By Abdul Adil
(AA, Al Jazeera, Wafa, The Muslim News):
GAZA
At least 100 more Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours, bringing the overall death toll from Israel’s indiscriminate bombings since October 2023 to 50,523, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.
Israeli army attacks killed at least 100 in Gaza including 58 in Gaza City.
At least 27 Palestinian civilians, including children, were killed and over 100 others injured this afternoon in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a school sheltering displaced people in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, northeast of Gaza City, according to local sources.
WAFA correspondent reported that Israeli warplanes struck the Al-Arqam School, which was housing displaced families, with three missiles. The attack resulted in at least 27 fatalities and over a hundred injured among the civilians present.
A ministry statement said that 138 more injured people were also transferred to hospitals in the last 24 hours, bringing the number of injuries in the Israeli onslaught to 114,776.
Medical sources tell Al Jazeera at least 25 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 100 wounded in an Israeli air strike on a school housing hundreds of displaced people in the Tuffah neighbourhood of northern Gaza City.
Many of the casualties are children and women.
The school was hit with four missiles, according to a Civil Defence agency spokesperson.
Israeli airstrikes hit a residential apartment block in the Shejaiya neighborhood in Gaza City, killing 20 people, a medical source said.
The source said five more people also lost their lives in Israeli strikes on homes along Al-Yarmouk Street in central Gaza City.
Israeli fighter jets also struck three Palestinian homes, killing at least 12 people in eastern Khan Younis in southern Gaza, another medical source said.
Twelve more people were killed when Israeli forces bombed homes and tents sheltering displaced civilians in several areas in the same city.
Four Palestinians perished in an Israeli airstrike targeting a house in the Sabra neighborhood in southern Gaza City, the medical source said.
Medics said two more Palestinians were killed and several others injured in a separate Israeli strike on a vehicle carrying displaced people on Al-Mansoura Street in the Shejaiya neighborhood in the same city.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to escalate attacks on Gaza amid efforts to implement US President Donald Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from the enclave.
Israel began a surprise aerial campaign on Gaza on March 18, and has since killed more than 1,160 victims and injured over 2,700, shattering a January ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
Israel has systematically targeted civilian facilities, including schools, hospitals, and places of worship, amid its ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip.
Under the rules of war, targeting such civilian facilities can constitute a war crime.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to escalate attacks on Gaza amid efforts to implement US President Donald Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from the enclave.
More than 39,000 Palestinian children have been orphaned by Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, official figures showed on Thursday.
“Some 39,384 children in Gaza have lost one or both parents after 534 days of the Israeli genocide,” the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in a statement marking the Palestinian Child’s Day, which falls on April 5.
It explained that around 17,000 children have lost both parents in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 2023.
“These children are living in tragic conditions, with many forced to take refuge in torn tents or destroyed homes, in a near-total absence of social care and psychological support,” it added.
“The Gaza Strip is suffering from the largest orphan crisis in modern history,” the statistics bureau said.
According to the statement, at least 17,954 children have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, including 274 newborn babies and 876 infants under one year old.
“Seventeen children also froze to death in the tents sheltering displaced people, and 52 others died of starvation and systematic malnutrition,” it added.
The bureau warned that 60,000 children face death due to malnutrition and looming famine in Gaza amid a deadly Israeli blockade on the enclave.
WEST BANK
The Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners Society have condemned the Israeli authorities for committing a heinous crime against 17-year-old Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmed, who died in Israeli custody at the Megiddo prison. According to the results of an autopsy, starvation was identified as the primary cause of his severe symptoms, which ultimately led to his death.
Both organizations stated that Walid was medically examined in December 2024 and February 2025 after suffering from scabies, a contagious skin disease. Following complaints of insufficient food, he was examined again but remained underfed. On March 22, 2025, Walid lost consciousness and was finally transferred to the prison clinic, where attempts to revive him failed, and he was declared dead.
The autopsy report revealed severe internal damage, including swollen and air-filled tissues around his heart, neck, chest wall, abdomen, and intestines, as well as muscle and fat atrophy in the upper body and limbs. It also indicated skin rashes consistent with his scabies infection, particularly on his lower limbs.
The report further confirms that the conditions of deprivation, including dehydration from insufficient water intake and severe weight loss caused by untreated gastrointestinal issues, contributed to his death.
The Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners Society stated that Walid’s death was not an isolated incident, but part of a broader pattern of medical abuse within Israeli prisons, including deliberate starvation, lack of necessary medical treatment, and the systematic torture of prisoners. They emphasized that hundreds of Palestinian children, like Walid, continue to endure these cruel conditions while detained by Israeli authorities.
Walid Ahmed, from the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah, had been detained on September 30, 2024, and was still under detention at the time of his death. He became the 63rd Palestinian to die in Israeli detention since the beginning of the ongoing genocide in October 2023.
Meanwhile, Israeli military bulldozers have destroyed streets in Aktaba, a suburb of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, during a major raid involving soldiers and armoured vehicles.
The bulldozers damaged water and sewage networks while Israeli forces raided a building and fired live ammunition, local sources told the Wafa news agency.
During 67 days of an Israeli siege on Tulkarem, most infrastructure has been destroyed, and thousands of Palestinians have been displaced.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli forces arrested a man at the Sarra checkpoint west of Nablus and another during a raid on the city of el-Bireh.
Near the village of Bardala in the northern Jordan Valley, illegal Israeli settlers expanded work on an illegal outpost being built close to Palestinian homes.
Israeli army forces raided the Al-Fawar refugee camp in the southern West Bank on Thursday amid military escalation across the occupied territory.
According to witnesses, Israeli forces held dozens of youths for field interrogation at the camp south of Hebron city before setting them free.
Clashes erupted between angry residents and Israeli forces, who used live fire and rubber-coated bullets to disperse Palestinians, witnesses said. No injuries were reported.
The raid was the latest in Israel’s ongoing military escalation in the occupied West Bank, where at least 942 people have been killed and over 7,000 others injured in Israeli attacks since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to the Health Ministry.
The Israeli army has also launched a deadly offensive in the northern West Bank since January, killing more than 70 Palestinians and displacing thousands.
The International Court of Justice declared Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestinian territories illegal in July. It demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
YEMEN
The Yemeni Houthi [Ansar Allah] group claimed on Thursday to have shot down a US drone in western Yemen and attacked US Navy ships in the Red Sea, as Washington escalated its airstrikes on the country.
A Houthi statement said that a surface-to-air missile downed an MQ-9 drone as it was carrying out “hostile” missions over the coastal province of Al-Hudaydah.
According to the statement, the drone was the second to have been intercepted in the last 72 hours and the 17th since October 2023.
Military spokesman Yahya Saree also said that Houthi forces targeted the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its affiliated warships in the Red Sea, using several cruise missiles and drones.
There was no immediate US comment on the Houthi statements.
Saree said the US launched more than 36 airstrikes targeting several areas across Yemen, resulting in fatalities and injuries, without giving a specific figure.
According to the Houthi-run Health Ministry, at least 61 civilians have been killed and 139 others injured in US airstrikes across Yemen since March 15.
Last month, US President Donald Trump said that he had ordered “decisive and powerful military action” against the Houthis and later threatened to “completely annihilate them.”,
LEBANON
The Israeli military says it attacked a Hezbollah “terrorist” operating in the Alma al-Shaab area in southern Lebanon.
Israel has hit Lebanon repeatedly since agreeing to a truce with Hezbollah in November, including striking the capital, Beirut.
The ceasefire brought a halt to a year-long conflict and mandated that Israeli ground troops withdraw from southern Lebanon.
It also called for Hezbollah fighters to withdraw from the south, beyond the Litani River and the United Nations-designated temporary border, the Blue Line, and for Lebanese troops to deploy there.
[Photo: Civil defense teams on the scene to conduct search and rescue operation among debris following the Israeli attack on Dar al-Arqam School, where displaced Palestinians took refuge, in Gaza City, Gaza on April 3, 2025. Photojournalist: Saeed Mohammed/AA]
