Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Ceasefire hopes ‘drowned out by bombs’

Thank you for joining us for updates on everything related to Israel’s war on Gaza. This live page is now closed.

Read more about how a majority of Americans disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza, according to a new poll, here.

And you can find more news, features and videos on the war here.

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

• Hezbollah has said it launched dozens of rockets at Kiryat Shmona, an Israeli border town, in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s southern village of al-Habbariyeh that killed seven people.
• In response to the rocket attack, Israel bombed two Lebanese towns, killing at least nine.
• At least 18 Palestinians have died trying to recover airdropped aid into Gaza, with six more bodies recovered from the sea.
• Al Jazeera is reporting several people have been killed and injured in an Israeli attack that targeted the tribal committees responsible for securing aid south of Gaza City.
• Israel has asked to reschedule a meeting with US officials to discuss its military plans in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly scrapped the planned talks.

A video clip shared online by local Palestinian media outlets and verified by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking unit, Sanad, shows Israeli forces storming the town of Deir Ballut, west of Salfit.

Israeli raids on the West Bank have intensified since the war in Gaza began in October. More than 7,800 people have been detained since then.

Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) office says in its daily report on X that 164 of those trucks carried food.

It also said that it coordinated the delivery of 25 food aid trucks to northern Gaza overnight between yesterday and today and that 156 aid packages, weighing one tonne each, were also dropped over the north.

Despite the delivery of this aid, the UN’s World Food Programme says that one in three children in north Gaza are currently experiencing acute malnutrition. Earlier today, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that enough food to feed the north is currently stockpiled in trucks waiting to enter the Gaza Strip.

On March 18, Oxfam accused Israel of using bureaucracy to “deliberately” hinder aid supplies headed into Gaza, with trucks waiting an average of 20 days before they are cleared to enter.

A United Nations expert who published a report saying there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel has committed genocide in its war on Gaza says she has received threats throughout her mandate.

Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, presented a report titled “Anatomy of a Genocide” to the UN Human Rights Council, which Israel said it “utterly rejects”.

It’s been a difficult time,” she said. “I’ve always been attacked since the very beginning of my mandate.”

Read the full story here.

Israeli forces apprehended the two children at a military checkpoint in central Hebron, Wafa news agency reports.

Activist Yasser Abu Markhiya told the Palestinian news agency that Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint, near the Jabal al-Rahma Mosque in Tal Rumeida, held his daughters Zainab and Jana, aged 8 and 10, respectively.

It was unclear from the report when or if the girls had been released.

A report by a UN special rapporteur accuses Israel of “genocidal acts” in Gaza.

The entire area has been classified as a military objective, making all Palestinians their potential targets.

So, how does the report reflect the reality on the ground?

Earlier, we reported on exclusive footage obtained by Al Jazeera that shows Israeli soldiers shooting dead two Palestinian men waving white flags of surrender.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent reports that the men were attempting to return to northern Gaza, travelling along al-Rashid Street.

Near the Nablusi roundabout southwest of Gaza City, the men, waving white flags, are met by a deployment of Israeli forces and killed, before their bodies are buried among rubbish and rubble by Israeli army bulldozers.

In a statement, Hamas condemns the killings, saying the events captured in the footage are “further evidence of the scale of fascism and criminality that governs Zionist behaviour, in the context of the brutal war of extermination against our people in the Gaza Strip”.

The statement called on the International Criminal Court to take “necessary measures” to hold Israel accountable for “the crimes they commit against children and defenceless civilians”.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) praised a State Department staffer who resigned to protest US government support for Israel in its war on Gaza.

Annelle Sheline quit as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. She told CNN, “Whatever credibility the United States had as an advocate for human rights has almost entirely vanished since the war began”.

“We thank Ms Sheline for her courageous and principled stance in defence of human rights for all people, including Palestinians,” said CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad.

“It is the decades-long denial of the humanity of the Palestinians that has resulted in this tragic situation in which our nation is complicit in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced starvation of entire populations.”

Maysoon al-Nabahin squeezes out the last bit of cartoned cheese onto a freshly baked piece of bread, knowing it will be the only thing her family of eight will eat that day.

Umm Muhammed, as she’s known, fled from a school in Bureij where she, together with her husband and six children, were sheltering after Israeli forces destroyed their home in east Bureij in central Gaza.

The 45-year-old now lives in the crowd of tents around Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah further south. She’s a petite woman, her face etched with worry, looking older than her years.

Al Jazeera followed three families to find out how they are making due in the face of extreme hunger.

Read more of their story here.

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic report several people were killed and injured in an Israeli attack that targeted the tribal committees responsible for securing aid south of Gaza City.

Earlier this month, Israeli air strikes targeted tribal aid distribution workers in Gaza City’s Kuwait roundabout, killing at least 23 people.

On February 29, Israeli forces opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians as they gathered south of Gaza City waiting to receive humanitarian aid in what is known as the “flour massacre”, leaving 118 dead and 760 wounded.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, provides humanitarian support to millions of Palestinian refugees.

Israel’s war on Gaza has made its work even more vital. But the agency is under pressure.

The United States has suspended its funding to the agency after Israel said some UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7.

The agency has launched an investigation into the allegations. The loss of US support could prove devastating for the agency. Can UNRWA continue its work without its biggest donor?

Al Jazeera Arabic aired video showing Israeli soldiers shooting dead two Palestinians while they walked in an open area along the coast, apparently trying to return to northern Gaza.

One of the men repeatedly waves what looks to be a white towel. The footage also shows Israeli soldiers burying the two with a bulldozer after they were killed.

The footage is graphic and may not be advisable for some viewers.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has demanded that the Israeli army shed light on the whereabouts of Gaza journalist Bayan Abusultan.

RSF says Abusultan was last seen on March 19, “among those sequestered in the raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.”

Abusultan has been offline since reporting witnessing her own brother being shot by Israeli forces.

The US highlighted the mistreatment of Marwan Barghouti, one of the most prominent Palestinian political figures imprisoned by Israel, with the Israeli government, the Washington Post reports.

This comes after Barghouti’s family and prisoners’ rights groups alleged he’s been physically and psychologically abused since October 7.

Barghouti, 64, received five life sentences for his role in the second Intifada and is being incarcerated in Megiddo, a maximum-security prison.

According to Barghouti’s son, Arab, who was interviewed by the Post, Barghouti “was physically assaulted, placed in solitary confinement in darkness for 12 days, and the Israeli national anthem was pumped into his cell ‘at a very high volume from around 5am until midnight, for many days'”.

A report by a UN special rapporteur accuses Israel of “genocidal acts” in Gaza.

The entire area has been classified as a military objective, making all the Palestinians there potential targets. So, how does the report reflect the reality on the ground?