The Israeli military carried out intensified attacks across Gaza on Thursday, killing at least 75 Palestinians in 24 hours, including 44 people in Gaza City alone. Israel’s assault on northern Gaza’s main urban centre has continued with a series of overnight attacks, killing at least 18 people, including seven children.
Israel’s army claimed it now controls 40 percent of Gaza City and has expanded its assault on residential homes and displacement camps, with the UN children’s fund (UNICEF) describing the current situation as “unthinkable”.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 30 percent of Palestinians killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza have been children, amounting to 28 children killed every day since October 2023. Since the start of the war in October 2023, at least 64,231 people have been killed and 161,583 wounded across Gaza. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7 attacks, and about 200 were taken captive.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog is set to visit the UK next week, causing outcry among Labour MPs, who have urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer not to meet with the visiting delegation, according to The Guardian newspaper.
Herzog is expected in the UK on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the British newspaper. The purpose of his unconfirmed visit is still unclear.
Downing Street sources told The Guardian that no appointments with Herzog would be confirmed until next week. But Labour MPs have already called on Starmer not to meet him.
“The UK’s recognised the ‘real risk’ of genocide perpetuated by Israel, so unless this meeting is about peace, what message are we sending?” Sarah Champion, the Labour MP and chair of the international development committee, wrote in a post on X.
Former shadow chancellor and Labour MP John McDonnell said he was “appalled at the decision to allow this representative of a government that is systematically killing Palestinian children on a daily basis to visit our country”.
Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza, has told Al Jazeera Arabic that he fears the world will become inured to scenes of Israeli violence in the Strip.
“We are in the most dangerous phase since the beginning of the aggression against the Palestinian people,” he said.
“We fear that the international community will adapt to scenes of children being killed and starved in the Gaza Strip and they will just remain as numbers on the news.”