The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said it will open two supply distribution centres intended to provide aid on Thursday, Reuters is reporting.
The group closed its facilities after the Israeli army warned that roads leading to distribution centres were “considered combat zones” and was due to reopen them this morning, but pushed the time back for what it said were maintenance and repair work. It did not say when distribution of supplies would resume later today.
The group has been fiercely criticised by humanitarian organisations, including the United Nations.
The UN has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave.
More than 2,700 children under the age of five in Gaza were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in the second half of May, “reflecting a sharp deterioration”, reports the Office of the UN high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR).
In its latest Gaza humanitarian situation update, the UN agency, said that of 46,738 children under the age of five who were screened for malnutrition in the second half of May, 5.8% were diagnosed with acute malnutrition, up from 4.7% in the first half of May. This latest figure is almost triple the proportion of children diagnosed with malnutrition out of those screened in February 2025 during the ceasefire, OHCHR reported.
The humanitarian agency also warned that there are now only four stabilisation centres for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition cases with medical complications in the Gaza Strip, including two in Deir al-Balah, one in Khan Younis, and one in Gaza City.
“Stabilisation centres in north Gaza and Rafah have been forced to suspend operations, leaving children in these areas without access to lifesaving treatment,” it added.
Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday during a trip to Paris accused Israel of carrying out “premeditated genocide” in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.
“It’s a premeditated genocide from a far-right government that is waging a war against the interests of its own people,” he said at a joint press conference with France’s president Emmanuel Macron, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
While Lula has previously used the term “genocide”, Macron has refused to, saying last month it was not for a “political leader to use to term but up to historians to do so when the time comes”.
Aid needs to reach the people of Gaza “at speed and at volume”, Keir Starmer said as he restated his view the current situation was “utterly intolerable”, reports the PA news agency.
He told reporters:
In relation to what’s happening in Gaza, we’ve been absolutely clear that it is intolerable and we need to get back to a ceasefire urgently and that is our constant work with other allies to get us to that position.
We need those hostages to come out, many of them have been held for a very long time.
And of course, humanitarian aid needs to get in at speed and at volume, but that can only happen if we get back to a ceasefire so I’m absolutely clear that the situation as it is is utterly intolerable, and that’s why we’ve taken measures like the trading talks have been stood down, the sanctions we’ve put in and we’re working with allies to see what else we can do.
Israel has claimed it was targeting an Islamic Jihad militant operating in the courtyard of the Al-Ahli Hospital in an attack in which three local reporters were killed and six people were wounded (see earlier post). Gaza’s Health Ministry has not yet identified the journalists or said which outlets they worked for.
Over 180 journalists and media workers have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the vast majority of them in Gaza, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel has said many of those killed in its strikes were militants posing as reporters.
The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said it will open two supply distribution centres intended to provide aid on Thursday, Reuters is reporting.
The group closed its facilities after the Israeli army warned that roads leading to distribution centres were “considered combat zones” and was due to reopen them this morning, but pushed the time back for what it said were maintenance and repair work. It did not say when distribution of supplies would resume later today.
The group has been fiercely criticised by humanitarian organisations, including the United Nations.
The UN has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave.
Three journalists have been killed and a fourth critically wounded a fourth in an Israeli attack on Al-Ahli Hospital, also known as the Baptist Hospital, in Gaza City, Al Jazeera has reported.
“The attack was aimed directly at the hospital and resulted in multiple casualties,” the hospital director said. “This is the eighth attack of its kind targeting the facility since the start of the war, and this is a heavy burden on the residents since many hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been ceased their operation.”
UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, has highlighted the lack of hygiene supplies for women and girls menstruating in the Gaza Strip.
In a post on X on Thursday, the UN agency wtote:
‘Every time my period comes, I wish I weren’t a girl,’ says an adolescent in Gaza.
There are around 700,000 women and girls of menstruating age from the Gaza Strip.
Since the State of Israel imposed a siege on Gaza on 2 March, there has been a complete depletion of hygiene supplies, including sanitary pads.
Almost 90% of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza has been either destroyed or partially damaged, the United Nations Population Fund reported.
A joint statement from the Israeli army and the Shin Bet internal security agency said the bodies of Israeli-American hostages, Judih Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai (see 8.33am BST), were recovered from the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip in an overnight operation.
“The rescue operation was conducted by … troops in coordination with the intelligence directorate and special forces,” it added, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
An Israeli military official said the couple were killed on the morning of 7 October by fighters of the Mujahideen Brigades, an armed group close to Hamas ally Islamic Jihad.
Coverage of the war in Gaza is constrained by Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists and a bar on international reporters entering the Gaza Strip to report independently on the war.
Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza since 7 October 2023, unless they are under Israeli military escort. Reporters who join these trips have no control over where they go, and other restrictions include a bar on speaking to Palestinians in Gaza.
Palestinian journalists and media workers inside Gaza have paid a heavy price for their work reporting on the war, with over 180 killed since the conflict began.
The committee to protect journalists has determined that at least 19 of them “were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders”.
Foreign reporters based in Israel filed a legal petition seeking access to Gaza, but it was rejected by the supreme court on security grounds. Private lobbying by diplomats and public appeals by prominent journalists and media outlets have been ignored by the Israeli government. To ensure accurate reporting from Gaza given these restrictions, the Guardian works with trusted journalists on the ground; our visual teams verify photo and videos from third parties; and we use clearly sourced data from organisations that have a track record of providing accurate information in Gaza during past conflicts, or during other conflicts or humanitarian crises.
Israeli president Isaac Herzog has described the return of the bodies of two Israeli-Americans, Judih Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai (see 8.33am BST), as “a moment of deep pain, but also one of solace and the resolution of uncertainty”.
“We will continue to do everything in our power to bring our sisters and brothers back from hell,” he said in a post on X.
Ms Rachel, the children’s entertainer and educator whose YouTube videos have been watched by millions of families around the world, said she is willing to risk her career to keep advocating for suffering children in Gaza.
In an interview with WBUR, a Boston-based public radio station, Ms Rachel, whose full name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, said she had received pushback for speaking out to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza, where more than 54,000 people have been killed in Israel’s ongoing military assault.
But Accurso said she would continue to advocate for children’s safety.
“I wouldn’t be Ms Rachel if I didn’t deeply care about all kids. And I would risk everything, and I will risk my career over and over to stand up for them. It’s all about the kids for me,” Accurso told WBUR.
The UN has described Gaza as “the hungriest place on Earth”, and warned that the Palestinian territory’s entire population is at risk of famine. Accurso said she had recently met with Palestinian women whose children were suffering in Gaza.
“When you sit with a mother who’s FaceTiming her boys in Gaza who don’t have food, and you see that anguish and you are there with her, it really moves you – I’m sorry to get emotional – to do everything you can for her,” she said.
“And of course, you say: ‘I need to do more. What can I do to help?’ I do have a big platform, and I look at it as a responsibility.”
In April, a pro-Israel group urged the US attorney general to investigate Accurso over her messaging about children suffering in Gaza, and Accurso has been criticised by rightwing media and commentators.
Asked about the criticism, Accurso said:
It’s really painful. And I have to remind myself that people don’t know my heart, and people try to tell you who you are, but you know who you are. And I know how deeply and equally I care for all children, and I do lean on my faith in that situation.
