Updates: Palestinians flee as Israeli forces continue destruction of Rafah

Thanks for joining us.

You can read our story on how Palestinians fled al-Ahli Hospital following Israel’s early morning attack here.

Read our timeline of Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s health facilities since the war began here.

You can keep up to date with all our latest coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.

We’ll be closing this live page soon. Here’s a recap of today’s major developments:

• Israeli forces struck al-Ahli Hospital with two missiles in an early morning attack.
• At least 37 people were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza today, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
• Yemeni officials say five people were killed and 13 wounded by three United States air strikes on a factory west of the capital Sanaa.
• The Houthis in Yemen confirmed they fired two ballistic missiles towards Israel, targeting Ben Gurion Airport.
• Israel’s defence minister says the military is expanding its security zone in northern Gaza and issuing forced evacuation orders for Palestinians to exert “heavy pressure on Hamas in favour of returning to the outline of releasing the hostages”.
• Hamas reiterated that the captives it holds will not be returned by military force but by a “decision [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu refuses to make”.

Our colleagues are reporting that Israeli forces have destroyed several residential buildings west of the southern Gaza city.

On Saturday, the Israeli army said it completed the construction of what it calls the Morag Corridor, which cuts off Rafah from the rest of Gaza, as Israel expanded its attacks on the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

An early morning Israeli strike on al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, the last major hospital providing critical healthcare in northern Gaza, has sparked condemnation in Palestine and across the world as Israel continues to attack healthcare facilities.

Qatar said the attack on the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza was a “horrific massacre and a heinous crime against civilians” that constituted a grave violation of international humanitarian law.

British Foreign Minister David Lammy said Israel’s bombing of medical facilities had “comprehensively degraded access to healthcare” in the enclave.

Read more of this story here.

Israeli forces detained six people, including four teenagers, during an evening raid on the town of Kobar, northwest of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

Security sources told the Wafa news agency that Israeli troops detained five of the Palestinians on the outskirts of the town.

The sources added that 22-year-old Nasser Khalil Shanan was detained before Israeli soldiers seized a car he was returning to his father, adding that the storming of the town coincided with a settler attack on its outskirts.

Muhammad Izzat Badwan, 15, was also detained but was later released.

October 17, 2023

Hundreds of people sheltering in the car park of al-Ahli Hospital were killed in an Israeli attack. In the days leading up to the incident, the hospital director reportedly received warnings from Israel. Israel attributed the explosion at the facility to a misfired rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allegation denied by the armed group.

November 3, 2023

An ambulance convoy was destroyed by an Israeli air attack outside al-Shifa Hospital, resulting in many Palestinian deaths.

November 21, 2023

An air raid on al-Awda Hospital killed Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Dr Ahmad al-Sahar of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and another doctor, Ziad al-Tatari.

January 22, 2024

Several people were killed while sheltering about 150 metres (about 500 feet) from the entrance of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Evacuees sheltering in the area suffered due to fighting and forced evacuation orders.

Read our full list here.

Enas Abu Khalaf,  of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF), spoke to Al Jazeera about the dire situation in the coastal enclave. Here are her translated comments:

• “This is a war on all aspects of life in the Gaza Strip.”
• “We don’t know if we can continue providing medical aid in Gaza.”
• “What happened to the patients at al-Ahli Hospital is like a death sentence for them.”
• “Since the resumption of Israeli attacks, we have lost two of our colleagues.”
• “There is no justification for Israel’s indiscriminate targeting of hospitals.”

The Palestine Red Crescent Society says it has been informed by the International Committee of the Red Cross that Assaad al-Nassasra, its medic who has been missing since an Israeli assault on Rafah last month that killed 15 aid workers, is being held by Israeli authorities.

🚨Urgent: We have been informed by the International Committee of the Red Cross that PRCS medic Assad Al-Nsasrah is being held by the Israeli occupation authorities. His fate had remained unknown since he was targeted along with other PRCS medics in #Rafah.
📢We call on the… pic.twitter.com/l0oOxujS8G

— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) April 13, 2025

The situation here is unfolding in a very critical way. Hundreds of patients and injured people were inside the al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

Its medical staff had already had to make decisions on whom they should prioritise for medical care.

The hospital was a safe haven for patients, away from the unpredictable, falling bombs, from the ongoing horrors.

Israeli attacks had destroyed their homes, their residential blocks, and now they are left not only without a place to stay but also without a proper health facility where they can receive treatment.

Whatever is available now does not constitute the level of proper care that should be provided to them.

The Israeli military has failed to provide or allow the entry of much-needed medical supplies and medical equipment during the first phase of the ceasefire. Instead of moving into phase two, it broke the ceasefire and started a massive bombardment campaign across the Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s Christians marked Palm Sunday at one of the world’s oldest churches.

Watch the video below:

Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu says French President Emmanuel Macron is “gravely mistaken” after he said earlier this week that Paris could recognise a Palestinian state in the next few months.

The Israeli prime minister wrote on X that since the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, no Hamas or Palestinian Authority official has condemned “the atrocities of the worst massacre committed against Jews since the Holocaust, which indicates their true attitude towards the Jewish state”.

“We will not accept moral sermons for the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger the existence of Israel, from those who oppose granting independence to Corsica, New Caledonia, French Guiana, and other territories, whose independence would not endanger France in any way,” Netanyahu wrote.

Israeli news outlet Ynet has reported that more than 250 former Mossad intelligence members have signed a letter calling for the end of the war on Gaza and a return of the captives held in the enclave.

The letter by the former Mossad agents was initiated by the retired senior officer Gail Shoresh and signed by three former heads of the intelligence agency.

This comes after army reservists signed a letter to call for the immediate return of the captives, even if it means changing the army’s current directive. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the letter, calling them “marginal and extremist”.

We have been reporting on US strikes on Yemen that have killed at least five people.

The Houthi group in Yemen has now put out a statement addressing the US attacks, saying that an American MQ-9 drone was shot down in the airspace of Hajjah governorate by a locally made surface-to-air missile.

Yousef Abu Sakran was dozing next to his injured child and wife in a tent ward at al-Ahli Arab Hospital when the sounds of people running and shouting woke him up.

He stepped into the hospital courtyard well before dawn on Sunday to ask what was happening but found no clear answer, only vague news that the Israeli army had made calls to people living around the hospital, demanding the expulsion of everyone in the medical facility.

The 29-year-old father reacted instantly. He scooped up his five-year-old son, Mohammad, and he and Iman ran towards the gate.

Mohammad has severe injuries across his body, including third-degree burns on his back and legs, but Yousef had to keep running with him.

Read more of this story here.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned Israel’s attack on al-Ahli Hospital, where one child died due to the “disruption” of healthcare.

“The hospital was forced to move 50 patients to other hospitals. Forty critical patients couldn’t be moved. The hospital is unable to receive new patients pending repairs,” Ghebreyesus wrote on X.

During Israel’s early morning attack, the hospital’s emergency room, laboratory, and pharmacy were destroyed.

Yemen’s Ministry of Health and Environment says five people were killed and 13 wounded by three US air strikes on a factory in Bani Matar District, west of the capital Sanaa.

The Houthi-affiliated media Al Masirah reported that two US raids also targeted the al-Yatmah area in Khab and al-Sha’af District in al-Jawf governate, northern Yemen.

Tens of thousands of people filled the streets Morocco’s capital in solidarity with Palestinians amid the ongoing war on Gaza.

Political figures, party leaders and civil society organisations took part in the protest in Rabat for the second consecutive Sunday.

Many demonstrators remain angered by Morocco’s decision in 2020 to normalise ties with Israel, a move that sparked controversy at the time and continues to fuel discontent.

Morocco signed the Abraham Accords, a foreign policy push from the first administration of US President Donald Trump, which saw Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates also normalise relations with Israel in return for various diplomatic and financial agreements.

Responding to the attack on al-Ahli Hospital, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has reiterated urgent calls for the protection of health infrastructure amid the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza.

“Attacks on healthcare must end,” he said, adding that hospitals are protected under international law. “Once again we repeat: patients, health workers and hospitals must be protected. The aid blockade must be lifted. Ceasefire.”

Al-Ahli hospital in #Gaza is out of service following this morning’s evacuation order and attack – @WHO has received an update from the hospital’s director. A child died due to disruption of care.

The emergency room, laboratory, emergency room X-ray machines and the pharmacy…

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) April 13, 2025