Thousands of Palestinian cancer patients are living without treatment as they await medical evacuation

When the Gaza war began, Ismail Abu Naji was just 18 months old, his small body covered in swollen, bleeding lesions. Months earlier, doctors had diagnosed him with a rare blood cancer, one that, if untreated, is often a death sentence.

In the weeks before the war, Ismail’s family had arranged for him to be transferred to Al-Makassed hospital in Jerusalem, a charitable institution for Palestinians, for specialised care. But the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack that triggered the conflict meant Ismail could not leave the territory.

Thousands have blown down in storms and tents from China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia found to be not waterproof

Thousands of tents supplied by China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to shelter displaced Palestinians in Gaza offer only limited protection against rain and wind, an assessment compiled by shelter specialists in the devastated territory has revealed.

The assessment will undermine claims that Palestinians in Gaza are being supplied with adequate shelter. Fierce storms in recent weeks blew down or damaged thousands of tents, affecting at least 235,000 people, according to UN estimates.

The term ceasefire ‘risks creating a dangerous illusion life is returning to normal’ for Palestinians squeezed into the remaining 42% of their land behind Israel’s ‘yellow line’

When Jumaa and Fadi Abu Assi went to look for firewood their parents thought they would be safe. They were just young boys, aged nine and 10 and, after all, a ceasefire had been declared in Gaza.

Their mother, Hala Abu Assi, was making tea in the family’s tent in Khan Younis when she heard an explosion, a missile fired by an Israeli drone. She ran to the scene – but it was too late.

Relatives and experts tell of the human and societal need to find and identify the dead, while images and data shed light on the scale of the job

It has been described as one of the most gruelling recovery efforts in modern warfare.

As negotiations over the fragile Gaza ceasefire continue, Palestinians have started to dig through 61m tonnes of debris, 20 times more than the combined mass of all debris generated by conflicts since 2008. Underneath, at least 10,000 people are thought to be buried.