Massacres continue in Gaza as US Vice President Kamala Harris backs Israel a day after seeking a ceasefire.
Here’s how things are going on Tuesday March 5, 2024:
Fighting and humanitarian crisis
- An Israeli airstrike on a house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Tuesday morning killed at least eight people and injured several others, the Wafa news agency reported.
- Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch, said attacks by Israeli forces on people seeking aid in Gaza were part of a “decades-long pattern” of deadly abuses against the Palestinians.
- With their bare hands, people searched through the rubble of destroyed homes to rescue victims of another Israeli bombardment in Rafah. In the east of the city, similar scenes occurred as crowds searched for the remains of a building pulverized by Israeli air attacks.
Regional tensions and diplomacy
- US Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated her country’s support for Israel and pressed for more humanitarian aid to flow into the Gaza Strip during talks with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz , a day after calling for a ceasefire.
- Pro-Palestinian protesters confronted US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside a movie theater in Brooklyn, New York, demanding that she call Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide.
- In Australia, a group of lawyers accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being an “accomplice to the genocide in Gaza” and called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open an investigation.
- In Lebanon, US special envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to the capital, Beirut, to mediate talks aimed at ending the escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
- Tel Aviv Tribune Arabic shared a video authenticated by the Sanad verification agency showing the interception of fire coming from southern Lebanon towards northern Israel.
- Israel intensified its criticism of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, on Monday, claiming that 450 of its employees were members of groups in the Gaza Strip, without providing any evidence to support its charge.