Israeli military issues forced evacuation order for parts of northern Gaza
The IDF has issued a forced evacuation order to residents in parts of northern Gaza: Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Zayed, al-Manshiya and Tal al-Zaatar.
Avichay Adraee, an Arabic language spokesperson for the Israeli army, said it is a “final” warning before the “raid”.
“We have warned about this area many times. For your safety, you must move immediately west to the known shelters in Gaza City,” he wrote in a post on X this morning.
It comes a day after the Israeli military ordered a sweeping evacuation order for the southern city of Rafah and parts of neighbouring Khan Younis – the biggest since the war resumed last month when Israel broke the ceasefire agreement with Hamas by launching a wave of airstrikes that killed hundreds of Palestinian people, including many women and children.
The IDF claims the evacuation orders are issued to protect Palestinian civilians from Hamas fighters who the Israeli military says are using civilians as human shields.
The UN has said the evacuations have failed to comply with the requirements of international law, as Israel is accused of failing to provide adequate health or safety conditions to civilians forced to flee.
Yesterday, residents in parts of southern Gaza were advised to leave immediately for the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone”, a narrow strip of coastline at the southernmost end of the strip. But there have been many deadly Israeli airstrikes in the zone so there is no guarantee of safety there.
Key events
Four people have been killed and at least seven injured in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs early on Tuesday, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim Moussawi said the Israeli attack on Beirut that killed at least four people amounted to “a major and severe aggression that has escalated the situation to an entirely different level”.
Speaking in a televised statement after visiting the building that was struck, he called on the Lebanese state to “activate the highest level of diplomacy to find solutions”.
Jeanine Hennis, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, meanwhile, wrote in a post on X that “with the Lebanese Government taking positive steps and gradual returns to northern Israel, further escalation is the last thing anyone needs.”
At least 50,399 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 2023 – health ministry
At least 50,399 Palestinian people have been killed and 114,583 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
At least 42 bodies and 183 injured people have been received by hospitals in Gaza over the last day, according to the territory’s health ministry, which said that at least 1,042 Palestinian people have been killed by Israeli forces since Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas on 18 March.
Health officials have said in the past that thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory.
The UN has said that 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one” and buried in a mass grave just over a week ago in southern Gaza.
According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) and civil defence workers were on a mission to rescue colleagues who had been shot at earlier in the day, when their clearly marked vehicles came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan district.
As my colleagues report in this story, a Red Crescent official in Gaza said that there was evidence of at least one person being detained and killed, as the body of one of the dead had been found with his hands tied.
Israel’s military said its “initial assessment” of the incident had found that its troops had opened fire on several vehicles “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”.
The US, Israel’s staunchest ally and biggest weapons supplier, said it expects “all parties on the ground” in Gaza to comply with international humanitarian law, according to BBC News. This isn’t the first time Washington has said this.
In April 2024, for example, under former president Joe Biden, the state department said the US had “been clear at the highest levels publicly and privately with Israel that it must abide by international humanitarian law”.
Asked about the killings of the 15 people, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce was quoted as having said: “Every single thing that happens in Gaza is happening because of Hamas”.
South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel’s war in Gaza at the International Court of Justice.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the newswires from Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut where airstrikes have hit what Israel claims to be Hezbollah targets:
Four people killed by Israeli airstrike on Beirut, health ministry says
We reported in the opening post that officials had said three people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut in the middle of the night.
The death toll has been increased, with Lebanon’s health ministry reporting that four people were killed in the airstrike, including one woman. At least seven others were reported to have been injured.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had struck and killed Hassan Ali Badir, a Hezbollah and Iran Quds Forces operative, in the attack.
On Friday, the Israeli military carried out its first major airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs in months, apparently retaliating for an earlier rocket launch from Lebanon.
The Israeli airstrike targeted a building in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital that Israel said was a drone storage facility belonging to Hezbollah, the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group.
Hezbollah said it had no involvement in the rocket attack and remained committed to the November ceasefire brokered by France and the US, which brought an end to Israel’s assault on Lebanon last year.
The November truce halted the fighting and mandated that southern Lebanon be free of Hezbollah fighters and weapons, that Lebanese troops deploy to the area and that Israeli ground troops withdraw from the zone. But each side accuses the other of not entirely living up to those terms.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun condemned the latest Israeli attack on Beirut, calling it a “dangerous warning” of Israel’s intentions.
“Israel’s persistence in its aggression requires more effort from us in addressing Lebanon’s friends around the world and rallying them in support of our right to full sovereignty over our land,” Aoun said.
Gaza’s Government Media Office has issued a statement following the reported killing of Palestinian journalist Mohammed Saleh al-Bardawil by Israeli forces in Khan Younis at dawn (see post at 08.47 for more details).
The media office, which now says 209 journalists have been killed during the war, wrote in a post on Telegram:
The Government Media Office condemns in the strongest terms the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the “Israeli” occupation.
We call on the International Federation of Journalists, the Federation of Arab Journalists, and all journalistic bodies in all countries of the world to condemn these systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists and media professionals in the Gaza Strip.
We hold the “Israeli” occupation, the US administration, and the countries complicit in the crime of genocide, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, fully responsible for committing this heinous, brutal crime.
We call on the international community, international organizations, and organizations involved in journalism and media work in all countries of the world to condemn the crimes of the occupation, deter it, and prosecute it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, bringing the occupation’s criminals to justice.
Israeli military issues forced evacuation order for parts of northern Gaza
The IDF has issued a forced evacuation order to residents in parts of northern Gaza: Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Zayed, al-Manshiya and Tal al-Zaatar.
Avichay Adraee, an Arabic language spokesperson for the Israeli army, said it is a “final” warning before the “raid”.
“We have warned about this area many times. For your safety, you must move immediately west to the known shelters in Gaza City,” he wrote in a post on X this morning.
It comes a day after the Israeli military ordered a sweeping evacuation order for the southern city of Rafah and parts of neighbouring Khan Younis – the biggest since the war resumed last month when Israel broke the ceasefire agreement with Hamas by launching a wave of airstrikes that killed hundreds of Palestinian people, including many women and children.
The IDF claims the evacuation orders are issued to protect Palestinian civilians from Hamas fighters who the Israeli military says are using civilians as human shields.
The UN has said the evacuations have failed to comply with the requirements of international law, as Israel is accused of failing to provide adequate health or safety conditions to civilians forced to flee.
Yesterday, residents in parts of southern Gaza were advised to leave immediately for the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone”, a narrow strip of coastline at the southernmost end of the strip. But there have been many deadly Israeli airstrikes in the zone so there is no guarantee of safety there.
Why did Netanyahu cancel appointment of the new Shin Bet head?
So why did Benjamin Netanyahu withdraw his selection of former navy commander vice admiral Eli Sharvit as the next head of the Shin Bet security service – and so quickly?
On Monday, hours after Sharvit’s appointment was announced, reports began surfacing that he had been among tens of thousands of Israelis who took to the streets in 2023 to oppose the Netanyahu government’s controversial attempts to reform the judiciary.
Despite huge protests, Israel’s far-right, ultra-religious government that year succeeded in passing a key part of the coalition’s judicial overhaul: abolishing the court’s power to overrule government decisions.
There were also local media reports that said Sharvit, who served in the military for 36 years, had supported a 2022 water agreement with Lebanon that Netanyahu had opposed.
It was also revealed that the former naval chief had penned an opinion piece criticising Donald Trump’s policies on climate change.
“Trump’s shortsightedness sends a shocking message to the world of disregard for scientific reality, the well-being of humanity, and responsibility to future generations,” he reportedly wrote as CEO of Elgry Eco Energy.
This prompted staunch Trump ally, senator Lindsey Graham, to criticise Sharvit’s appointment in a post on X.
“While it is undeniably true that America has no better friend than Israel, the appointment of Eli Sharvit to be the new leader of the Shin Bet is beyond problematic,” Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator as well as a ranking member of the chamber’s judiciary and budget committees, wrote on Monday.
“There has never been a better supporter for the State of Israel than President Trump. The statements made by Eli Sharvit about President Trump and his polices will create unnecessary stress at a critical time. My advice to my Israeli friends is change course and do better vetting.”
Netanyahu and Trump are close allies. Israel’s war on Gaza is being fuelled by the US, by far its biggest arms supplier and critical in providing it with diplomatic cover.
As we mentioned in the opening post, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backtracked on his decision to appoint vice admiral Eli Sharvit as the next head of the Shin Bet, some 24 hours after making the surprise announcement.
Netanyahu’s office said that following some “further thought” he had told Sharvit that he will now consider other candidates to replace the head of Israel’s security service Ronen Bar, whose firing is due to take effect pending a court review.
The Israeli cabinet formally approved the early dismissal of Bar late last month, over the failure to anticipate the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
Bar was appointed in October 2021 for a five-year term as the head of the Shin Bet – Israel’s domestic intelligence agency equivalent to the UK’s MI5.
As my colleague Lorenzo Tondo notes in this story, Bar’s relations with Netanyahu had been strained even before the 7 October attack in 2023, notably over a proposed judicial overhaul that had split the country.
Relations worsened after the 4 March release of the internal Shin Bet report on the attack, which acknowledged the agency’s own failures but also pointed to wider policy issues in the run-up.
Netanyahu has denied accusations that the sacking of Bar, which prompted mass protests, was aimed at thwarting a Shin Bet investigation into allegations of financial ties between Qatar and aides in the prime minister’s office.
Israeli forces kill Palestinian journalist and his entire family in airstrike on house in Khan Younis – reports
We are seeing reports that Mohammed Saleh al-Bardawil, a Palestinian journalist who worked as a broadcaster for Sawt Al-Aqsa radio, and his wife and three children were killed at dawn on Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
These reports – which we have not yet independently verified – are from Al Jazeera and a correspondent from the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Under international law, journalists are protected civilians who must not be targeted by warring parties.
But more than 200 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.
Lebanon says three dead, seven injured after Israeli attack on Beirut
At least three people have been killed and seven injured in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs early on Tuesday, the Lebanese health ministry said, further testing a shaky four-month ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it attacked a Hezbollah militant “who had recently directed Hamas operatives and assisted them”.
Reuters reported that the attack took place a few days after a previous strike by Israel on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital.
There was no immediate statement from Hezbollah on the identity of the target. But a source close to the Iran-backed Lebanese group told AFP the strike had targeted Hassan Bdair, an official overseeing its Palestinian affairs.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the attack on Tuesday, calling it a “dangerous warning” that signals premeditated intentions against Lebanon.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said it was a “clear breach” of a ceasefire that largely ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
We will be bringing you more reaction as we get it. In other developments:
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Palestinians held funerals on Monday for 15 medics and emergency responders killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza, after their bodies and mangled ambulances were found in a mass grave. The Palestinian Red Crescent says the slain workers and their vehicles were clearly marked as medical and humanitarian personnel and accused Israeli troops of killing them “in cold blood.”
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Tuesday he has reversed his decision, announced a day earlier, to appoint former navy chief Vice Admiral Eli Sharvit as the new head of the Shin Bet security agency. The move was controversial as the supreme court had blocked moves to oust the incumbent chief, Ronen Bar.
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A 17-year-old from the West Bank who was held in an Israeli prison for six months without being charged died after collapsing in unclear circumstances, becoming the first Palestinian teen to die in Israeli detention, officials said. Walid Ahmad was a healthy high schooler before his arrest in September for allegedly throwing stones at soldiers, his family said.
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Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed on Tuesday that they shot down another American MQ-9 Reaper drone, even as the US kept up its campaign of intense airstrikes targeting the group. The reported shootdown over Yemen’s contested Marib governate came as airstrikes hit around Sanaa, the country’s rebel-held capital, and Saada, a stronghold for the Houthis. US President Donald Trump issued a new warning to both the Houthis and their main benefactor, Iran, describing the group as having “been decimated” by the campaign of strikes that began March 15.