Yemen’s Houthis report new raids on the Red Sea port of Hodeidah as the death toll from US’s attacks on Sunday rises to 53. The victims include five children.

    US officials say they will keep hitting Yemen until the rebel group backs down on its threat to resume attacks on Israel-linked ships in the Red Sea.

    In Gaza, Israel continues its attacks and punishing blockade of the Strip, killing a 62-year-old Palestinian man, as an Israeli delegation travelled to Cairo to discuss the details of the ceasefire with Egyptian officials.

    Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 48,572 Palestinians have been confirmed killed and 112,032 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. Gaza’s Government Media Office has updated its death toll to more than 61,700, saying thousands of Palestinians missing under the rubble are presumed dead. At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.

    ran’s Khamenei says Yemen is ‘definitely victorious’

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed support for the people of Yemen following the US’s deadly bombardment of the country.

    “The nation of #Yemen is definitely victorious. The only path is that of resistance,” he wrote in a post on X.

    “That which has caused the US and its allies to panic today is the fact that the Muslim nations are standing firmly and that this resistance will prove to be effective.”

    Parents in Gaza struggling to feed their children again, UN says

    In a post on X, the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) says Palestinians in Gaza are again worried about securing enough food.

    “Parents in Gaza are struggling to feed their children. Hospitals are running out of supplies – again,” OCHA wrote.

    “The flow of supplies has been blocked for 2 weeks. It is critical to open up Gaza immediately.”

    Top Democrat rejects genocide allegations against Israel

    Chuck Schumer, the minority leader of the US Senate, says allegations of genocide against Israel increase anti-Semitism because they make Israel and Jewish people “look like monsters”.

    In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the top Democrat rejected the allegations of genocide – including by a UN commission and rights experts – by turning the focus on Hamas and saying the Palestinian group is “much closer to genocidal than Israel”.

    “If Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened. In fact, the opposite happened,” Schumer said.

    “And I told Netanyahu, I said to him what I thought: You gotta reduce the number of casualties and make sure aid gets in and stuff like that. Here is the difficulty: Hamas has a different way of waging warfare, of using innocent Gazans as human shields. They put rockets in hospitals. They put their military supplies in schools. What is a country supposed to do when rockets are being fired from a school? So Israel’s been in a much more difficult position because of what Hamas did.”

    The comments come after a UN probe last week found that Israel had committed genocidal acts by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities. Amnesty International issued a report in December saying that Israel had committed at least three of the five acts banned by the 1948 Genocide Convention, namely killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a protected group’s physical destruction.

    Human Rights Watch has also levelled the same allegation, saying Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza by denying them clean water.

    Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 48,572 Palestinians, wounded 112,032 others and reduced most of the Palestinian territory to rubble.

    WFP says no food has entered Gaza since March 2

    The World Food Programme (WFP) is again calling for an end to Israel’s total blockade on Gaza.

    “No food has entered Gaza since March 2, as all border crossings remain closed for both humanitarian and commercial supplies”, the WFP said in a post on X.

    Israel’s blockade, which is now in its 15th day, has also caused the prices of commercial food to surge, the WFP added, “with some staples increasing over 200 percent”.