Updates: Palestinians flee Rafah as Israel renews assault on south Gaza

You can read the story of Rahaf, one of more than 15,000 Palestinian children killed by Israel in Gaza, here.

You can watch the story of the children killed on Eid al-Fitr here.

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

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s main events:

• Israel has renewed attacks on Rafah, just hours after tens of thousands of Palestinians were put under forcible displacement orders.
• The displaced were sent to the al-Mawasi area, a so-called “safe zone” that has repeatedly come under Israeli attack.
• At least 322 children have been killed since Israel resumed its attacks on Gaza on March 18, according to UNICEF.
• UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has called Israel’s escalating assault on Gaza “one of the darkest times for our common humanity”.
• Israel aims to occupy 25 percent of Gaza in a new operation, according to an Axios report citing an Israeli official.
• Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has resigned from his post in a dispute with his erstwhile far-right ally, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
• Trump has warned Yemen’s Houthis that the “real pain is yet to come” if they do not halt attacks on shipping.

The US government will review $9bn of funding for Harvard University over alleged anti-Semitism on campus, authorities said, after it cut millions from Columbia University, which has also seen pro-Palestinian student protests.

President Donald Trump has aggressively targeted prestigious US universities, stripping their federal funds and directing immigration officers to deport foreign student demonstrators, including those with green cards.

Officials would look at $255.6m in contracts between Harvard and the government, as well as $8.7bn in multi-year grant commitments to the prestigious Ivy League institution, the General Services Administration said in a statement.

Critics argue that the Trump administration’s campaign is retributive and will have a chilling effect on free speech, while its supporters insist it is necessary to restore order to campuses and protect Jewish students.

“Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination – all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry – has put its reputation in serious jeopardy,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.

Haaretz, citing a senior Israeli official, reports that Israel has offered Hamas a ceasefire through mediators Egypt and Qatar in exchange for the release of 11 living captives and the return of 16 bodies, in addition to providing information on the remaining captives in Gaza.

Israel would also release an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners from its jails, the newspaper said.

The official said that on the fifth day of the deal, Israel would request information from Hamas regarding the rest of the captives in its custody.

Under the Israeli proposal, Tel Aviv would ask Hamas to release the bodies of 16 Israeli captives on the 10th day of the agreement. Israeli estimates indicate that 59 captives remain in Gaza, including 24 who are alive.

No comments have been issued by Israel, Hamas or the mediators on the report.

Tehran has complained to the United Nations Security Council about “reckless and belligerent” remarks by US President Donald Trump, describing them as “a flagrant violation of international law” and the founding UN charter.

Trump threatened Iran on Sunday with bombing and secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear programme.

The Reuters news agency said Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, wrote in a letter that Tehran “strongly warns against any military adventurism and will respond swiftly and decisively to any act of aggression or attack by the United States or its proxy, the Israeli regime, against its sovereignty, territorial integrity, or national interests”.

Said Arikat, a veteran Palestinian journalist who has been a fixture of US State Department news briefings, has been denied a question for the first time in more than two decades, he says.

Arikat, a correspondent with the Jerusalem-based Al Quds news has been a regular presence at the briefings, where he often asks questions about US support for Israeli actions.

But while he is usually one of the first reporters to be called on, he was not allowed to ask a question today.

The development comes as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to silence Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices.

I suppose it was bound to happen. For the first time in close to a quarter of a century of attending the @StateDept briefings, I was not given a question.

— Said Arikat (@SMArikat) March 31, 2025

Yahya Saree, the military spokesman of the Houthi rebels, says in a statement that air defences shot down a US MQ-9 drone over Yemen’s central province of Marib.

The spokesman said the group continues to “prevent Israeli navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas”.

Residents of the war-devastated southern Lebanese village of Aitaroun marked the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr among their dead.

Relatives crowded the village’s cemeteries to pray for the more than 100 residents, including fighters from Hezbollah, who were killed during the war between the group and Israel, which ended with a fragile ceasefire in November.

“We defied the entire world by being here in Aitaroun to celebrate Eid with our martyrs,” Siham Ftouni told the AFP news agency near the grave of her son, a rescuer with an Islamic health organisation affiliated with Hezbollah.

“Their blood permitted us to come back to our village,” she said.

During the war, Lebanese state media reported that Israeli troops used explosives in Aitaroun and two nearby villages to blow up houses. The town square is heavily damaged.

Few people have returned to live or to reopen businesses in Aitaroun or many other villages in southern Lebanon.

Iran would have no alternative but to acquire a nuclear weapon if attacked by the United States or its allies, an adviser to the country’s supreme leader has warned, following a threat by Donald Trump.

The comments came hours after the supreme leader himself, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had promised to hit back if the US president made good on his threat to bomb Iran if it did not agree to a deal to curb its nuclear programme.

“We are not moving towards [nuclear] weapons, but if you do something wrong in the Iranian nuclear issue, you will force Iran to move towards that because it has to defend itself,” Khamenei’s adviser Ali Larijani said in an interview on Iranian TV.

“Iran does not want to do this, but … [it] will have no choice,” he added.

“If at some point you [the US] move towards bombing by yourself or through Israel, you will force Iran to make a different decision.”

Grieving families and colleagues have attended the funeral of the 15 humanitarian workers killed in Rafah while aiding casualties of Israeli attacks.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society buried eight paramedics, five civil defence workers and a UN staff member, condemning Israel’s repeated targeting of medics.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports from Khan Younis in southern Gaza:

At least 322 children have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed its attacks on the territory on March 18, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said, and at least 609 children have also been injured.

“Most of these children were displaced, sheltering in makeshift tents or damaged homes,” the agency added, noting that some of the children killed were being treated at Nasser Hospital, in southern Gaza, which Israel attacked on March 23.

“The resurgence of relentless and indiscriminate bombardments, combined with the complete block on supplies entering the Gaza Strip for more than three weeks, has put the humanitarian response under severe strain and Gaza’s civilians – especially its one million children – at grave risk,” the agency added.

More than 15,000 children have been killed during the 18-month war, over 34,000 were injured, and nearly one million were repeatedly displaced.

Israel’s army has attacked Rafah in southern Gaza, just hours after issuing a forced evacuation order for all Palestinians to leave the area.

Two people have been killed in the strikes. Crowds of people have started moving north – by car and on foot.

Al Jazeera’s Ama Boateng reports:

The Yemeni group’s Al Masirah TV has reported “US aggression on Kamaran Island with two strikes”, quoting its correspondent in Hodeidah.

The island is the largest Yemeni one in the Red Sea and is located off the port city of Hodeidah.

Moments earlier, Trump had warned the Houthis and their Iranian backers they would face “real pain” from more attacks should they keep threatening shipping.

Since then, the Houthis have announced attacks targeting US military ships and Israel.

Houthi-held parts of Yemen have witnessed near-daily attacks since Washington launched a campaign against the rebels on March 15 to force them to stop threatening vessels in key maritime routes.

That day saw a wave of US air strikes that officials said killed senior Houthi leaders and that the Health Ministry said killed 53 people.

Iran’s supreme leader has warned of a forceful response if the US or its allies bomb his country.

That follows a threat made by Trump if there is no deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Watch Al Jazeera’s Inside Story below:

The head of UNRWA has condemned Israeli orders forcibly displacing Palestinians in Gaza amid a heightened military offensive.

“People are treated like pinballs with constant military orders playing with their fate and lives,” the agency’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, wrote in a post on X.

Lazzarini noted that the latest displacement order, affecting all residents of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, is impacting more than 140,000 people.

“Where are people supposed to move? Unlike in other conflicts, where populations can find safety, Gaza is being bombarded all across. It is sealed off like a cage with borders shut and basics not allowed in,” he wrote.

“Two million people, half of them children, live there. How is this allowed, at the world’s watch, with no checks and balances.”

Lazzarini called the war “one of the darkest times for our common humanity”.

As if death, diseases, destruction and hunger were not enough for the Palestinians in #Gaza

People are treated like pinballs with constant military orders playing with their fate & lives.
The Israeli Authorities issued today more forced displacement orders in #Rafah impacting…

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) March 31, 2025

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has resigned from his post in a letter to Netanyahu.

A spokesperson for Smotrich said his resignation was a protest against a request by his erstwhile far-right ally, Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir, for more ministerial positions upon Ben-Gvir’s return to the government.

The resignation is not likely to collapse Netanyahu’s coalition. The government passed its 2025 budget in Israel’s parliament last week.

Ben-Gvir, a former national security minister, left the government in January in protest against the ceasefire in Gaza but said he would rejoin the coalition this month after Israel resumed its war on the territory.

The parties of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir ran together in the last elections but operate independently.

The two figures share a far-right agenda and have both called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, but they have been at odds in recent weeks over funding for the police and Smotrich criticised Ben-Gvir for quitting the government in January.

Axios has quoted an Israeli official as saying that Israel will expand its ground operation in Gaza to occupy 25 percent of the Palestinian territory over the next two to three weeks in order to pressure Hamas to release the remaining captives.

“The Israeli official said the ground operation is part of a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign aimed at forcing Hamas to agree to release more hostages,” Axios reported.

“But reoccupation could go beyond Israel’s stated objectives of the war and could serve as a pretence for pressing Palestinians to leave Gaza.”

Credit ratings agency Fitch affirmed Israel’s ratings at “A” and maintained its negative outlook, citing a high public debt/GDP ratio and still-elevated risks from the ongoing conflict with Gaza.

The debt/GDP ratio measures a country’s public debt relative to its gross domestic product (GDP), with a higher ratio indicating a greater risk of default.

Fitch expects Israel to remain heavily involved in Gaza over the medium term, the agency said in its report.

There is ongoing heavy machine-gun shooting in the eastern part of the Shujayea and Zeitoun neighbourhoods of Gaza City. It seems that the Israeli military is putting more pressure on the few families who are remaining in these areas simply because there’s no other place to go or to evacuate.

They are also targeting the remaining residential buildings in the area with heavy artillery.

Earlier, in the late afternoon, a residential home in Gaza City was targeted and destroyed by fighter jets during a busy time. This is the second day of Eid and families were visiting each other, offering Eid greetings, when the attack happened.

One family member told us that he was five minutes away from visiting his sister, who was killed in the strike. We saw a mother inside the hospital, collapsed and crying … [she was] the mother of three kids who were killed in the attack.

Twelve people were killed in this strike. The last body that was recovered from under the rubble was brought here, along with a plastic bag that was full of the flesh of another body that was recovered from under the rubble. Children, women and men killed in this attack were from one family.

And this wasn’t the only attack today. At least 34 people have been killed across Gaza, more than half of them women and children.