Source: Mondoweiss.net
Israeli strikes intensify on Rafah as Egypt closes the Rafah crossing from its side. Meanwhile, CIA Director Burns prolonged his stay in Qatar to try to avoid a “collapse” of negotiations.
Casualties
- 34,735 + killed* and at least 78,108 wounded in the Gaza Strip.*
- 496+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
- 612 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, and at least 6,800 injured.***
*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on May 6, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on May 5, this is the latest figure.
*** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded is according to Israeli media reports.
Key Developments
- Israel kills 113 Palestinians, wounds 142 since Thursday, May 2, across Gaza, raising the death toll since October 7 to 34,735 and the number of wounded to 78,108, according to the Gaza health ministry.
- Israeli army warns Palestinians in Rafah of an imminent invasion, instructing them to leave.
- Egypt closes the Rafah crossing from its side with cement blocks.
- Israel’s war minister Gallant tells U.S. defense secretary Lloyd Austin that Israel “has no choice but to invade Rafah.”
- Axios: Biden will discuss the Rafah invasion with Netanyahu today.
- EU chief diplomat Joseph Borrell says Israel’s order to Palestinians to evacuate Rafah is “unacceptable.”
- France renews its refusal of an Israeli invasion of Rafah.
- Hamas says that Israel’s invasion of Rafah “will not be a picnic.”
- UN experts condemn Israel’s “systematic” violations against Palestinian civilians.
- UNRWA says it will not participate in evacuating civilians from Rafah.
- The Israeli army admits four of its soldiers were killed in a Palestinian mortar attacks against Israeli troops in the Netzarim corridor, south of Gaza city.
- West Bank: four Palestinians killed in gunfight with Israeli forces north of Tulkarem.
Israel kills 113 Palestinians since Thursday
The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry announced that the remaining hospitals in the Gaza Strip received 113 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes since Thursday, May 2, while 142 others arrived wounded.
Meanwhile, local media sources reported that, in the past 24 hours, Israeli forces bombed the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, as well as a residential apartment in the Samer area. Five bodies have been recovered since Sunday. Israeli forces also killed an unreported number of people in strikes on Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.
In the central Gaza Strip, Israeli strikes targeted the Mighraqa village, killing at least six Palestinians since Sunday in strikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp. Another Palestinian was killed on Sunday in an Israeli strike on the Maghazi refugee camp….