Updates: Journalists among 65 killed in wave of Israeli attacks on Gaza

You can read about Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat, here.

You can read about the settler attack against No Other Land co-director Hamdan Ballal here.

And to follow all of our coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, click here.

We will be closing the live page soon. Here’s a brief recap of the day’s main events:

• At least 65 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours.
• Two Palestinian journalists were killed in Israeli air strikes, including Hossam Shabat, a reporter with Al Jazeera.
• The Israeli military issued new forced evacuation orders in northern Gaza. UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, says at least 124,000 Palestinians have been internally displaced in Gaza in recent days.
• The Israeli army confirmed it attacked a Red Cross building in Rafah, saying that the building’s affiliation was unknown at the time of the shooting.
• The UN announced that it would reduce the number of international staff in Gaza after staff were killed in recent strikes.
• Senior Trump administration officials accidentally added a reporter to a text chain in which they shared plans to strike Yemen – an unprecedented security breach.
• A Palestinian co-director of No Other Land was attacked by settlers and arrested by the Israeli army in the Susya area of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank.
• A 17-year-old Palestinian child has died while in Israeli custody – the first Palestinian minor to die in an Israeli prison.

In a span of days, Israel resumed its bombing campaign against the people of Gaza, the US launched a war with Yemen and US President Donald Trump threatened Iran to negotiate with Washington or else face war.

But despite all the aggression, the US is not necessarily getting its way, argues Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

Watch the interview here:

The US State Department spokesperson has deflected questions about the killings of two journalists in Israeli attacks on Gaza – Al Jazeera’s Hossam Shabat and Palestine Today’s Mohammad Mansour – instead, placing the blame on Hamas.

“I would say that every single thing that’s happening is a result of Hamas and its choices to drag that region down into a level of suffering that has been excruciating and has caused innumerable deaths,” Tammy Bruce told reporters during a news briefing.

Bruce further reiterated US support for Israel, stating that Washington stands by Israel’s “needs as it defends itself”.

Pressed on whether the killing of the journalists could be considered a war crime, Bruce declined to provide a direct answer.

“I’m not going to stand here and declare what’s a war crime and what isn’t,” she said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the killing of Shabat and Mansour and called for an independent investigation into whether they were deliberately targeted.

“The deliberate and targeted killing of a journalist, of a civilian, is a war crime,” Jodie Ginsberg, the CPJ’s chief executive, said.

Hamdan Ballal, the co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was one of three Palestinians attacked by settlers and then detained by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank village of Susiya on Monday, according to lawyer Leah Tsemmel.

Police told her they are being held at a military base for medical treatment and she told The Associated Press she has not been able to speak with them.

Basel Adra, another co-director of the film, witnessed the detention and said about two dozen settlers – some masked, some carrying guns – attacked the village. Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones.

“We came back from the Oscars and every day since, there is an attack on us,” Adra told the AP. “This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”

No Other Land, which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.

Adra said that settlers entered the village on Monday evening shortly after residents broke the daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A settler – who according to Adra frequently attacks the village – walked over to Ballal’s home with the military, and soldiers shot in the air.

Ballal’s wife heard her husband being beaten outside and heard him scream, “I’m dying”, according to Adra.

Adra then saw the soldiers lead Ballal, handcuffed and blindfolded, from his home into a military vehicle. Speaking to the AP by phone, he said Ballal’s blood was still splattered on the ground outside his own front door.

A group of 10-20 masked settlers with stones and sticks also assaulted activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, smashing their car windows and slashing tyres to make them flee the area, one of the activists at the scene, Josh Kimelman, told the AP.

One person was killed in an Israeli attack in southern Lebanon late on Monday, after a wave of intensive air attacks in the region over the weekend, state media reported.

“A raid by an enemy Israeli drone on a vehicle in the area of Qaqaiyat al-Jisr left one dead,” the National News Agency said, citing information from the Lebanese Health Ministry.

Israel launched air strikes on southern Lebanon on Saturday, killing eight people, in response to rocket fire that hit its territory for the first time since a ceasefire with Hezbollah took effect on November 27.

No party has claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, which a military source said was launched from an area north of the Litani River, between the villages of Kfar Tebnit and Arnoun, near the zone covered by the ceasefire agreement.

Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement that it “strongly condemns” the killing of Hossam Shabat, Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent, in an Israeli air strike that hit his car in Jabalia, northern Gaza on Monday.

“Al Jazeera affirms its commitment to pursue all legal measures to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes against journalists. And stand in unwavering solidarity with all journalists in Gaza and reaffirm its commitment to achieving justice and prosecuting the killers of more than 200 journalists in Gaza since October 2023,” it said in the statement.

“The Network extends its condolences to Hossam’s family, and calls on all human rights and media organisations to condemn the Israeli occupation’s systematic killing of journalists, the evasion of responsibilities under international humanitarian law, and to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice.

“Al Jazeera renews its firm commitment to covering events in the Gaza Strip, despite the ongoing targeting and harassment faced by its correspondents and journalists.”

Other Al Jazeera journalists and correspondents killed since October 2023 during Israel’s war on Gaza include Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Ismail Al-Ghoul and Ahmed Al-Louh.

After more than a year of being unable to contact my friend, one morning in January 2025, while in our shelter in Rafah, I received a call from an unknown number.

I was overjoyed when I heard Malak’s voice. She was happy and excited to speak to me, but she sounded exhausted.

Two days later, on January 8, I made plans with my mother to visit Malak. I called her to confirm. Malak’s younger sister Farah answered, crying bitterly. “Malak is gone,” she sobbed.

Read more here.

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic report that several other people were also injured in the attack on a house in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza.

The International Committee of the Red Cross’s office in Rafah in southern Gaza has been damaged by an explosive projectile.

No staff have been wounded in the attack, which was confirmed by the Israeli army.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports from Gaza:

The Israeli military has told residents of the Jabalia area in northern Gaza to evacuate their homes ahead of an attack.

“To all those present in the area of Jabalia, this is an early warning before a strike. Terrorist organisations are once again returning to and firing rockets from populated areas … For your safety, head south towards the known shelters immediately,” Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X, after issuing similar warnings for the northern towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoon.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, has warned during a visit to Jerusalem that Israeli strikes on Syria and Lebanon threatened to worsen instability in the region.

“Military actions must be proportionate, and Israeli strikes into Syria and Lebanon risk further escalation,” Kallas said at a joint news conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.

In Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes on military sites since rebels overthrew longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel says it wants to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of the new authorities.

“We feel that these things are unnecessary because Syria is right now not attacking Israel and that feeds more radicalisation that is also against Israel,” Kallas told journalists.

In Lebanon, the most intense escalation since a November ceasefire, which ended the war between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, occurred on Saturday.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said eight people were killed in Israel’s strikes. Israel said its attacks were in response to rockets fired at Israel, which Hezbollah has denied responsibility for.

It’s truly unprecedented and I’m sure people are going to be looking into it, whether or not the White House is going to investigate itself, which seems somewhat unlikely.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a really respected journalist here in Washington, especially when it comes to national security. He works for The Atlantic, and got a message that [US National Security Advisor] Michael Waltz wanted to connect via Signal, so he said, “Sure”.

But then a few days later, he got added to this group and it seemed like the people on it were the US vice president, the secretary of defence, the secretary of state, the director of national intelligence.

About 18 members in all, very high up in the Trump administration, and they talked about whether or not the US should strike Yemen.

And very unusually, JD Vance, the vice president, who never disagrees with the president in public, said he didn’t think it was a good idea, pointing out that only three percent of US goods are shipped through the Suez Canal.

Then Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth responded that they should do it and that [the US] are the only military with the capability to do just that. And then they talked about how, if the strikes were successful, they would want to see some sort of payment from both Egypt and Europe.

But the most remarkable part of this is, two hours before the first strikes were launched in Yemen, this reporter knew exactly what was going to happen, what assets were involved, what weapons, how exactly the strikes were going to be laid out.

That could have put a lot of US troops in jeopardy and then afterwards, there were a whole lot emojis going back and forth.

The White House has confirmed a report by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who says senior Trump administration officials accidentally included him in a Signal chat group in which they discussed plans to conduct strikes in Yemen.

Goldberg was included in a group chat in which US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials discussed upcoming strikes against Yemen’s Houthis. Trump announced strikes on March 15, but in a shocking security breach, Goldberg wrote that he had hours of advance notice via the group chat.

“The message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told reporters.

The security breach provoked outrage among Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Chris Coons, who wrote on X that “every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime.”

Signal, an open-source, encrypted messaging application, is not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information.

Major protests have been taking place in Israel against Netanyahu.

His firing of the internal security service chief has been blocked by the Supreme Court for now.

But the opposition is calling for a general strike.

Al Jazeera’s Inside Story discusses how serious Israel’s political crisis is:

Israel’s continuing attacks on journalists aim to “deter them from conveying the truth and exposing the occupation’s massacres against our Palestinian people,” Hamas says in a statement on Telegram.

It said Israel deliberately targeted journalist Hussam Shabat, a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher, and Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, today while they were doing their jobs.

“In light of these heinous crimes and the deliberate targeting of journalists, we call on international press and media institutions to fulfil their responsibilities in exposing these crimes and protecting Palestinian journalists,” Hamas said, adding that Israeli forces have killed 208 journalists in Gaza since October 2023.

The UN is saying that they are going to reduce the number of international staff in Gaza.

The UN has over 13,000 employees in Gaza, the vast majority of them are Palestinians who work as doctors, nurses, drivers and perform other very important humanitarian jobs in Gaza.

Over 250 have been killed in the past 15 months or so, but now the secretary-general is saying that the situation is so dangerous that of the 100 international staff in Gaza employed by the UN, he’s going to reduce that staffing by about one-third, or about 30 of those international staff, who are going to leave Gaza for their own safety.

An army statement on Telegram says hostile aircraft sirens were activated in at 9pm (19:00 GMT).

According to the military, Israel’s air force successfully intercepted a rocket that crossed into the Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip.