Medics

Health officials in Gaza say many of the 90 returned bodies bore marks of violence and possible executions.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health says it has received the remains of 45 Palestinians who were held in Israeli custody via the International Committee of the Red Cross, bringing the total number of bodies returned to 90 as part of a United States-brokered ceasefire deal.

Medical teams are continuing to examine, document and prepare the bodies for delivery to families “in line with approved medical procedures and protocols”, the Health Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Under a ceasefire deal backed by US President Donald Trump and aimed at ending the two-year Gaza war, Israel was to turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every deceased Israeli returned. The remains of 45 people were returned on Monday.

Palestinians awaited information about the bodies that arrived at Nasser Hospital on Tuesday and Wednesday. The forensics team described disturbing conditions, bearing signs of physical abuse.

Some of the Palestinian bodies were blindfolded and handcuffed, indicating “field executions” may have taken place, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Israel is expected to hand over more bodies, though officials have not said how many are in its custody or how many will be returned. It remains unclear whether the bodies were dug up from cemeteries by the Israeli army during its ground offensive or if they belong to detainees who were killed during the Israeli assault. Throughout the war, Israel’s military has exhumed bodies as part of its search for the remains of captives.

As forensic teams examined the first remains returned, the Health Ministry on Wednesday released images of 32 unidentified bodies to help families recognise missing relatives.

Many appeared decomposed or burned. Some were missing limbs or teeth, while others were coated in sand and dust. Health officials have said Israeli restrictions on allowing DNA testing equipment into Gaza have often forced morgues to rely on physical features and clothing for identification.

The forensics team that received the bodies said some arrived still shackled or bearing signs of physical abuse.

“There are signs of torture and executions,” Sameh Hamad, a member of a commission tasked with receiving the bodies at Nasser Hospital, said.

The bodies belonged to men aged 25 to 70. Most had bands on their necks, including one who had a rope around his neck. Most of the bodies wore civilian clothing, but some were in uniforms, suggesting they were Palestinian fighters.

Hamad said the Red Cross provided names for only three of the dead, leaving many families uncertain of their relatives’ fate.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians since October 2023, according to the Health Ministry. Palestinian officials say the true toll could be far higher, with tens of thousands of bodies believed to be under the rubble.

Thousands more people are missing, according to the Red Cross and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Rasmiya Qudeih, 52, waited outside Nasser Hospital, hoping her son would be among the 45 bodies transferred from Israel on Wednesday.

He vanished on October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas-led attack. She was told he was killed by an Israeli strike.

“God willing, he will be with the bodies,” she said.

The Health Ministry released a video showing medical workers examining the bodies, saying the remains would be returned to families or buried if left unidentified.

Rights groups and a United Nations Commission of Inquiry have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, and South Africa has filed a case alleging Israel committed genocide at the International Court of Justice. Israel denies the accusations.

The attack by the paramilitary on the hospital wounded 17 others, and is the second such attack in 24 hours.

At least 12 people have been killed and 17 were wounded when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shelled a hospital in Sudan’s North Darfur state, medical sources said.

A female doctor and a nursing staff member were among the injured in the attack on the el-Fasher Hospital, the Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Wednesday.

The medical group said the RSF “directly bombed” the facility. It alleged the attack was a “full-fledged war crime” and showed “a complete disregard for the lives of civilians and international laws that protect health facilities and their workers”.

The group held the RSF “fully responsible” for the attack and appealed to the international community and the United Nations Security Council to take immediate action to stop attacks on health facilities and civilian homes and to protect the devastated health system in the besieged city.

The hospital is one of the last functioning health facilities in the city, with most repeatedly bombed and forced to shut.

Two medical sources confirmed Wednesday’s attack, which was the second on the hospital within 24 hours, after eight people were killed in an attack on a maternity ward on Tuesday.

The RSF is pressing a fierce assault on el-Fasher in an attempt to wrest control of the city away from its rivals, the regular Sudanese army.

Since April 2023, the war between the two forces has killed tens of thousands, displaced some 15 million and pushed nearly 25 million people into acute hunger, according to UN figures, triggering what has widely been described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Some activists say el-Fasher, the last state capital in the vast western Darfur region to elude the paramilitary’s grasp, has become “an open-air morgue” for starved civilians.

The RSF has imposed a blockade on el-Fasher since May 10, 2024, despite international warnings about the dangers to the city, a hub for humanitarian operations in the five Darfur states.

Nearly 80 percent of households in need of medical care in el-Fasher are unable to access it, according to the UN.

Exhausted medical teams are already scrambling to treat the injured amid daily attacks on the city.

Nearly 18 months into the RSF’s siege, the city – home to 400,000 trapped civilians – has run out of nearly everything. The animal feed families have survived on for months has grown scarce and now costs hundreds of dollars a sack.

The majority of the city’s soup kitchens have also been forced shut for lack of food, according to local resistance committees, volunteer groups that coordinate aid.

More than one million people have fled el-Fasher since the start of Sudan’s civil war, with the exodus dramatically escalating as the RSF has increased attacks following its loss of control of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, earlier this year.

Israel has struck Nasser Hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip, killing at least 21 people, including five journalists, as well as medics and rescue workers, in the latest deliberate attack on civilians and the besieged enclave’s decimated health system.

Monday’s attack, which killed journalists who worked for Al Jazeera, the Reuters and Associated Press (AP) news agencies, and others, was among the deadliest of a multitude of Israeli strikes that have targeted both hospitals and media workers over the course of the nearly two-year genocidal assault.

It comes as Israel widens its offensive to heavily populated areas and urban centres, including Gaza City, increasing the already heightened peril for the population.

The first strike of the “double-tap” attack, where one strike is followed by a second soon after, hit the top floor of a building at Nasser Hospital. Minutes later, as journalists and rescuers in orange vests rushed up an external staircase, a second projectile hit, said Dr Ahmed al-Farra, the head of the paediatrics department.

Among the journalists killed were Al Jazeera’s Mohammad Salama, Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, Mariam Abu Daqqa, a freelance journalist working for AP at the time, as well as Ahmed Abu Aziz and Moaz Abu Taha.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said the attack has “sent the entire area into an absolute sense of chaos and panic”.

“Not only for passers-by or people living in the vicinity of the hospital, but for the patients themselves, who are receiving treatment in one of the areas that must be protected under … international humanitarian law,” Abu Azzoum said.

The attack was met with widespread global condemnation, including from press freedom groups and rights advocates, who expressed outrage over Israel’s repeated targeted killings of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

Al Jazeera condemned the attack as “a clear intent to bury the truth”.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, also decried the attack.

“Rescuers killed in line of duty. Scenes like this unfold every moment in Gaza, often unseen, largely undocumented,” Albanese said.

“I beg states: how much more must be witnessed before you act to stop this carnage? Break the blockade. Impose an Arms Embargo. Impose Sanctions.”

Israel’s allies, such as France Germany and the United Kingdom, have called for an investigation.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate also condemned Israel for the strikes, saying it represented “an open war against free media, with the aim of terrorising journalists and preventing them from fulfilling their professional duty of exposing its crimes to the world”.

The attack raises the death toll of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 to at least 273, according to an Al Jazeera tally.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called for “the international community to hold Israel accountable for its continued unlawful attacks on the press”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the strike was a “tragic mishap”, and that the military was investigating it. Israel has often issued similar statements after incidents that drew international outrage and calls for UN investigations, but actual accountability for the perpetrators is unheard of.

Israeli forces also killed Palestinian correspondent Hassan Douhan, who worked for the Al-Hayat al-Jadida publication, in a separate incident in Khan Younis later on Monday, bringing the death toll of journalists killed that day to six.

Two weeks ago, Israel killed prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif and four other journalists in a strike. In that attack, Israel acknowledged targeting Sharif and falsely alleged he worked for Hamas, without providing any evidence, after having openly maligned and condemned him for months before murdering him.

Nasser Hospital has withstood raids and bombardment during the war, with officials repeatedly noting critical shortages of supplies and staff amid a crippling aid blockade. Other hospitals have also come under attack, including al-Shifa Medical Complex, the enclave’s main hospital, where Israel has killed hundreds.

Death, desperation and famine stalk enclave

Israeli attacks across the famine-struck territory have killed at least 61 people since dawn on Monday, including seven people desperately seeking aid.

Tanks have been advancing in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have been intensifying attacks in a bid to force nearly 1 million Palestinians there southwards into concentration zones.

Gaza’s Civil Defence said that Israel had destroyed 1,000 buildings in Gaza City since August 6, trapping hundreds under the rubble, while ongoing shelling and blocked access routes prevented many rescue and aid operations.

The al-Awda Hospital said Israeli gunfire also killed six aid seekers trying to reach a distribution point in central Gaza and wounded another 15.

Israeli forces have been routinely opening fire on hungry Palestinians as they attempt to secure meagre aid parcels at the controversial Israeli and United States-backed GHF sites.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and some 13,500 wounded while seeking aid at distribution points or along convoy routes used by the UN and other aid groups.

Al-Awda said that two Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed six Palestinians, including a child, while al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said three Palestinians, including a child, were killed in a strike there.

The relentless attacks continue as the UN warns that malnutrition among children in Gaza is deepening.

The UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) renewed calls for the unrestricted flow of aid into and within Gaza.

“With famine conditions now confirmed in Gaza governorate, hunger and malnutrition among children are deepening,” OCHA said.

“Partners working on nutrition note that in any food crisis, children with underlying health conditions are affected first – and without proper nutrition, water and care, their condition worsens more quickly.”

Chris McIntosh, Oxfam’s humanitarian response adviser in Gaza, has described the situation as unprecedented in scale and severity.

“It’s difficult not to overuse superlatives in this context, but truly, this is a singular humanitarian disaster and the worst crisis that I’ve ever been part of… by far,” he said.

In the meantime, US President Donald Trump has predicted that the war on Gaza could see a “conclusive end” within two to three weeks. Similar claims have quickly fallen by the wayside as Washington’s full military and diplomatic backing of Israel’s genocidal war shows no signs of abating.

“It’s got to get over with because between the hunger and all of the other problems – worse than hunger, death, pure death – people [are] being killed,” Trump said.

A TEEN boy died “in terror” after his dad crashed on a motorway while high on cocaine.

Daniel Burba, 31, has been advised by doctors not to drive when got behind the wheel of his wife’s van with 14-year-old Ryan Morgan in the passenger seat.

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The dad had been diagnosed with epilepsy just weeks before the horror which was made worse by the use of illegal drugs.

Despite this, Burba was four-times the limit for cocaine and its derivative benzoylecgonine – causing him to suffer an epileptic fit.

Ryan had no choice but to try to gain control of the van before it swerved off the M6 near Lancaster and hit a tree.

The teen was tragically pronounced dead at the scene after suffering head injuries.

Burba, who also only had a provisional licence, was taken to hospital with “relatively minor” injuries.

While being treated, a paramedic discovered a small bag of cocaine in the dad’s wallet.

Burba has now been jailed for ten years after he pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and driving without a licence or insurance.

In a victim impact statement, Ryan’s mum said her heart has been broken and told how she has been unable to grieve properly because she fears once she starts, she won’t be able to stop.

She continued: “I feel that no amount of time Daniel will serve will ever be enough for taking Ryan’s life. Not only did he take my boy’s life, he took my boy’s future.

“My boy will never grow and be a father, go to work and follow his dreams or travel. He didn’t even get to finish school. He hasn’t ever had a chance to experience life.

“It’s so unfair because Ryan did have a beautiful heart. He wanted to be a policeman. He would have changed the world. He made it a better place in the short time he was here. He made everyone smile who came into contact with him. He had a smile that lit up the room.

“Daniel has taken all that and more. Daniel has taken a precious son, brother, grandson, nephew, friend and cousin. He had so much to live for.

“The fact that Daniel knew he wasn’t allowed to drive due to his seizures, plus a lack of licence and insurance is just disgusting.”

Preston Crown Court heard the horror unfolded on April 20 as other motorists noticed Burba driving erratically with his hazards on.

He reached speeds of more than 70mph before leaving the carriageway and smashing into a tree.

The court heard the Peugeot Bipper van flipped over due to the force it hit the tree.

Police later discovered Burba had been told in October 2014 by his doctor to stop taking cocaine after he suffered a seizure which lasted up to four minutes.

He was also advised not to drive, with the same warning issued in February when he was admitted to hospital after more fits.

Sentencing, Judge Robert Altham, the Honorary Recorder of Preston, told him: “You knew that cocaine predisposed you to further fits.

“You were not entitled to drive unsupervised and certainly not on the motorway. You should not have behind the wheel at all.”

As well as the jail sentence, Judge Altham disqualified Burba from driving for 14 years and five months.

Sgt Martin Wilcock, Senior Investigating Officer at our Road Policing Unit, said: “No sentence will ever make up for any loss of life, particularly in these tragic circumstances. However, Daniel Burba will have the rest of his life to reflect upon the catastrophic consequences his decision to consume drugs and then get behind the wheel have had. Sadly, his son will not.

“I hope the outcome of this case sends a strong message out to anyone who is considering driving, having been told by a doctor not to. Or anyone who is considering driving, having consumed drugs or alcohol.

“As is so very obvious from this case, you run the risk of taking a life but also ruining many others – including your own.”

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Dozens killed on Saturday include 38 Palestinians seeking aid at controversial distribution sites, according to sources.

Sixty-two Palestinians, most of them aid seekers, have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza since dawn on Saturday, hospital sources in the besieged enclave have told Al Jazeera.

The death toll includes 38 Palestinians seeking aid at distribution sites operated by the controversial United States and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

The deaths are the latest killings reported near GHF-operated sites, despite Israel’s announcement last week that it would begin implementing “tactical pauses” in fighting in some areas to allow Palestinians greater access to humanitarian aid.

Israel announced the start of the daily pauses in military operations on July 27. However, 105 Palestinians were killed while seeking food on Wednesday and Thursday alone, the United Nations Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory said on Friday.

As of Friday, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access aid, according to the human rights office.

Another 169 Palestinians, including 93 children, have died of starvation or malnutrition since the start of Israel’s war in October 2023, according to figures from Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Palestinians in the enclave have reported numerous cases of Israeli soldiers and American security contractors hired by the GHF deliberately firing on aid seekers in the vicinity of the distribution sites.

Facing growing international condemnation over the conditions in Gaza, Israel has in recent days allowed airdrops of aid into the enclave by countries including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Spain, Germany and France.

But humanitarian groups, including the UN aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, have warned that the airdrops are insufficient and called on Israel to facilitate the free flow of assistance via land.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said that just 36 aid trucks entered the enclave on Saturday, far short of the 600 trucks it said were needed to meet the humanitarian needs of the population.

In Khan Younis, a Palestine Red Crescent Society staffer was killed and three others wounded by an Israeli attack on its headquarters, according to the aid group.

“One Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) staff member was killed and three others injured after Israeli forces targeted the Society’s headquarters in Khan Younis, igniting a fire on the building’s first floor,” the PRCS said in a post on X on Saturday.

Reporting from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah earlier on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said that Palestinians have not seen any improvement in their situation despite the recent deliveries of aid.

“In the markets, you barely find food. Whatever is available is very, very expensive, and Palestinians are still forced to risk their lives to get whatever they can get,” Khoudary said.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, on Saturday said Gaza was experiencing a famine that had been “largely shaped” by the attempts to replace the UN-led aid system with the “politically motivated” GHF.

“Sidelining & weakening UNRWA has nothing to do with claims of aid diversion to armed groups. It is a deliberate measure to collectively pressure & punish Palestinians for living in Gaza,” Lazzarini said in a post on X.

UNICEF has warned that malnutrition in Gaza has exceeded the threshold for famine, with 320,000 young children among those at risk of acute malnutrition.

“We are at a crossroads, and the choices made now will determine whether tens of thousands of children live or die,” Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations, said in a statement on Friday after a recent visit to Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Israeli fire and air strikes have killed at least 58 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, many of them near an aid distribution site operated by the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to local health authorities, the latest deaths of people desperately seeking food for their hungry families.

Medics at al-Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals in central Gaza, where most of the casualties were moved to, said at least 15 people were killed on Saturday as they tried to approach the GHF aid distribution site near the so-called Netzarim Corridor.

The rest were killed in separate attacks across the besieged and bombarded enclave, they added. Since the GHF started operations last month, at least 274 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded near aid distribution sites, according to a statement by the Gaza Ministry of Health.

The GHF said they were closed on Saturday. But witnesses said thousands of people had gathered near the sites anyway, desperate for food as Israel’s punishing 15-week blockade and military campaign have driven the territory to the brink of famine.

‘Execution sites’

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Palestinians are starting to see GHF distribution hubs as “execution sites,” considering the repeated attacks there. But people in Gaza “have run out of options, and they are forced to travel to these dangerous humanitarian spaces to get aid”.

Israel imposed a full humanitarian blockade on Gaza on March 2 for 11 weeks, cutting off food, medical supplies and other aid.

It began allowing small amounts of aid into the enclave in late May following international pressure, but humanitarian organisations say it is only a tiny fraction of the aid that is needed.

There has been no immediate comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s incidents.

The GHF – a United States and Israel-backed organisation led by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical Christian who advised US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – began distributing food packages in Gaza on May 27, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral.

Israel and the United States say the new system is intended to replace the UN-run network. They have accused Hamas, without providing evidence, of siphoning off the UN-provided aid and reselling it to fund its military activities.

Israel has also admitted to backing armed gangs in Gaza, known for criminal activities, to undermine Hamas. These groups have been blamed for looting aid.

UN officials deny Hamas has diverted significant amounts of aid and say the new system is unable to meet mounting needs. They say it has militarised aid by allowing Israel to decide who has access and by forcing Palestinians to travel long distances or relocate again after waves of displacement.

Later on Saturday, the Israeli military ordered residents of Khan Younis and the nearby towns of Abasan and Bani Suheila in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and head west towards the so-called humanitarian zone area, saying it would forcefully work against “terror organizations” in the area.

More than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip is now within the Israeli-militarised zone, under forced displacement orders, or where these overlap, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The UN estimates that nearly 665,000 people have been displaced yet again since Israel broke the ceasefire in February.

Israel’s war on Gaza and its population has killed more than 55,290 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the densely populated Strip, which is home to more than two million people. Most of the population is displaced and malnutrition is widespread.

Despite efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to restore a ceasefire in Gaza, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, including that Israel implement a permanent ceasefire and not restart the war.

Twenty-six Palestinians have been killed and 150 injured in Israeli tank shelling and gunfire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah, southern Gaza, according to medics and local residents.

Mohammed Ghareeb, a local journalist in Rafah, told the BBC that thousands of Palestinians had gathered near a US-backed humanitarian aid distribution centre when Israeli tanks approached and opened fire on the crowd.

Local journalists and activists shared harrowing footage of bodies and wounded individuals being transported on donkey carts to the Red Cross field hospital in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah, as rescue teams were reportedly unable to reach the scene.

The BBC has contacted the IDF for a response.

Mr Ghareeb said the crowd of Palestinians had gathered near Al-Alam roundabout around 04:30 local time (02:30 BST), close to the aid centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, shortly before Israeli tanks appeared and opened fire.

“The dead and wounded lay on the ground for a long time,” Mr Ghareeb said.

“Rescue crews could not access the area, which is under Israeli control. This forced residents to use donkey carts to transport victims to the field hospital.”

The Red Cross field hospital said 26 people had been killed and 150 injured.

Efforts were under way to transfer the casualties to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for further treatment, the doctor added.

Civil Defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told the AFP news agency that more than 100 people were wounded “due to gunfire from Israeli vehicles towards thousands of citizens”.

The incident underscores the dire humanitarian conditions in Rafah, where recent Israeli military operations have severely limited access to aid and emergency services.

On Saturday, crowds of civilians rushed aid trucks in Gaza, the World Food Programme has said, as hunger and desperation create chaotic scenes.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a new US and Israel-backed organisation that has been distributing food at designated sites across Gaza. Israel set up the plan after accusing Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies.

The GHF said it distributed two million meals this week, which the BBC has not been able to independently verify.

This comes as the US attempts to broker a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas responded to the US ceasefire proposal by saying it is prepared to release 10 living Israeli hostages and 18 dead hostages in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners.

However, the group also repeated its demands for a permanent truce, a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and guarantees for the continuous flow of humanitarian aid. None of these are in the deal on the table.

Hamas said it had submitted its response to the US draft proposed by Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East.

Witkoff said the proposal was “unacceptable and only takes us backward” and insisted the US deal was “the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days.”