Palestinians mourn 28 killed in strikes on refugee camps

A relative mourns by the bodies of children killed in an Israeli air strike on a building in Rafah. PIC/AP

Mourners held funeral prayers Wednesday morning outside a hospital in central Gaza for 28 people killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on urban refugee camps the previous night. Footage showed mourners praying over the bodies, which were wrapped in funeral shrouds, before the bodies were taken away in donkey carts for burial.

As fighting rages on in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is determined to carry out a Rafah ground offensive, despite United States President Joe Biden's misgivings. Earlier, Qatari officials said they were "cautiously optimistic" after talks with Israel's intelligence chief in Doha aimed at trying to reach a cease-fire. But, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said Tuesday, an Israeli ground operation in Rafah would set back any talks.

A medic carries a wounded Palestinian boy. Pic/AP

At least 31,819 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. A United Nations food agency warned that "famine is imminent" in Gaza.

Fighting rages on near hospital

Explosions and shootings shook the Gaza Strip's biggest hospital and surrounding neighborhoods as Israeli forces stormed through the facility for a second day Tuesday. The military said it had killed 50 Hamas militants in the hospital, but it could not be independently confirmed that the dead were combatants. Thousands of Palestinian patients, medical staff and displaced people were trapped inside the sprawling complex Tuesday as heavy fighting between troops and Hamas fighters raged in nearby districts.

In a first, Israel working on national food

For the first time in its history, Israel is working to ensure food security in the country. As such, Israel's Ministry of Agriculture said that it is "changing its face and focusing its mission" in a new way and, in cooperation with other ministries, is developing a proposal for a national plan to that end. To emphasise the importance of this, the ministry intends to change its name to "Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security". The ministry said that in the coming days it will submit a decision-making proposal for the government's approval to formulate a national plan for food security that will include the formulation of goals for the supply of food to the entire population until the year 2050, with intermediate goals for the years 2030 and 2040.

Despite war, Israel is 5th in happiness list

Despite five months of war with Hamas, Israel ranked fifth in the 2024 World Happiness Report, which was released on Wednesday. Anat Panti, a happiness policy researcher at Bar-Ilan University University in Ramat Gan, explained, "The reason lies in the fact that life satisfaction, the index by which the level of happiness is measured, is a stable index over time and refers more to the characteristics of the country itself such as the strength of the economy, the degree of social involvement, and the health services in the country, than to fleeting feelings."

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