuals from under the rubble,” the Civil Defence said in a statement.
“Therefore, we call on the international community and human rights organizations for immediate and urgent intervention to protect civilians and innocent people in the Gaza Strip.”
May 28, 2025
Brett Wilkins
The vigil at Harvard University took place as UNICEF said that at least 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or wounded in Gaza during 600 days of Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockades.
Community members concluded a 24-hour vigil at Harvard University on Wednesday during which the names of almost 12,000 children slain in Gaza by Israeli forces were read aloud, signifying only a partial list of child casualties documented by the United Nations Children’s Fund, which found that at least 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or wounded in the embattled enclave during 600 days of U.S.-backed genocidal slaughter.
They All Have Names – a coalition of parents, educators, students, healthcare workers, faith leaders, and other community members – gathered at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts to hold the vigil ahead of Harvard University’s commencement ceremonies on Thursday.
According to the Harvard branch of Students for Justice in Palestine, it took nearly an hour-and-a-half just to read the names of infants killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023. Victims’ names were read in ascending order of their ages.
“At least 17,400 children have been killed in Gaza since October 7,” said Dr. Lara Jirmanus a family physician and clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. “They include at least 825 babies who could not celebrate their first birthday; 895 one-year olds; 3,266 preschoolers; 4,032 between the ages of 6 and 10; 3,646 middle schoolers; and 2,949 teenagers.”
“We gather today to remember them, their hopes, and dreams,” Jirmanus added. “And to remember that we have the power to stop this unspeakable catastrophe, by demanding our elected officials stop sending arms for genocide.”
The vigil occurred against a backdrop of continued genocide denial and aspersions of casualty data provided by the Gaza Health Ministry – figures that Israeli military officials have repeatedly found to be accurate, and that peer-reviewed research published in The Lancet, one of the world’s preeminent medical journals, has determined to likely be a vast undercount.
Jirmanus told Common Dreams that the names of around 12,000 children killed in Gaza between October 2023 and October 2024 were recited during the vigil at a rate of about 500 names per hour.
As the vigil took place, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)—which has called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child” – announced its latest estimate that 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or injured in Gaza since Israel began attacking and besieging the strip in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
All told, the Gaza Health Ministry says that at least 191,285 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.
Among those maimed by Israel’s onslaught are thousands of children who have had one or more limbs amputated, often without anesthesia due to the Israeli blockade. Many surviving Palestinian children have also lost one or both parents. Some have lost their entire families. A new acronym has even been coined to describe some of these orphans: WCNSF, or “wounded child, no surviving family.”
“In a 72-hour period this weekend, images from two horrific attacks provide yet more evidence of the unconscionable cost of this ruthless war on children in the Gaza Strip,” UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.
“On Friday, we saw videos of the bodies of burnt, dismembered children from the al-Najjar family being pulled from the rubble of their home in Khan Younis,” Beigbeder noted. “Of 10 siblings under 12 years old, only one reportedly survived, with critical injuries.”
“Early Monday, we saw images of a small child trapped in a burning school in Gaza City. That attack, in the early hours of the morning, reportedly killed at least 31 people, including 18 children,” he continued.
“These children – lives that should never be reduced to numbers—are now part of a long, harrowing list of unimaginable horrors: the grave violations against children, the blockade of aid, the starvation, the constant forced displacement, and the destruction of hospitals, water systems, schools, and homes,” Beigbeder added. “In essence, the destruction of life itself in the Gaza Strip.”
Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.
The Harvard vigil took place as Israeli occupation forces pressed ahead with Operation Gideon’s Chariots, a campaign of conquest, indefinite occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for new Israeli settlements.
They All Have Names noted:
Conditions in Gaza are more catastrophic than ever, as Israel has blocked humanitarian aid for nearly three months, only recently allowing a few trucks of aid, which the U.N. warned was “nowhere near enough.” Using starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors without Borders, and an independent U.N. commission have all concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
As officials in Gaza report hundreds of deaths—mostly of children and elders—from malnutrition and lack of medical care, even Israeli officials are speaking out against what former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently called a “war of extermination.”
Extermination and forced starvation are among the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity for which current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The other Hague-based global tribunal, the International Court of Justice, is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa and backed by dozens of countries, either individually or as members of regional blocs.
The 24-hour vigil also took place as U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican administration – which continues to offer billions of dollars in arms as well as diplomatic support for Israel even as it acknowledges the mass starvation Gaza – wage a rhetorical and financial war against Harvard.
While the administration claims its moves to strip Harvard of federal funding and contracts and block international students from attending the nation’s oldest university are responses to its failure to adequately address alleged antisemitism on campus, many critics argue Trump is targeting the Ivy League school over its defiance of the president’s “war on woke” and to bend other powerful institutions to his will.
“While we are relieved that Harvard has not conceded to all of the Trump administration’s demands, we continue to be alarmed by the university’s repressive measures which have been aimed at silencing dissent and protest against genocide, and eliminating teaching and research about Palestine,” vigil co-organizer Sandra Susan Smith, who is a professor of criminal justice at Harvard Kennedy School, said Tuesday.
“We call on Harvard to defend free speech, academic freedom, and to adopt an ethical investment policy to ensure that it is not funding human rights abuses with its $50 billion endowment,” she added.
Vigil participants and UNICEF both called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
“The children of Gaza need protection. They need food, water, and medicine. They need a cease-fire,” said Beigbeder. “But more than anything, they need immediate, collective action to stop this once and for all.”
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