August 13, 2025
Usaid Siddiqui and Farah Najjar
Usaid Siddiqui and Farah Najjar
- Israel’s targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system amounts to “medicide”, an attempt to wipe out medical care in the Strip, a group of UN experts has said.
- At least 89 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn on Wednesday, with our team on the ground reporting the intensification of strikes on the northern parts of the enclave.
- Meanwhile, at least eight people, including three children, have starved to death in the territory in the past 24 hours, bringing the total count of hunger-related deaths to 235, including 106 children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
- Protests have continued around the world against Israel’s targeted assassination of four Al Jazeera journalists and two freelancers in Gaza.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,722 people and wounded 154,525. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
The
head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
(UNRWA) has condemned Israel’s ‘war on children’.
At least 89 Palestinians have
been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn, according to medical
sources, with Al Jazeera’s team on the ground reporting the intensification of
strikes on the northern parts of the besieged enclave, where more than 50
people were killed in Gaza City alone.Israeli air strikes on groups trying to secure the distribution of aid north of Gaza City killed at least 12 people on Wednesday
At least 26 people desperately seeking any food for their families were killed by Israeli fire, including 16 killed by Israeli near an aid point north of Rafah, according to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza.
In the last 24 hour reporting period, at least eight people, including three children, died from Israeli-imposed starvation and malnutrition, bringing the total number of hunger-related deaths since the war began in October, 2023 to 235, among them 106 children, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), described the deaths as “the latest in the war on children and childhood in Gaza”.
“This is in addition to: over 40,000 children reported killed or injured due to bombardment and airstrikes, at least 17,000 unaccompanied and separated children, and one million deeply traumatised children and out of education,” he wrote in a post on X.
“Children are children. No one should stay silent when children die, or are brutally deprived of a future, wherever these children are, including in Gaza.”
Gaza’s healthcare system has also been the subject of targeted destruction by the Israeli military, which amounts to “medicide”, UN experts said Wednesday, accusing Israel of deliberately attacking and starving healthcare workers, paramedics and hospitals to wipe out medical care in the enclave.
“As human beings and UN experts, we cannot remain silent about the war crimes committed before our eyes in Gaza,” said Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right to health, and Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
“In addition to bearing witness to an ongoing genocide, we are also bearing witness to a ‘medicide’, a sinister component of the intentional creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, which constitutes an act of genocide,” the experts said.
“Health and care workers have been continuously targeted, detained, tortured and are now, like the rest of the population, being starved,” they added.
Ceasefire talks to restart
As the death toll continues to rise in Gaza from Israeli attacks and its punishing blockade, a delegation from the Palestinian group Hamas was scheduled to begin discussions in Egypt over a potential ceasefire on Wednesday.
The previous round of indirect ceasefire talks in Qatar ended in deadlock in late July, after Israel and the United States withdrew their delegations hours after Hamas submitted its response to a truce proposal.
The talks in Cairo will focus on ways to stop the war, deliver aid, and “end the suffering of our people in Gaza”, Hamas official Taher al-Nono said.
A Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations told the news agency Reuters that “Hamas believes negotiation is the only way to end the war and is open to discuss any ideas that would secure an end to the war”.
A Hamas representative also told Reuters the group was willing to hand over governance of Gaza to a non-partisan committee, but would not give up its weapons before a Palestinian state is established.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to continue the war until Hamas is “destroyed”.
Israeli military plan to seize Gaza City
Israel’s security cabinet last week approved plans to seize Gaza City and forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to concentration zones, despite international condemnation from the United Nations and dissent from within Israel’s own military.
However, earlier Wednesday, the military said its chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, had signed off on the “main framework” for the operational plan during a meeting with top commanders, Shin Bet representatives and senior officers.
According to the statement, Zamir “emphasised the importance of increasing troop readiness and preparedness for reserve recruitment, while conducting proficiency training and providing breathing space ahead of the upcoming missions”.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said Israeli forces appeared to be in the preparatory stage of the expanded invasion, hitting multiple neighbourhoods overnight.
“Explosions [were] clearly heard from the eastern part of Gaza City, particularly near the Zeitoun neighbourhood and surrounding areas as far as the Sabra neighbourhood,” Mahmoud reported. “Seven people were reported killed overnight from a mixture of heavy artillery and air strikes targeting major residential clusters.”
In the city’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, three more people were reportedly killed as they fled the area.
Mahmoud said the Zikim crossing, the main entry point for aid in northern Gaza, had become “deadly for Palestinians”, with limited aid trucks allowed through despite crowds of desperate people.
“More people are dying there, either from deliberate Israeli military fire or from the stampede,” he said.
Mahmoud added that there was growing international condemnation of Israel “for creating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza”, but no change on the ground.
“They gave permission for some aid trucks to enter Gaza, to create a media buzz that there is food coming in,” he said. “But that has nothing to do with what’s going on … more people are still dying on a daily basis of enforced starvation.”
From
South Africa’s Cape Town to Manila in the Philippines and London in the UK,
voices are raised in protest.
Protests and vigils have taken
place around the world in support of Palestinians suffering in Gaza and to pay
tribute to the four Al Jazeera journalists and two freelancers killed by Israel
in the besieged enclave in a deliberate targeted assassination on Sunday.Journalists, students, activists and members of civil society – notably in Cape Town, South Africa; Manila, the Philippines; and London, the United Kingdom – held the protests on Wednesday to call on their governments to put pressure on Israel to allow international media into Gaza and bring an end to Israel’s genocidal war there.
Late on Sunday, Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, along with cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, were killed in an Israeli strike that had targeted their media tent located by al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Al-Sharif had been one of Gaza’s most recognisable faces for his constant reporting of the reality on the ground since Israel’s war on Gaza began following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,722 people and wounded 154,525. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks in southern Israel, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Nearly 270 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel since the war began.
South Africa
Members of civil society and journalists gathered at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town on Wednesday to express their anger at al-Sharif’s murder, sporting placards with one reading “your voice was louder than their bombs”.
The location is significant, said Al Jazeera’s Fahmida Miller, reporting from Cape Town, as “it’s been an important signal against oppression here in South Africa, especially during the decades of apartheid”.
The people gathered here “have condemned what Israel has done”, Miller said.
“They want the entry of international journalists into Gaza in addition to the work being done by Palestinian journalists,” she said. “People here are angry.”
Journalist Zubeida Jaffer told Miller, “I was one of the journalists who were targeted, you know those media that documented apartheid, so this really resonates with me.”
Miller said, “The South African government has previously condemned the killing of journalists in Gaza, specifically in 2022 when Shireen Abu Akleh was killed. The South African government had said it was a violation of international law.”
Abu Akleh was a Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera, before she was killed by Israeli forces while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In December 2023, South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
United Kingdom
Reporters belonging to the UK branches of the National Union of Journalists paid their respects on Wednesday to the slain Al Jazeera workers outside the prime minister’s residence at Number 10 Downing Street, said Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from London.
The reporters, holding placards bearing the names of journalists killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began, read out the names of each journalist that appeared on their placard and “symbolically, recited Islamic funeral prayers” for those killed on Sunday, said Hull.
Those present “have really condemned the British government … talking about its complicity in what is going on in Gaza, for not doing more and speaking out more,” said Hull.
While British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday “talked about his grave concern” about the killings of the Al Jazeera journalists, those present on Wednesday “want outright condemnation and nothing less”, said Hull.
“They also want the government to take firm steps to pressure the Israeli government to ensure the safety of journalists in Gaza, importantly to allow international journalists into Gaza to be able to work freely there and for an independent investigation to be carried out by … the International Criminal Court in order to provide justice and accountability for those involved.”
Last week, Starmer condemned Israel’s plans to take over Gaza City, saying they were “wrong” and “will only bring more bloodshed”. He has also announced that the UK will recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel meets certain conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza and reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.
Philippines
Students, campus journalists and activists gathered at the University of the Philippines on Wednesday to express outrage at the killing of the Al Jazeera journalists.
They say “the attack … is a deliberate cover-up by Israel of its crimes against humanity” in the Gaza Strip, said Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo, reporting from Manila.
“They also describe the accusation that Anas al-Sharif, one of the most prominent voices reporting from within Gaza, is a member of Hamas is baseless,” said Lo, noting that protesters say “this is an age-old tactic used by governments who are bent on silencing the truth”.
“Any imperialist power … will choose a scapegoat to use as a pretext, however false it is,” campus journalist Karl Patrick Suyat told Lo.
These protesters also gathered to urge “the international community to ramp up pressure on Israel to stop its genocide, including for the Philippine government to cut its trade and defence ties with Israel”, said Lo.
The Philippines is the third-largest importer of Israeli weapons.
In June, the Philippines voted in favour of a United Nations General Assembly resolution demanding an immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza. This resolution also condemned Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war and called for Israel to lift its blockade on humanitarian aid in Gaza.
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