Hundreds of children and women have been killed in Gaza following days of Israeli airstrikes, say Palestinian officials.
At least 447 children and 248 women were among the estimated 1,417 people who have died in the bombardment, according to the health ministry, adding more than 6,000 have been injured.
Israel has said it is targeting Hamas after the militant group carried out a wave of attacks in Israel at the weekend as gunmen stormed the border and killed hundreds in their homes as well as 260 others at a music festival.
Israel says a total of 1,300 of its people have died since Saturday’s raid as its troops continue to mass along the barbed wire fence ahead of a possible ground offensive on Gaza, with 300,000 reservists called up.
Among today’s key developments:
• UN warns of ‘dire situation’ in Gaza Strip • UK navy to send ships and begin surveillance flights over Israel • Blinken tells Netanyahu the US will always be by Israel’s side • Palestinians accuse Israel of killing civilians • Israeli PM says Hamas beheaded soldiers and raped women • Israeli military admits it failed to protect its citizens in Hamas attack • US secretary of state pledges support for Israel in Netanyahu meeting
Hamas has said 18 Palestinians died in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the heart of Gaza following one of the latest Israeli retaliatory raids.
Some 340,000 Palestinians have fled their homes seeking refuge in schools, according to the United Nations.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned crucial supplies were running dangerously low in the Gaza Strip after Israel imposed a total blockade on the territory.
“It’s a dire situation in the Gaza Strip that we’re seeing evolve with food and water being in limited supply and quickly running out,” said Brian Lander, the deputy head of emergencies at WFP.
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0:51
Bombardment at dawn in Gaza City
Israel has insisted it is giving prior warning of its strikes, though they are now hitting entire neighbourhoods as opposed to individual buildings.
Meanwhile, the chief of staff for Israel’s military, Herzi Halevi, admitted it failed to protect its civilians from Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Saturday.
“The IDF is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens, and on Saturday morning in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, we did not,” Mr Halevi said. “We will learn, we will investigate, but now is the time for war.”
Image: The scene in Jabalia in the Gaza Strip after an airstrike. Pic: AP
The overnight retaliatory strikes targeted Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces, including command centres used by the fighters who attacked Israel, and the home of a senior Hamas operative where unspecified weapons were stored, the Israeli military said.
Elsewhere, Israeli airstrikes have struck the international airports of the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, damaging their runways and putting them out of service, said Syrian state media.
An unnamed military official was quoted by the state news agency Sana as saying no one was hurt in the attacks. The Israeli military declined to comment.
Israel’s siege of Gaza has left Palestinians stricken as supplies of food, water, electricity and medicine have dwindled.
The death toll in Gaza is expected to rise as 650,000 people have been affected by the shortages, and hospitals are on the verge of collapse with diminishing power supplies.
IDF troops assemble
Troops from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are building up near the Gaza border as an imminent ground invasion is possible – though no political decision on this has yet been announced, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht said.
Israel has also evacuated tens of thousands of residents from nearby communities.
Should the ground offensive go ahead it would be the first since the 50-day Gaza war in 2014, which left thousands of Palestinians and dozens of IDF troops dead.
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Image: Israeli soldiers near the Israel-Gaza border. Pic: AP
Hamas attack ‘the equivalent of 10 9/11s’, Blinken says
Meanwhile, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said during a visit to Israel today that the country’s government had shared photographs and videos in meetings which showed victims of attacks by Hamas.
He said the images included a baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded, and young people burned alive in their cars or hideaways
“It’s simply depravity in the worst imaginable way,” Mr Blinken told a news briefing in Tel Aviv.
“Images are worth a thousand words. These images may be worth a million.”
He added: “If you look at (the incursion) in proportion to the size of Israel’s population, this is the equivalent of 10 9/11s.
“That’s how big and how devastating the attack has been.”
Mr Blinken also said the US is “working as hard as it can” to ensure the conflict does not open on a second front with involvement from Iran-backed Hezbollah, based in Lebanon.
“[Joe Biden] has been very clear that no one state or non-state actor should try to take advantage of this moment,” he said.
Following his trip to Israel, Mr Blinken will head to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, before travelling on to meet with leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Qatar.
The US secretary of state said he will be “pressing countries to help prevent the conflict from spreading”.
Mr Blinken had earlier met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv today, where said the US would “always be there by [Israel’s] side”.
“You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourselves, but as long as America exists you will never have to,” Mr Blinken said.
Mr Netanyahu announced a unity government on Wednesday and vowed to “crush and destroy” Hamas.
“Every Hamas member is a dead man,” Mr Netanyahu said in a televised address. He has also called Hamas an “enemy of civilisation”.
Israel estimates 1,500 Hamas militants have been killed on its soil following their infiltration of the border.
The IDF, which along with Western powers, considers Hamas as “terrorists”.
Image: People mourn after an Israeli couple were killed by Hamas gunmen
Mr Netanyahu said that militants beheaded soldiers and raped women in its attack on Saturday.
Hamas is also believed to be holding around 150 hostages in Gaza, including soldiers, men, women, children and older adults, since the surprise weekend raid.
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3:09
Families appeal for hostages’ release
Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, said the blockade would remain until the captives were released.
“Not a single electricity switch will be flipped on, not a single faucet will be turned on, and not a single fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home,” he said on social media.
The US has stepped in by sending Israel a team of technical experts to assist with the recovery as it believes some of the captives are Americans.
Donald Trump has announced a 10% trade tariff on all imports from the UK – as he unleashed sweeping tariffs across the globe.
Speaking at a White House event entitled “Make America Wealthy Again”, the president held up a chart detailing the worst offenders – which also showed the new tariffs the US would be imposing.
“This is Liberation Day,” he told a cheering audience of supporters, while hitting out at foreign “cheaters”.
He claimed “trillions” of dollars from the “reciprocal” levies he was imposing on others’ trade barriers would provide relief for the US taxpayer and restore US jobs and factories.
Mr Trump said the US has been “looted, pillaged, raped, plundered” by other nations.
Image: Pic: AP
His first tariff announcement was a 25% duty on all car imports from midnight – 5am on Thursday, UK time.
Mr Trump confirmed the European Union would face a 20% reciprocal tariff on all other imports. China’s rate was set at 34%.
The UK’s rate of 10% was perhaps a shot across the bows over the country’s 20% VAT rate, though the president’s board suggested a 10% tariff imbalance between the two nations.
It was also confirmed that further US tariffs were planned on some individual sectors including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical mineral imports.
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6:39
Trump’s tariffs explained
The ramping up of duties promises to be painful for the global economy. Tariffs on steel and aluminium are already in effect.
The UK government signalled there would be no immediate retaliation.
Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “We will always act in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers. That’s why, throughout the last few weeks, the government has been fully focused on negotiating an economic deal with the United States that strengthens our existing fair and balanced trading relationship.
“The US is our closest ally, so our approach is to remain calm and committed to doing this deal, which we hope will mitigate the impact of what has been announced today.
“We have a range of tools at our disposal and we will not hesitate to act. We will continue to engage with UK businesses including on their assessment of the impact of any further steps we take.
“Nobody wants a trade war and our intention remains to secure a deal. But nothing is off the table and the government will do everything necessary to defend the UK’s national interest.”
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0:43
Who showed up for Trump’s tariff address?
The EU has pledged to retaliate, which is a problem for Northern Ireland.
Should that scenario play out, the region faces the prospect of rising prices because all its imports are tied to EU rules under post-Brexit trading arrangements.
It means US goods shipped to Northern Ireland would be subject to the EU’s reprisals.
The impact of a trade war would be expected to be widely negative, with tit-for-tat tariffs risking job losses, a ramping up of prices and cooling of global trade.
Research for the Institute for Public Policy Research has suggested more than 25,000 direct jobs in the UK car manufacturing industry alone could be at risk from the tariffs on car exports to the US.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) had said the tariff costs could not be absorbed by manufacturers and may lead to a review of output.
The tariffs now on UK exports pose a big risk to growth and the so-called headroom Chancellor Rachel Reeves was forced to restore to the public finances at the spring statement, risking further spending cuts or tax rises ahead to meet her fiscal rules.
A member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), David Miles, told MPs on Tuesday that US tariffs at 20% or 25% maintained on the UK for five years would “knock out all the headroom the government currently has”.
But he added that a “very limited tariff war” that the UK stays out of could be “mildly positive”.
He said: “There’s a bit of trade that will get diverted to the UK, and some of the exports from China, for example, that would have gone to the US, they’ll be looking for a home for them in the rest of the world.
“And stuff would be available in the UK a bit cheaper than otherwise would have been. So there is one, not central scenario at all, which is very, very mildly potentially positive to the UK. All the other ones which involve the UK facing tariffs are negative, and they’re negative to very different extents.”
Israel is beginning a major expansion of its military operation in Gaza and will seize large areas of the territory, the country’s defence minister said.
Israel Katz said in a statement that there would be a large scale evacuation of the Palestinian population from fighting areas.
In a post on X, he wrote: “I call on the residents of Gaza to act now to remove Hamas and return all the hostages. This is the only way to end the war.”
He said the offensive was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and capture large areas that will be added to the security zones of the State of Israel”.
The expansion of Israel’s military operation in Gaza deepens its renewed offensive.
The deal had seen the release of dozens of hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, but collapsed before it could move to phase two, which would have involved the release of all hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
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1:08
26 March: Anti-Hamas chants heard at protest in Gaza
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had already issued evacuation warnings to Gazans living around the southern city of Rafah and towards the city of Khan Yunis, telling them to move to the al Mawasi area on the shore, which was previously designated a humanitarian zone.
Israeli forces have already set up a significant buffer zone within Gaza, having expanded an area around the edge of the territory that had existed before the war, as well as a large security area in the so-called Netzarim corridor through the middle of Gaza.
This latest conflict began when Hamas launched an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages.
The ensuing Israeli offensive has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
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1:22
Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
Aid group Doctors Without Borders warned on Wednesday that Israel’s month-long siege of Gaza means some critical medications are now short in supply and are running out, leaving Palestinians at risk of losing vital healthcare.
“The Israeli authorities’ have condemned the people of Gaza to unbearable suffering with their deadly siege,” said Myriam Laaroussi, the group’s emergency coordinator in Gaza.
“This deliberate infliction of harm on people is like a slow death; it must end immediately.”
“Liberation day” was due to be on 1 April. But Donald Trump decided to shift it by a day because he didn’t want anyone to think it was an April fool.
It is no joke for him and it is no joke for governments globally as they brace for his tariff announcements.
It is stunning how little we know about the plans to be announced in the Rose Garden of the White House later today.
It was telling that we didn’t see the President at all on Tuesday. He and all his advisers were huddled in the West Wing, away from the cameras, finalising the tariff plans.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the so-called ‘measured voice’. A former hedge fund manager, he has argued for targeted not blanket tariffs.
Peter Navarro is Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing. A long-time aide and confidante of the president, he is a true loyalist and a firm believer in the merits of tariffs.
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His economic views are well beyond mainstream economic thought – precisely why he appeals to Trump.
The third key character is Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary and the biggest proponent of the full-throttle liberation day tariff juggernaut.
The businessman, philanthropist, Trump fundraiser and billionaire (net worth ranging between $1bn and $2bn) has been among the closest to Trump over the past 73 days of this presidency – frequently in and out of the West Wing.
If anything goes wrong, observers here in Washington suspect Trump will make Lutnick the fall guy.
And what if it does all go wrong? What if Trump is actually the April fool?
“It’s going to work…” his press secretary said when asked if it could all be a disaster, driving up the cost of living for Americans and creating global economic chaos.
“The president has a brilliant team who have been studying these issues for decades and we are focussed on restoring the global age of America…” Karoline Leavitt said.
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2:52
‘Days of US being ripped off are over’
Dancing to the president’s tune
My sense is that we should see “liberation day” not as the moment it’s all over in terms of negotiations for countries globally as they try to carve out deals with the White House. Rather it should be seen as the start.
Trump, as always, wants to be seen as the one calling the shots, taking control, seizing the limelight. He wants the world to dance to his tune. Today is his moment.
But beyond today, alongside the inevitable tit-for-tat retaliation, expect to see efforts by nations to seek carve-outs and to throw bones to Trump; to identify areas where trade policies can be tweaked to placate the president.
Even small offerings which change little in a material sense could give Trump the chance to spin and present himself as the winning deal maker he craves to be.
One significant challenge for foreign governments and their diplomats in Washington has been engaging the president himself with proposals he might like.
Negotiations take place with a White House team who are themselves unsure where the president will ultimately land. It’s resulted in unsatisfactory speculative negotiations.
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6:03
Treasury minister: ‘We’ll do everything to secure a deal’
Too much faith placed in the ‘special relationship’?
The UK believes it’s in a better position than most other countries globally. It sits outside the EU giving it autonomy in its trade policy, its deficit with the US is small, and Trump loves Britain.
It’s true too that the UK government has managed to accelerate trade conversations with the White House on a tariff-free trade partnership. Trump’s threats have forced conversations that would normally sit in the long grass for months.
Yet, for now, the conversations have yielded nothing firm. That’s a worry for sure. Did Keir Starmer have too much faith in the ‘special relationship’?
Downing Street will have identified areas where they can tweak trade policy to placate Trump. Cars maybe? Currently US cars into the UK carry a 10% tariff. Digital services perhaps?
US food? Unlikely – there are non-tariff barriers on US food because the consensus seems to be that chlorinated chicken and the like isn’t something UK consumers want.
Easier access to UK financial services maybe? More visas for Americans?
For now though, everyone is waiting to see what Trump does before they either retaliate or relent and lower their own market barriers.