Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Evidence of torture, executions in mass grave

Thank you for joining us for updates on everything related to Israel’s war on Gaza.

For more news, analysis and opinion on the conflict, click here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here’s a quick recap from today:

• The Palestinian Civil Defence said it will cooperate with an independent investigation into three separate mass graves containing 392 bodies.
• Pro-Palestine student protests continued across the US, with Georgia State Patrol officers using stun guns and arresting protesters on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta.
• Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, reiterated that the group will not accept a truce deal without a permanent ceasefire.
• A senior Israeli official said the military is “moving ahead” with its planned ground invasion of Rafah.
• Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi denounced “forced migration” after Israel said it plans to attack Rafah city.
• The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) says its aid ship bound for the Gaza Strip was delayed after Israel initiated an “administrative roadblock”.
• The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that at least eight people were killed in an Israeli air raid in central Gaza’s Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood.
• Israeli forces killed a Belgian aid worker and his seven-year-old son in an attack in Rafah, prompting Belgium to summon its Israeli envoy.
• Israeli far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has called for cutting ties with the Palestinian Authority.

Celebrity Chef Jose Andres says the seven aid workers killed by Israeli forces in Gaza were “the best of humanity” during a memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral that was attended by hundreds.

The attack on an aid convoy for Andres’s charity, World Central Kitchen (WCK), earlier this month prompted worldwide condemnation.

At the service, Andres praised each of the workers – Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, John Chapman, Jacob Flickinger, Lalzawmi Frankcom, James Henderson, James Kirby, and Damian Sobol – during an emotional eulogy, his voice cracking repeatedly.

“The seven souls we mourn today were there so that hungry people could eat,” he said, referring to residents of Gaza. “They risked everything to feed people they did not know.

“They were the best of humanity. Their examples should inspire us to do better, to be better,” he said.

Andres said WCK continues to demand an investigation into the actions of the Israeli forces against its workers and that the official explanation was not good enough.

“There is no excuse for these killings. None,” he said.

The students here at George Washington University have the same template as the students at Columbia.

They’re looking for the university to divest, to declare what interests they have in companies linked to Israel, and also, they’re looking to make sure that anyone who is involved in these protests will get an amnesty afterwards.

However, in the last hour or so, we’ve also seen a number of barriers placed on the edge of the square. They were very quickly removed, but they’re not far away.

The number of police in nearby streets has increased. We are told the Secret Service was here as well, but they have cycled away and are no longer on site.

A number of accesses to the square have been blocked, and in the building over my shoulder, the police have set up essentially a temporary command structure where they are talking about what they can do.

Now, seven o’clock local time … was given essentially as a deadline for the encampment to go away. It’s not clear then what the university administrators will do.

What is clear is that the Metropolitan Police Department has been called in to help because the numbers are just too big for George Washington’s own police to deal with.

The mayor has said that it has to be done peacefully if the protesters are to be moved.

The people here are not planning to leave anytime soon. They will stay until the university meets its demands.

Social media video verified by Al Jazeera shows students at UPenn setting up a “Gaza encampment” the likes of which have been seen at Columbia University and on other campuses.

Many student protests have been met with violent crackdowns by local police departments.

The spokesperson for the Iran-aligned group, Yahya Saree, says it targeted an Israeli ship, the MSC Darwin, in the Gulf of Aden.

The Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November in what they say is a campaign of solidarity with Palestinians and against Israel’s continuing war on Gaza.

Britain said on Thursday the Royal Navy warship HMS Diamond had shot down a missile fired by the Houthis from Yemen targeting a merchant vessel.

“The UK continues to be at the forefront of the international response to the Iranian-backed Houthis’ dangerous attacks on commercial vessels, which have claimed the lives of international mariners,” British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said in a statement

Saree said the group had also fired a number of “ballistic and winged missiles” at several targets around Eilat in southern Israel.

Watch our report on students at Sorbonne University, who are protesting on campus in support of Palestinians.

President Emmanuel Macron’s office says France is considering extending sanctions on Israeli settlers behind violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank after the prime minister spoke with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

The two leaders “firmly condemned recent Israeli announcements about settlements” in the occupied West Bank, “which are contrary to international law”, Macron’s office said in a statement.

On February 28, “extremist Israeli settlers” were banned from entering French territory. Last week, the EU imposed sanctions on four Israeli settlers and two settler organisations for violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

Since the start of the year, Israeli authorities have declared nearly 1,100 hectares (2,720 acres) of the West Bank to be “state land” – twice as much as in the previous record year in 1999, according to the settlement watchdog Peace Now.

To learn more about the Israeli settlers and why they live on Palestinian lands, you can read our in-depth explainer here. Or you can read about how Israeli settlers have been expanding illegal outposts during Israel’s war on Gaza here.

Muhammad Mustafa says he “appreciates” Germany’s announcement this week that it plans to resume funding for UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency.

Germany had paused funding for the organisation, which provides services to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and countries like Lebanon and Jordan, earlier this year, after the Israeli government accused it of complicity in the October 7 attacks.

An independent review of the allegations by former French FM Catherine Colonna found that Israel had not provided significant evidence to back up its claims.

As an Israeli ground assault on Gaza’s last “safe zone” looms, two children in Rafah brace for it.

“We’re afraid people will resort to killing each other for food,” 11-year-old Husam says as he recounts his daily battle to secure basic necessities like food, water and sanitation in Rafah during Israel’s war on Gaza.

Husam is one of more than 600,000 children who have sought refuge in the city, the designated “safe zone” in southern Gaza. But since March, the Israeli government has threatened to extend a military invasion there, too, casting a shadow of fear that has been building for months. “A person’s psyche wears out with fear. It’s a slow death,” Husam says as he reflects on what lies ahead.

Watch Al Jazeera’s episode of Close Up:

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), a movement composed of campaigns and initiatives working to end the Israeli blockade of Gaza, says its aid ship bound for the enclave has been delayed from leaving Turkey.

The coalition said in a statement, “All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the trip to Gaza.”

“However, today we received word of an administrative roadblock initiated by Israel in an attempt to prevent our departure”.

“Israel is pressuring the Republic of Guinea Bissau to withdraw its flag from our lead ship – Akdeniz [“Mediterranean]. This triggered a request for an additional inspection, this one by the flag state, that delays our April 26 planned departure”.

The coalition said this was another “example of Israel obstructing the delivery of life-saving aid to the people in Gaza who face a deliberately created famine”, adding that it was not the first time Israel had used “these kinds of tactics to stop our ships from sailing”.

Aid workers from 40 countries are due to deliver 5,000 tonnes of aid to Gaza using the Akdeniz.

The Arabic language spokesperson of the US State Department has resigned, citing her opposition to Washington’s policy related to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Hala Rharrit was also the Dubai Regional Media Hub’s deputy director and joined the State Department almost two decades ago as a political and human rights officer, the department’s website showed.

She wrote on LinkedIn, “I resigned April 2024 after 18 years of distinguished service in opposition to the United States’ Gaza policy”.

Nearly a month earlier, Annelle Sheline of the State Department’s human rights bureau announced her resignation, and State Department official Josh Paul resigned in October.

A senior official in the US Education Department, Tariq Habash, who is Palestinian-American, had stepped down in January

The Israeli military says it has approved collaborative efforts for the Joint Logisitics Over-the-Shore (JLOTS) initiative led by the United States Central Command (CENTCOM).

It said it would provide security and logistics support for the JLOTS initiative, which includes a temporary floating pier to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

As we reported earlier, a United Nations team visiting the pier had to seek shelter in a bunker “for some time” yesterday after the area came under fire.

As temperatures soar in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Civil Defence has warned that conditions are ripe for “the expansion of the spread of epidemics and diseases among [displaced Palestinians], especially among children and pregnant women”.

“Drink plenty of water, try to ventilate the place, keep children away from the sun’s rays, especially at peak heat times, and be sure to wipe their bodies with cold water constantly”, spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said in a statement on Telegram, speaking to the thousands of displaced Palestinians currently sheltering in tents.

Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick Ryder told reporters that construction of the pier, announced in March by US President Joe Biden, has started.

The pier will receive ships carrying desperately needed aid for the people of Gaza, thousands of whom are facing imminent famine.

“I can confirm that US military vessels, to include the USNS Benavidez, have begun to construct the initial stages of the temporary pier and causeway at sea,” Ryder told reporters.

The UN has warned Gaza faces famine and has complained of “overwhelming obstacles” to getting aid into and distributing it around the enclave.

Ryder said the Pentagon was tracking some type of mortar attack in Gaza that caused minimal damage in the staging area for the pier. The UN stated earlier today that one of its teams, inspecting the staging area, had to take cover for several hours when bombs struck nearby.

Ryder added that US forces had not started moving anything to that area yet and there were no US forces on the ground.

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general, told Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey during a press briefing that while the organisation is collecting information on mass graves discovered at Nasser Hospital, a mandate is required from a UN legislative body in order to take custody of any evidence.

“We’ve called for an international investigation. How that will take place? It’s unclear at this time. There are certain parts of this organisation that have the authority to do that,” Dujarric said.

“In the meantime, it’s important that all forensic evidence be well preserved,” he added.

US Senator Bernie Sanders has told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a post on X, that it was “not antisemitic or pro-Hamas” to point out that “in a little over six months”, his “extremist government” has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000.

In an attached statement, Sanders said his comments were in response to the Israeli prime minister’s remarks yesterday that criticism of the Israeli government’s policies was antisemitic.

“Mr. Netanyahu. Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But, please do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal policies of your extremist and racist government,” Sanders wrote in his closing remarks.