April 23, 2024 - Israel-Hamas war

More than 270,000 tons of solid waste across the entire Gaza Strip remain uncollected, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Tuesday, as Israel's military campaign has disrupted essential services in the enclave. In January and February, UNRWA and the UN's Development Programme collected 10,000 tons of solid waste in Gaza.

Scores displaced: As of April 21, up to 1.7 million people (more than 75% of the entire population) have been displaced across Gaza, the majority multiple times, UNRWA estimated.

Israeli attacks intensified in central Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis in recent weeks, uprooting "a significant number of displaced people" further south, UNRWA said, adding, “Families are forced to move repeatedly in search of safety." In the northern Gaza and Gaza City governorates, about 300,000 people were estimated to be sheltering.

Relief operations hindered: Efforts to provide relief for Palestinians in northern Gaza have been "severely restricted," the agency said, claiming that Israeli authorities have impeded aid missions to the area.

Israel has longstanding issues with UNRWA, having accused some staffers of being directly involved in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks into southern Israel. An independent review noted that "Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence" for its allegations.

Health system crushed: As of April 17, eight out of 24 UNRWA health centers were operational across the north, central Gaza and in the south, as Israel’s siege in Gaza has diminished food, fuel and water supplies, and severely damaged the medical system.

Israel has consistently denied aid convoys to northern Gaza, according to the UN's agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA). Food shortages are worst in northern Gaza, where Israel concentrated its military offensive in the early days of the war.

Israeli authorities vetoed at least 27 out of 81 aid missions that require coordination in the north and south of the strip, between April 1 and April 19, UNRWA said in a report on Tuesday. The last time UNRWA was able to deliver food supplies to the area was on January 23.

The Israeli agency in charge of inspecting convoys entering Gaza told CNN earlier this month that it was “cooperating [in the north] with a wide array of humanitarian organisations" including UN agencies and regional actors.

Since the beginning of April, an average of 186 aid trucks have crossed into Gaza per day via the Kerem Shalom and Rafah land crossings, UNRWA added. As of 8 April, UNRWA said it had delivered flour to nearly 400,000 families in southern Gaza. Before the war, about 500 trucks of supplies were entering the Palestinian enclave daily.

Barely trickling in: Human rights agencies have repeatedly warned that Israel's severe restrictions on aid entering Gaza means relief is barely tricking into the strip.

UNRWA says there “has been very little significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza or improved access to the north." Israeli agencies have frequently blamed the United Nations for failing to distribute aid within Gaza, saying last week that hundreds of trucks of aid piled up at Kerem Shalom. 

Dozens of Palestinians visited the central Gaza neighborhood of Nuiserat last week, after Israeli forces withdrew. 

CNN footage shows the destroyed interior of buildings sliced by bombardment, as men and boys wearing flip flops stand on huge mounds of debris. A young Palestinian child sits on a white sofa surrounded by pink cushions, old blankets, and upturned concrete slabs in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Residents in Gaza say they were desperately trying to salvage precious objects from homes ravaged by Israeli strikes, as they surveyed the area in horror. 

“On the second day of Eid rockets started hitting us,” Abu Mohammad Farajallah, a displaced resident, told CNN on April 18. “We came back after a week to struck houses and buildings, there is no place to stay.” 

Earlier this month, the Israeli military retreated from Nuseirat and left swathes of rubble, damaged residential buildings and destroyed water, sanitation and waste collection services, Palestinian officials told CNN. Israeli attacks in the neighborhood left at least 500 people killed, injured or missing, said Gaza’s Civil Defense spokesperson, Mahmoud Basal. CNN cannot verify the estimate and contacted the Israeli military about the scope and purpose of its attacks in Nuseirat. 

Another resident, Hassan Al Habbash, compared the devastation to “an earthquake.”

"We have never witnessed such destruction in history,” added the doctor, who wore glasses and had a wispy white beard. “I came back to find my house demolished.” 

Israel's bombardment demolished the top three floors of the Al-Sahaba building in Gaza City, in the northern part of the enclave, Monday.

Footage from the attack shows the Israeli airstrike hitting the eight-story tower, igniting a ball of fire and triggering a massive plume of smoke. The strike was also captured from a distance, with another video showing a dark cloud of smoke rising on the city’s horizon.

A warning was issued an hour ahead of the strike, with no casualties reported, according to journalists on the ground. The Israeli military says it launched 25 air strikes across Gaza over past 24 hours. 

Human rights warnings: Oxfam and Human Rights Watch have accused Israel of imposing "indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks in violation of international humanitarian law" in Gaza.

The Israeli military says it killed two members of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck and killed Hussein Ali Azkul, who it described as “a significant terrorist operative" in Hezbollah's Aerial Defense Unit, in southern Lebanon. Azkul was "heavily involved in the planning and execution of terrorist attacks against Israel," the IDF said in a statement Tuesday.

Hezbollah also acknowledged the death of Azkul in a statement on Tuesday as well, without mentioning the cause or date of death.

The IDF claimed to have killed another “significant terrorist” in Hezbollah’s Aerial Unit -- Sajed Sarafand -- in the area of Arzoun, in southern Lebanon. Sirens were activated Tuesday morning in the western Galilee area, near the Lebanese border, because of a suspected drone infiltration.

Regional tensions: Israeli and Hezbollah forces have engaged in cross-border fire and tit-for-tat exchanges since October 7, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel. Hezbollah’s political stance has unambiguously supported the Palestinian militants. It has roundly condemned Israel’s relentless airstrikes on Gaza.

CNN's Tamara Qiblawi contributed reporting.

Emergency workers on Tuesday recovered at least 35 more bodies from a mass grave within the Nasser medical complex, in southern Gaza, after Israeli forces withdrew from the neighborhood earlier this month.

The total number of bodies found increased to 310, Colonel Yamen Abu Suleiman, the director of Civil Defense in Khan Younis, told CNN, adding that operations are ongoing.

CNN is unable to verify Suleiman’s claims and cannot confirm the causes of death among the bodies being unearthed. Over the weekend, family members gathered at the hospital desperately searching for the bodies of loved ones who had been killed.

CNN has requested a response from the Israeli military to claims that its troops carried out DNA tests on scores of people who had been killed and temporarily buried within the hospital’s grounds in the search for hostages taken by Hamas and held in Gaza.

IDF's response: The Israel Defense Forces said that the “claim that the IDF buried Palestinian bodies is baseless and unfounded,” it told CNN.

“During the IDF’s operation in the area of Nasser Hospital, in accordance to the effort to locate hostages and missing persons, corpses buried by Palestinians in the area of Nasser Hospital were examined. The examination was conducted in a careful manner and exclusively in places where intelligence indicated the possible presence of hostages.” 

“The examination was carried out respectfully while maintaining the dignity of the deceased. Bodies examined, which did not belong to Israeli hostages, were returned to their place,” the IDF added.

The IDF reburied the bodies of Palestinians in a collective grave, relatives told CNN.

Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, on Monday called reports of the mass graves unearthed at Nasser hospital "extremely troubling."

The post was updated with the response from the Israeli military.

Gaza's Health Ministry has reported 32 more deaths due to Israeli military operations, bringing the total number of people killed since October 7 to 34,183 after 200 days of war.

The ministry does not distinguish between casualties among civilians and fighters.

Its counterpart in Ramallah said Tuesday that 72% of those killed in Gaza were children, women and the elderly.

It also reported that the number killed in the occupied West Bank over the past 200 days had reached 487, including 122 children under the age of 18.

Violence by Israeli settlers and troops in the occupied West Bank has surged during Israel's war in Gaza.

The Government Media Office in Gaza estimated that 7,000 people in the territory were missing.

It said that, over the past 200 days, 14,778 children had been killed – as had 9,752 women. The Media Office also said that 17,000 children in Gaza had lost one or both parents.

The office issued estimates for the scale of destruction across Gaza, which included 86,000 homes destroyed and a further 294,000 partially destroyed and unfit for habitation. It also said that 103 schools and colleges had been destroyed and more than 300 damaged. 

CNN cannot independently confirm the numbers due to the lack of international media access to Gaza.

The community of one of the kibbutz in southern Israel that was attacked on October 7 has called on the Israeli government to do "everything" needed to release the hostages still held in Gaza.

Kibbutz Be’eri marked the Passover Seder at what has become known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv.

Yitzhaki said several kibbutz members were still being held hostage by Hamas.

Yitzhaki said the community would not be able to rebuild and heal until the hostages were released.

Dorit Or, the mother of hostage Dror Or, said that the community would continue to call attention to the hostages still in Gaza.

“Everyone has the freedom to live a life that’s full, safe and free with their families and communities,” she said.

The Israeli military and journalists in Gaza reported extensive strikes overnight in several parts of the territory.

The Israel Defense Forces said, “25 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including military infrastructure, observation posts, terrorists, launch posts” had been struck.

The IDF said its fighter jets completed “several airstrikes overnight on Hamas launch posts located in southern Gaza. ‏The launch posts were loaded, but were struck before any launches were carried out toward Israeli territory.”

In central Gaza, it “eliminated a number of terrorists using sniper fire."

And an aircraft struck “several terrorists who hid adjacent to a civilian shelter in the area of Bureij” in central Gaza.

A journalist working for CNN in Gaza City said that Israeli tank and artillery fire had continued in the neighborhoods of Zeitoun, Shuja'iya and Tuffah overnight.

The journalist said an Israeli airstrike hit an area near Wadi Gaza in central Gaza, and two more airstrikes had targeted the area of the Bureij refugee camp.

The journalist also reported that Israeli artillery shelling targeted the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Israeli officials in Sderot – close to the border with Gaza – said that shrapnel from a rocket caused a fire at a warehouse. There were no casualties.