Aid groups are raising new alarm over Israel’s blockade of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, where it has barred entry of all food and other goods for more than six weeks. Thousands of children have become malnourished, and most people are barely eating one meal a day as stocks dwindle, the United Nations says.
The humanitarian aid system in Gaza “is facing total collapse,” the heads of 12 independent aid organizations warned in a joint statement. They said many groups have shut down operations because Israel’s resumed bombardment the past month has made it too dangerous.
Israeli strikes overnight into Thursday killed at least 23 people, including a family of 10.
A strike in the southern city of Khan Younis killed five children, four women and a man from the same family, all of whom suffered severe burns, according to Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies. Strikes in northern Gaza killed 13 people, including nine children, according to the Indonesian Hospital.
A federal judge in Vermont who is considering whether he has jurisdiction over the case of a Turkish Tufts University student detained by immigration officials in Louisiana raised the possibility Monday of having her brought back to his court for a hearing.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions took under advisement arguments over Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, a doctoral student taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March 25. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Ozturk’s lawyers are challenging the legal authority for ICE’s detention. They are asking that she be immediately released from custody, or in the alternative, be returned to Vermont for further proceedings.
A lawyer for the Justice Department said her case should be dismissed, saying the immigration court has jurisdiction. But Ozturk’s lawyers, who initially didn’t know where she was for hours and first petitioned for her release in Massachusetts, argued for her to be released from detention while her immigration case continues.
A colossal squid has been caught on camera for the first time in the deep sea by an international team of researchers steering a remotely operated submersible.
The sighting was announced Tuesday by the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
