Casualties
33,843 + killed* and at least 76,575 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
462+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
604 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, and at least 6,800 injured.***
*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on April 9, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on April 5, this is the latest figure.
*** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded is according to Israeli media reports.
Key Developments
Israel kills 46 Palestinians, wounds 110 in the past 24 hours across Gaza, raising the death toll since October 7 to 33,482 and the number of wounded to 76,049, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Israel considers “determinant” response to Iranian attack that “does not lead to war.”
UN commissioner for human rights says Israel continues to impose restrictions on aid entry into Gaza.
Gaza health ministry says remaining power generators could stop working.
Israeli court rules for expulsion of 35 Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem.
World Food Program says humanitarian ceasefire needed to overcome famine in Gaza.
Israeli settlers kill two Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israel kills 46 Palestinians over 110 hours
The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry announced that 46 Palestinians who were killed in Israeli strikes arrived at the Gaza Strip’s remaining hospitals alongside 110 other wounded people over the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army continues to besiege Beit Hanoun. Local journalist Imad Zaqout reported that Israeli forces have attempted since Monday to empty Beit Hanoun and the east of Jabalia of Palestinians. Zaqout said that Israeli troops besieged the Mahdiyeh al-Shawa neighborhood, which has been used by displaced families as a refuge.
In the central Gaza Strip, Israeli forces continued to shell the north of the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing three Palestinians, and killing four others in a strike on a mosque in the center of the camp. Israeli troops also destroyed a residential block in the Mighraqa village, north of Deir al-Balah
In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli strikes killed six Palestinians in the Jneineh neighborhood in Rafah. Other strikes were reported east of Khan Younis, where medical teams recovered three dead bodies.
In the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical teams recovered 15 new dead bodies from across Khan Younis who were killed in previous Israeli strikes, almost two weeks after Israel’s withdrawal from the city. In Rafah, Israeli strikes killed four Palestinians in two different strikes in the Tel al-Sultan and the al-Zuhour neighborhoods.
Israel considers a strike against Iran that ‘does not lead to war’
Israel has informed U.S. officials about its options for a strike against Iran in response to Iran’s retaliation against Israel last weekend for Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1, NBC reported on Tuesday.
According to NBC, U.S. sources said that Israel could target Iranian assets in the region outside of Iranian soil. The sources were quoted as saying that Washington does not wish to take part in Israeli actions, but that Israel will coordinate with the U.S.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 12 said that Israel seeks to conduct a “determinant strike” that “doesn’t lead to war.”
Israel’s ‘Walla’ news website said that “we should not expect large-scale attacks on Iranian assets,” adding that Iran’s interests in the region are many, which gives Israel “several ways to act.”
UN says Israel continues to restrict entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip
The UN human rights commissioner said in a report on Tuesday that Israel continues to impose “unlawful restrictions” to the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip. The report also observed the presence of a “widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure.”
Also on Tuesday, the World Health Program issued a statement saying that an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” is needed to overcome the famine in the Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday, a bakery in Gaza City operated for the first time in six months, after an aid shipment reached the city with the help of the World Food Program. Egyptian media reported that 56 aid trucks were allowed into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday by the Rafah border crossing, three days after Israel began to allow limited numbers of aid trucks into the strip. Before October 7, Israel allowed up to 500 trucks of goods into Gaza per day.
Shortly after October 7, Israel imposed a total blockade of food, water, fuel, and electricity on the 2.3 million people residing in the Gaza Strip. Already, 30 Palestinians, mostly children, have been reported dead of starvation since October.
wo Palestinians were killed on Tuesday in the village of Aqraba, southeast of Nablus, in the ongoing series of violent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank.
The victims were identified as Abdel Rahman Bani Fadl, 30, and Muhammad Bani Jamea, 21, both from Aqraba, killed by settler gunfire. Aqraba’s mayor, Salahadin Bani Fadl, told Palestinian media on Tuesday that he was informed by the Palestinian liaison office, the Palestinian Authority’s body in charge of contact with the occupation authorities for civil affairs in the West Bank, that they were killed and that their bodies were withheld by the Israeli army.
The mayor said that around 50 settlers attacked Khirbet al-Tawil, a farming land in Aqraba which belongs to the village’s families and that they opened fire at Palestinians who tried to confront them. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society also reported that its teams transferred three Palestinians to the hospital after being severely beaten by the settlers.
Since Friday, Israeli settlers waged a violent campaign against Palestinian villages, after an Israeli settler teenager was found dead in a hilly area northeast of Ramallah. Settler attacks targeted the villages of Mughayyir, Duma, Sinjel, Turmusayya, Mazraa al-Sharqiyyah, and Beitin, all on the eastern line of the central West Bank hills overlooking the Jordan Valley.
During the attacks, settlers torched dozens of Palestinian cars, houses, and livestock barracks, according to residents’ accounts to breaking news. Settlers also killed two Palestinians over the weekend, 25-year-old Jihad Abu Alia, in Mughayyir, and 17-year-old Omar Hamed in Beitin, raising the death toll of the settlers’ violence campaign to four since Friday.
With the killing of Bani Fadl and Bani Jamea, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since October 7 has risen to 468, and to 150 since the beginning of 2024.