Second Easter in Gaza as territory reels under Israeli violence

TNA’s live coverage of the latest from the war on Gaza concludes for today. Join us again at 0800 GMT for updates from the besieged Palestinian enclave.
 

The Israeli army has ruled out a security incident following reports of gunfire near the Egyptian border close to Kadesh Barnea, according to the Times of Israel.

Soldiers carried out searches in the area to ensure there was no threat, the military stated.

Thousands of people marched through the streets of Istanbul on Sunday in a mass demonstration against Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

The protest, held under the slogan, "Gaza is Dying! Rise Up", was organised by the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH), a prominent Turkish aid organisation.

Participants chanted slogans condemning what they described as genocide and war crimes being committed by Israel against Palestinians in the besieged territory.

Waving Palestinian flags and holding banners in support of Gaza, the demonstrators called for an immediate end to the violence and for international accountability.

Many of the protesters expressed outrage at what they see as global inaction in the face of mounting Palestinian casualties and destruction in Gaza.

Protests are currently taking place in Istanbul, Turkey with thousands showing their solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, denouncing Israels ongoing genocide. pic.twitter.com/UuMTMzP3FZ

— Eye on Palestine (@EyeonPalestine) April 20, 2025

Several Israelis have attempted to cross into the Gaza Strip by entering a buffer zone along the border, according to a statement from the Israeli military.

"Troops were dispatched to the scene and returned the civilians safely," the army confirmed, noting that the group was unsuccessful in their attempt to enter Gaza.

The military added that the civilians were taken into custody for further questioning, although their motive for attempting to cross remains unclear.

The number of people killed in Sunday night’s US airstrikes on a market in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, has climbed to 12, according to the Houthis.

At least 30 others were injured in the strikes, which hit al-Farwah market and the surrounding area in the Shoub district.

The Houthis’ Saba News Agency reported that rescue operations were ongoing, with emergency crews searching through the rubble of collapsed buildings for survivors.

The Palestine Red Crescent rejected the findings of an Israeli military investigation that blamed operational failures for the killing of 15 Gaza emergency service workers, denouncing the report as "full of lies".

"The report is full of lies. It is invalid and unacceptable, as it justifies the killing and shifts responsibility to a personal error in the field command when the truth is quite different," Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson for the Red Crescent, told news agency AFP.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said he feared an outbreak of political violence connected to what he called a campaign of hate against the country's internal security chief, whom the government has moved to sack.

"The red line has been crossed. If we don't stop this, there will be a political murder here, maybe more than one. Jews will kill jews," Lapid said at a press conference in Tel Aviv, adding that "the most serious threats are directed at the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar".

Lapid, leader of the centre-right Yesh Atid party, argued that Bar should resign over his agency's failure to prevent the October 7 attack, and acknowledged the government had the legal authority to dismiss him, provided it was done through due process and "approved by the court".

But he also held Netanyahu responsible for a campaign of threats levelled at Bar.

Lapid presented screenshots of social media posts containing death threats against the security chief, telling Netanyahu: "Stop this."

"Instead of supporting incitement (to hatred), support the Shin Bet, the security forces, the systems that keep this country alive," he added.

Bar's dismissal as head of the internal security agency has been challenged in court by the opposition, which decried it as a sign of anti-democratic drift on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government.

Bar has suggested his ouster was linked to investigations into Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack "and other serious matters", while Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has warned of "a personal conflict of interest on the part of the prime minister due to the criminal investigations involving his associates".

A 16-year-old Palestinian teenage boy from occupied West Bank's Nablus has been critically injured by Israeli forces during a military raid on Sunday, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

According to Wafa, Israeli forces stormed the al-Masaken al-Shabiya neighbourhood, in which the agency reported troops firing live ammunition and tear gas canisters.

The victim was shot in the back as a result and was later rushed to hospital, where doctors alerted his condition as critical. 

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has spoken out against the Israeli military’s investigation into the March killings of 15 Palestinian medics and aid workers in Gaza.

He condemned the military’s dismissal of a deputy commander involved in the incident- one of the few disciplinary actions taken- despite evidence suggesting the medics had their hands bound before being shot and were buried alongside ambulances and other vehicles.

Calling the dismissal a "grave mistake," Ben-Gvir urged that the decision be overturned.

"Our combat soldiers, who are sacrificing their lives in Gaza deserve our full support," he stated.

Earlier on Sunday, the minister- who oversees Israel’s police- said he would promote officers who had opened fire on "terrorists".

"If there were once stutters in the minister’s office when a police officer was forced to defend his life and kill a criminal who shot him, today there are no stutters – there is complete support," Ben-Gvir said.

Houthi-affiliated media have reported that American airstrikes have struck the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which is under Houthi control.

According to the Houthis' Al-Masirah TV, US airstrikes have struck Kamaran Island off Yemen’s Red Sea coast prior to the latest wave of attacks, as well as the al-Jubah district in the eastern Marib governorate.

No information regarding casualties has been released.

Israel's army said it struck a Hezbollah military site in south Lebanon on Sunday, and killed an operative from the Iran-backed militant group in a separate strike earlier in the day.

"A short while ago, the (Israeli military) struck several launchers and a military infrastructure site from which Hezbollah terrorists operated in the area of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon," the military said in a statement, adding it had "struck and eliminated" a Hezbollah operative in the Houla area earlier in the day.

Lebanon's military said a munitions blast in the country's war-torn south killed an officer and two soldiers on Sunday, days after an explosion killed another soldier.

Under a November truce deal that ended a war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, the army has been deploying in south Lebanon and dismantling the group's infrastructure there.

"An army officer and two soldiers were killed and a number of citizens were injured due to an explosion of ammunition as it was being transported inside an army vehicle" in Braiqaa, in south Lebanon's Nabatiyeh district, an army statement said.

Specialised army units were investigating the circumstances of the incident, the statement added.

According to news agency AFP reported that in Braiqaa, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Israeli border, saw several charred and burnt vehicles on the road, with some damage to nearby shops and flats.

The army had cordoned off the area.

President Joseph Aoun offered his condolences for the three servicemen "who fell while performing their mission to preserve security and stability" and to keep south Lebanon residents from harm, a presidency statement said.

On Monday, the army said a soldier was killed and three others wounded in an explosion in the country's south, where Aoun said they had been dismantling mines in a tunnel.

According to the ceasefire, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters north of Lebanon's Litani River. Israel was to withdraw all its forces but has kept troops in five places it deems "strategic".

More than 1,000 people protested in the Moroccan port city of Tangier on Sunday against the planned docking of a ship said to be carrying fighter jet parts to Israel.

Dockworkers and organisations supporting Palestinians in Gaza said in separate statements that the Maersk vessel was transporting spare parts for F-35 warplanes from the United States to Israel, and was due to dock in Tangier on Sunday.

A crowd of around 1,500 people chanted, "The people want the ship banned," and "No genocidal weapons in Moroccan waters" as they marched down a road alongside the Tanger Med container port, according to news agency AFP.

Port authorities and Maersk did yet publicly commented on the vessel.

The Danish company has said it does not transport weapons or ammunition to conflict zones, though it has a contract with the US government and has previously acknowledged shipments that "contain military-related equipment" derived from "US-Israeli security cooperation".

The protesters in Tangier also called for the severing of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel, which were normalised in 2020 as part of the US-led Abraham Accords.

There have been several large-scale demonstrations in Morocco demanding ties with Israel be cut since the start of its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip in October 2023.

The North African kingdom has officially called for "the immediate, complete and permanent halt to the Israeli war on Gaza", but has not publicly discussed reversing normalisation.

🔴 الآن من طنجة العالية.. قبيل انطلاق المسيرة الشعبية دعما لغزة ورفضا لعبور سفن العدو من مياهنا وموانئنا المغربية pic.twitter.com/NgIIBmReMd

— hassan bennajeh - حسن بناجح (@h_bennajeh) April 20, 2025

Israeli anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence has sharply criticised the official investigation into the killings of 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza, accusing it of being inconsistent, evasive, and selectively presented.

"We all remember when the [Israeli military] claimed that the ambulances emergency lights weren’t on- and then we saw the footage proving otherwise. Not every lie has a video to expose it, but this report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth," the group said in a social media post.

"Another day, another cover-up. More innocent lives taken, with no accountability."

The IDF Spokesperson has just released its account of the incident in which 15 rescue workers were killed in Gaza. In a word? Cover-up.

The investigation is riddled with contradictions, vague phrasing, and selective details. The only "serious" disciplinary action taken: the… pic.twitter.com/6A28beKuXX

— Breaking the Silence (@BtSIsrael) April 20, 2025

An Israeli probe into the killings of Palestinian medics in Gaza says it has found "professional failures" and a deputy commander will be fired.

The findings issued on Sunday come after the killings of 15 medics last month by Israeli forces. Israel at first claimed that the medics' vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire but later backtracked.

Cell phone video recovered from one of the medics contradicted Israel’s initial account of the shooting.

The military investigation found that the deputy battalion commander, "due to poor night visibility," assessed that the ambulances belonged to Hamas militants.

Video footage obtained from the incident shows the ambulances had lights flashing.

A ship carrying wheat has arrived in Syria's Latakia port, the first delivery of its kind since former President Bashar al-Assad was ousted by rebels in December, the Syrian state news agency said on Sunday.

اللاذقية:

اللاذقية تستقبل أول باخرة قمح منذ سقوط النظام البائد، محمّلة بـ6600 طن، في خطوة تعكس بداية التعافي الاقتصادي وتعزيز الأمن الغذائي في البلاد. pic.twitter.com/QqOYtdbUEK

— Abdulrahman Al Hariri (@abdulrahmanpho) April 20, 2025

Israel conducted a number of airstrikes on Sunday in south Lebanon, targeting the Arnoun nature reserve between the villages of Arnoun and Yohmor al-Shqif in the Marjaayoun district.

An earlier drone strike targeted a motorbike in the border village of Houla, killing one man.

Israel has continued to launch strikes on parts of Lebanon despite the November ceasefire deal. It claims it is targeting Hezbollah personnel, weapons and infrastructure, and vows not to let the militant group rebuild itself.

Several civilians have been killed in the attacks.

مشاهدٌ توثق الغارة الاسرائيلية على بلدة #أرنون pic.twitter.com/RXBkvM5F0c

— Lebanon Debate (@lebanondebate) April 20, 2025

Four people were killed in south Lebanon on Sunday when a military vehicle that was transporting ammunition from last year’s war exploded.

Reports said an officer and a soldier died in the explosion, as well as a mother and her child who were passing by. There were also some injuries.

The explosion happened on the Braiqah-Qsaibeh road in south Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh district.

Civil Defence confirmed four were killed and four others were wounded when a remnant of the war exploded inside a military vehicle.

آلية الجيش اللبناني التي اشتعلت إثر انفجار ذخائر من مخلفات الحرب الإسرائيلية في بلدة #بريقع - القصيبة pic.twitter.com/ALXzVKRfNO

— كواليس بيروت - Kawalis Beirut (@KawalisBeirut) April 20, 2025

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Sunday that disarming the Iran-backed Hezbollah group was a "delicate" matter whose implementation required the right circumstances, warning that forcing the issue could lead the country to ruin.

Restricting the bearing of arms to the state is "a sensitive, delicate issue that is fundamental to preserving civil peace" and requires due "consideration and responsibility," Aoun told reporters after visiting the Maronite Patriarch for Easter.

"We will implement" a state monopoly on bearing arms "but we have to wait for the circumstances" to allow this, he said, adding that "nobody is speaking to me about timing or pressure".

"Any controversial domestic issue in Lebanon can only be approached through conciliatory, non-confrontational dialogue and communication. If not, we will lead Lebanon to ruin," he added.

Gaza's civil defence agency reported that Israeli air strikes since dawn on Sunday have killed at least 25 people across the Gaza Strip, including women and children.

"Since dawn today, the occupation's air strikes have killed 20 people and injured dozens more, including children and women across the Gaza Strip," Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency told AFP.

In a separate statement later, the agency reported that five people were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a group of civilians in eastern Rafah.

Pope Francis reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in an Easter Sunday message read aloud by an aide as the pontiff, still recovering from pneumonia, looked on during a brief appearance on the main balcony of St. Peter's Basilica.

Before a five-week hospital stay for pneumonia, which nearly killed him, Francis had been ramping up criticism of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, calling the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave "very serious and shameful" in January.

In the Easter message, the pontiff said the situation in Gaza was "dramatic and deplorable". The pope also called on Palestinian group Hamas to release its remaining captives and condemned what he said was a "worrisome" trend of antisemitism in the world.

"I express my closeness to the sufferings ... of all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people," said the message.

"I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace," it said.

Lebanese authorities have detained several people who they say were planning to launch rockets into Israel and confiscated the weapons they were intending to use, the military said Sunday.

The army said in a statement that the arrests are linked to other detentions announced earlier this week. It added that as military intelligence was investigating that case they got information that a new rocket attack was being planned.

The army said troops raided an apartment near the southern port city of Sidon and confiscated some of the rockets and the launchers and "detained several people who were involved in the operation". It said the detainees were referred to judicial authorities.

On Wednesday, the army said in a statement that authorities detained several people, including a number of Palestinians, who were involved in firing rockets in two separate attacks toward Israel in late March that triggered intense Israeli airstrikes on parts of Lebanon. Lebanon’s Hezbollah group denied at the time that it was behind the firing of rockets.

Lebanon's health ministry said one person was killed Sunday in an Israeli strike in the country's south, the latest such raid despite a ceasefire between Israel and the Shia militant group Hezbollah.

An "Israeli enemy strike on a vehicle in Kawthariyat al-Siyad", located inland between the southern cities of Sidon and Tyre, killed "one person and wounded another", the health ministry said in a statement.

It was not immediately who was the target of the strike.

الصّحة: الغارة التي شنها الجيش الإسرائيلي على سيارة في بلدة كوثرية السياد أدت في حصيلة أولية إلى سقوط شهيد pic.twitter.com/QoPXbasU1a

— LBCI Lebanon News (@LBCI_NEWS) April 20, 2025

An Israeli airstrike killed six Palestinians in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, on Sunday.

Gaza’s health ministry said 44 people had been killed and 145 wounded over the past 24 hours in the territory, bringing the total death toll since Israel resumed its strike on 18 March to 1,827, with over 4,800 wounded.

The ministry said the total death toll since the war started on 7 October 2023 was 51,201 people, and close to 116,900 wounded.

Qatar's chief negotiator voiced frustration over talks for a truce in Gaza in an interview with AFP, a month after Israel resumed its strikes on the Palestinian territory and another round of negotiations ended without a deal.

"We're definitely frustrated by the slowness, sometimes, of the process in the negotiation. This is an urgent matter. There are lives at stake here if this military operation continues day by day," Mohammed Al-Khulaifi said on Friday.

"We've been working continuously in the last days to try to bring the parties together and revive the agreement that has been endorsed by the two sides," the Qatari minister of state said. "And we will remain committed to this, in spite of the difficulties," he added.

During the long mediation process, Qatar has been the target of direct criticism from Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"We've been receiving those types of criticism and negative comments since the early times of our involvement," Al-Khulaifi said. "Critiques without any context, such as the ones that we keep hearing from Netanyahu himself, are often just noise," he added.

The United States and Iran made progress in a second round of high-stakes talks on Tehran's nuclear programme on Saturday and agreed to meet again next week, both sides said.

The Oman-mediated talks in Rome lasted about four hours, Iranian state television and a senior US official said. Tehran's top diplomat Abbas Araghchi declared it a "good meeting" that yielded progress.

"This time we managed to reach a better understanding on a series of principles and goals," he told Iranian state TV.

The senior US official said in a statement, "Today, in Rome over four hours in our second round of talks, we made very good progress in our direct and indirect discussions."

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said the parties "agreed to resume indirect talks at a technical level over the next few days and subsequently continue at the level of two senior negotiators next Saturday" on April 26. The US official confirmed another meeting next week but did not specify which day or where. Oman said the third round would be in Muscat, returning to the site of the first talks a week ago.

The fate of a US-Israeli captive who Hamas said had featured in an Israeli truce proposal remains unknown, the group said on Saturday, separately releasing a video of another captive alive.

The body of a guard assigned to the American-Israeli, Edan Alexander, had been recovered from the site of a recent Israeli strike, Hamas' armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement.

"But the fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown," the militants said.

A senior Hamas official had on Monday said Israel proposed a 45-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of 10 living captives, the first of whom would have been Alexander, but Hamas rejected the plan.

Alexander had also featured in a proposal one month earlier from the United States Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

An Israeli campaign group urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday to secure a deal to bring the hostages from Gaza, even if it meant ending the war.

"Netanyahu has no plan. Tonight, we heard endless talk about what not to do. We would appreciate hearing from our prime minister what should be done," the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

"There is one clear, feasible, and urgent solution that can be achieved now: reach a deal that will bring everyone home - even if it means stopping the fighting."