Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Israel says ‘moving ahead’ with Rafah attack

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

• Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said Israel is “moving ahead” with its planned military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where 1.5 Palestinians are sheltering.
• Calls grow for an international investigation into mass graves discovered in the vicinity of Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis as more than 310 bodies are recovered so far.
• Fears for the safety of tens of thousands of civilians in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya have surged as Israeli troops attack the city “with extreme force” and order Palestinian residents to flee immediately.
• Hamas has released a video of Israeli-American captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who appeared in footage that prompted hundreds of protesters in Jerusalem to march to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence to demand action.
• Yemen’s Houthi rebels have said its fighters targeted the Maersk Yorktown ship and a US warship in the Gulf of Aden, as well as the Israeli ship MSC Veracruz in the Indian Ocean.

Palestinian journalist Mohammad Kuri-kea has been reporting on the war in Gaza. But now he’s covering a personal tragedy. His mother was killed by Israeli forces when they raided al-Shifa Hospital in March.

Watch the full report:

We’ve been reporting on growing calls for an independent investigation as more mass graves are uncovered in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo asked US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood if the US is planning to join the European Union in calling for an independent investigation.

Wood said the US has “obviously seen the reports” and photographs of the mass graves but that they want to “look into this a bit more and find out what exactly happened”.

Wood added the US would need to “find out all the facts we need to find out before we start making determinations”.

Growing calls for an independent investigation into the mass graves being uncovered in Gaza.

At the UN, Robert Wood, US Deputy Ambassador, stopped by the stakeout. Here is what I asked him and his answers:

Q: There is another mass grave found; 51 people. Several mass graves… pic.twitter.com/ZmgeN06EYu

— Gabriel Elizondo (@elizondogabriel) April 24, 2024

At least three Palestinians have been killed and “several” others have been wounded in an Israeli air strike that hit a residential home in Rafah city, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reports.

It cited sources as saying Israeli fighter jets targeted a home that belonged to the Jamal family, which was “filled with people”.

More than 1.5 million Palestinians are currently sheltering in Rafah, where Israel has repeatedly threatened to send in ground troops for a ground invasion.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari says the army “will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to find our hostages”.

His comments come hours after Hamas released a video of Israeli-American captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is currently being held in Gaza. Following the release of the footage, hundreds of protesters marched towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem demanding immediate action.

Hagari said the Israeli army will “continue to pursue Hamas everywhere in Gaza”, as fears mount over a looming ground invasion of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where more than 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering.

“This is an urgent call for action,” he added.

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice says it is important, in the case of any potential investigation into the mass graves in Gaza, to find evidence of how those killed were “before … or when they died”.

“Were their hands tied behind their backs, did they show signs of having been tortured in any visible way?” Nice told Al Jazeera.

When it comes to looking at the bodies, he said it is important for investigators to identify whether they were all “routinely” killed, or if they were all killed in “different ways”.

It is also important to find witnesses, Nice said.

“You can demand from Israel a written account, a record of how this came about, because you wouldn’t deploy a group of soldiers to fill a mass grave like this without there being some kind of record,” he added.

“So there is a whole lot of stuff to be done, and the sooner, the better.”

He said countries “completely uninvolved” and “unengaged” in the conflict would be suitable independent investigators.

Mediating parties between Hamas and Israel had passed a video released earlier today by Hamas of American-Israeli captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin to the US and Israel on Monday, Axios reported.

It cited sources familiar with the matter as saying Qatar passed the video to Israeli and US officials two days before it was released by the group.

They cited another source as saying the Biden administration had asked the Qatari government several times for assistance in getting proof-of-life for Goldberg-Polin and other American hostages.

The issue, Axios reported, came up in phone calls between Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as senior White House officials.

Footage shared by Palestinian sources on Telegram, and verified by Al Jazeera, shows Israeli soldiers conducting a raid of Yatta, south of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

The video shows Israeli army vehicles entering the town, and troops firing tear gas canisters at Palestinian residents.

Last week and over the weekend, the Israeli army conducted several violent raids throughout the West Bank, killing at least 14 in the city of Tulkarem, and causing widespread destruction.

The armed wing of Hamas says it “lured to mechanised” units of the Israeli army and ambushed them in the al-Mughraqa area of the central Gaza Strip.

New York City police have cracked down on students at the city’s Columbia University, who have been camped out on the university’s campus until their pro-Palestine demands are met.

Law professor Bassam Khawaja spoke to Al Jazeera about his anger at the way the administration of the institution has handled these protests:

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has joined numerous rights groups and nations in calling for an independent investigation into the discovery of dozens of mass graves in Gaza.

It said its team members on the ground had witnessed the exhumation of hundreds of bodies found in the vicinity of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital and saw victims “handcuffed … who were executed”.

In a statement, Euro-Med said the high number of bodies that have been recovered is “alarming, and requires urgent international action, including the formation of an independent international investigation committee”.

Many of those who lost their lives were subjected to “premeditated murder as well as arbitrary and extrajudicial executions while they were detained and handcuffed”, it added.

Yemen’s Houthi group has said its fighters targeted the Maersk Yorktown ship and an American warship in the Gulf of Aden.

The group also targeted the Israeli ship MSC Veracruz in the Indian Ocean, its military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a televised speech.

The Houthis have been attacking commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea since the early days of Israel’s war on Gaza, prompting airstrikes by the US and UK on targets belonging to the group inside Yemen. The group says the attacks will continue until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

The US president has said that the new humanitarian aid must be allowed to immediately reach Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“We’re going to immediately secure that aid and surge it … including food, medical supplies, clean water,” Biden said after signing a massive military aid bill for Israel and other countries.

“Israel must make sure all this aid reaches the Palestinians in Gaza without delay,” he said.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Texas have been in a tense standoff with mounted state troopers, the latest in a series of confrontations rocking campuses across the United States.

As students at the university staged a walkout chanting “down with occupation,” state troopers on horseback were making their way through campus – while elsewhere police in riot gear were pushing back protesters, AFP reported, referencing social media footage.

At least two people had been arrested, the student newspaper The Daily Texan reported.

The standoff in Austin comes as ongoing protests at New York’s Columbia University amid Israel’s war on Gaza have sparked intense attention from media and politicians – and similar demonstrations across the country.

Rebecca Karl, a professor of history at New York University (NYU), says previous protests at Columbia University in the past were “quite confrontational”, but were still “nothing like this”.

New York City police arrested dozens of student protesters on NYU’s campus earlier this week, who were demonstrating in support of Palestinians.

Karl was a student at Columbia University, and says she has been a faculty member with NYU for many years.

Protests against Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza have taken place at several US universities, most notably at New York City’s Columbia University, where more than 100 students who gathered at the school’s campus have been arrested.

“There have been a number of protests, there have been a number of confrontations that have been dealt with by universities in ways that stress that we are not a violent institution,” she told Al Jazeera.

“But I’m personally very concerned,” she said.

Israel’s foreign ministry has called Germany’s decision to resume funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees “regrettable and disappointing”.

In a statement, the ministry said Israel had shared detailed information about “many hundreds” of UNRWA employees who were members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

A review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna into UNRWA’s found that Israel had yet to provide evidence to support its accusations.

The deputy spokesperson for the head of the UN, Farhan Haq,  says “all of the parties” who have the power to allow investigators access into Gaza must agree to any potential independent probe into the mass graves discovered in the vicinity of Gaza’s two largest hospitals.

More than 300 bodies have been recovered so far from mass graves at Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, and more than 380 bodies have been recovered from Gaza City’s al-Shifa Medical Complex, according to civil defence crews. International outcry and demands from an independent probe are quickly growing.

“For any investigations to be effective, all of the parties in the area that control access sufficient to conduct investigations would need to agree to it,” Haq told Al Jazeera, when questioned at a press briefing by our reporter Gabriel Elizondo.

This means Israel, which has been widely accused of being responsible for the mass graves, must agree to cooperate with the investigation.

“There’s always difficulties in terms of places where conflict has occurred, to get the access we need, but ultimately for any investigation to be meaningful, you need that access,” Haq said.

Haq reiterated that an “independent, effective and transparent investigation” into the killings at Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals must be conducted.

The Qatari foreign ministry has said that the review, headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna did the UN agency for Palestinian refugees “justice” after Israel made allegations against it.

“The Qatari foreign ministry stresses that establishing an independent review committee represents, in itself, transparent and credible institutional work in the face of previous accusations,” it said in a statement.

In January, Israel accused UNRWA staff members of abetting the October 7 attack on Israel. In March, the Israeli military claimed it had evidence implicating four more UNRWA staff members.

The ministry said that Qatar appropriated an additional $25m to support UNRWA, as it expressed “relief that donors announced their intention to resume aid to the agency”.

Several Palestinians were killed and others were injured, most of them seriously, as a result of Israeli army shelling of a house this evening in the Yabna refugee camp in the centre of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.

Footage obtained by Al Jazeera showed the arrival of the injured children and the elderly at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah.

Dr Suhaib al-Hams, the director of the Kuwaiti hospital, confirmed the arrival of the victims, telling Al Jazeera that the “Rafah governorate has become a continuous target of [the Israeli army].”

“The Israeli occupation uses internationally prohibited weapons, and the type of injuries we receive is unprecedented, such as amputation of limbs and laceration of the body,” al-Hams said.

Dr Jamal al-Hams, one of the medical staff at the Hospital, said that most of the injuries that reached the hospital are serious, and that one of the injured died as a result of his severe injury.

We will continue to update you on this attack as information comes in.