Demonstrators kick back teargas canisters shot by police during a protest in the central business district of Nairobi, Kenya, 25 June 2025. Photograph: Daniel Irungu/EPA
Police clashed with people marching in Nairobi and other areas to honour those killed in protests last year
At least 16 people have been killed and 400 injured in Kenya as a nationwide demonstration to honour those killed during last year’s anti-government protests turned chaotic, with police clashing with protesters in different parts of the country.
Amnesty Kenya’s executive director, Irũngũ Houghton, said the death toll had been verified by the government-funded Kenya national commission on human rights. “Most were killed by police,” he said.
A joint statement from groups supporting the protests said 83 people were seriously injured and at least eight people were being treated for gunshot wounds.
“We pray for our nation, dialogue and a way forward from the political impasse facing Kenya,” said the statement from the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), the Police Reforms Working Group and the Kenya Medical Association.
Thousands of Kenyans took to the streets early on Wednesday to pay tribute to more than 60 people who died last year when police opened fire on a crowd that tried to storm parliament while MPs inside passed legislation to raise taxes.
UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini speaks during a press conference in Geneva on March 10, 2025. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
Nearly 300 UNRWA workers have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023, and dozens of other agency staffers have alleged torture during Israel Defense Forces detention.
As the International Court of Justice this week weighs an Israeli ban on a United Nations agency that provides lifesaving aid in Gaza, the program’s leader called out attacks on its workers while the United States defended Israel—the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance.
The ICJ is holding a week of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands following the U.N. General Assembly’s December passage of a Norwegian-led resolution asking the tribunal, which is also known as the World Court, for an advisory opinion on Israel’s legal obligation to “ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population.”
Among the 38 nations and three regional blocs scheduled to address the 15 ICJ judges, only the United States and Hungary have so far defended Israel, whose forces have killed nearly 300 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) workers during their nearly 19-month annihilation of Gaza.
“An occupational power retains a margin of appreciation concerning which relief schemes to permit,” U.S. State Department legal adviser Joshua Simmons argued before the court Wednesday, referring to Israel’s 58-year occupation of Palestine, which the ICJ ruled an illegal form of apartheid in a June 2024 advisory opinion.
“Even if an organization offering relief is an impartial humanitarian organization, and even if it is a major actor, occupation law does not compel an occupational power to allow and facilitate that specific actor’s relief operations,” Simmons continued, noting “serious concerns about UNRWA’s impartiality, including information that Hamas has used UNRWA facilities and that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th terrorist attack against Israel” in 2023.
“Given these concerns, it is clear that Israel has no obligation to permit UNRWA specifically to provide humanitarian assistance,” Simmons added. “UNRWA is not the only option for providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza.”
In what UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini described at the time as an act of “reverse due process,” the agency fired nine employees in February 2024 following Israeli allegations that they were involved in the Hamas-led attack on Israel in which more than 1,100 Israelis were killed and 251 Israeli and foreign survivors were kidnapped.
Lazzarini admitted to terminating the staffers without due process or an adequate investigation of Israel’s claims. A subsequent probe by the U.N. Office of Oversight Services “was not able to independently authenticate information used by Israel to support the allegations.”
On Tuesday, Lazzarini reminded the world that “over 50 UNRWA staff—among them teachers, doctors, social workers—have been detained and abused” by Israeli forces since October 2023.
“I wished for death to end the nightmare I was living through”.
Received this awful testimony from a colleague who was rounded up in #Gaza tortured while in Israeli detention and finally released.
For @UNRWA staff humanitarian duty is met with brutality. Since the start of…
“They have been treated in the most shocking and inhumane way,” he continued. “They reported being beaten up and used as human shields. They were subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation, threats of harm to them and their families, and attacks by dogs. Many were subjected to forced confessions.”
Those forced confessions spurred numerous nations including the United States to cut off funding to UNRWA. Almost all of the countries have since restored funding as Israel’s claims have been debunked or questioned over a lack of evidence.
The U.S.—which has not restored funding for UNRWA—earlier this week abandoned its long-standing position that the body is immune from lawsuits, opening the door for cases by October 7 survivors and victims’ relatives stemming from dubious claims of agency involvement in the attack.
In addition to accusing Israeli troops of torturing its staffers, UNRWA has also documented tortures allegedly suffered by Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including interrupted drowning—also known as waterboarding—being shot in the knees with nail guns, sexual abuse of both men and women, and being sodomized with electric batons. The Israel Defense Forces is investigating dozens of in-custody deaths, many of them at the notorious Sde Teiman base in the Negev Desert.
While Israel’s physical assault on Gaza has killed hundreds of UNRWA workers, its diplomatic war on the U.N. has seen the agency banned from operating in Palestine and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared “persona non grata” in Israel after he included Israel on his 2024 “list of shame” of countries and armed groups that kill and injure children during wartime.
The U.S.-backed 572-day war waged by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court—has left more than 184,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Nearly all of the embattled enclave’s more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced and Israel’s “complete siege” of the coastal strip has fueled widespread starvation and illness.
This week’s ICJ hearing comes amid the tribunal’s ongoing genocide case against Israel, which was brought by South Africa and is backed by dozens of nations either individually or via regional blocs. The court has issued three provisional orders in the case, all of which Israel has been accused of flouting.
Responding to the U.S. intervention in this week’s ICJ hearings, Palestinian Ambassador to the Netherlands Ammar Hijazi told Middle East Eye that “everybody knows that Israel is using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war and is starving the population in Gaza because of that.”
U.N. agencies and international humanitarian groups have warned in recent days of the imminent risk of renewed famine in Gaza as food stocks run out.
“ #Gaza: children are starving.The Government of Israel continues to block the entry of food and other basics.A manmade and politically motivated starvation.Nearly 2 months of siege.Calls to bring in supplies are going unheeded.”— UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini
“The U.S. intervention is very narrow in its scope, when it highlights the rights of an occupying power but ignores the so many layers of duties of that occupying power that Israel is in violation of,” Hijazi added.
Among the countries defending UNRWA during Wednesday’s ICJ session were Indonesia and Russia, which is currently waging a war against Ukraine. Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono affirmed “the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” while Maksim Musikhin, legal director of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, argued that “international law should be respected by Israel” and that UNRWA deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support.UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Original article by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Wounded Palestinian kids receives medical attention at Nasser Medical Complex after an Israeli airstrike struck a residential home in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza on April 19, 2025 [Hani Alshaer/Anadolu Agency]
Nearly 600 children have been killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip since last month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday, Anadolu reported.
Citing figures released by the UN children’s agency (UNICEF), UNRWA said that over 1,600 other children have also been injured since Israel resumed its assaults on 18 March.
“The humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is now likely at its worst point since October 2023,” it added.
The Israeli army resumed its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip on 18 March and has since killed 1,864 people and injured nearly 4,900 others despite a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement that took hold in January.
More than 51,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Original article by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Destruction is seen in a cemetery resulting from Israeli attacks as Palestinians try to locate the graves of their relatives in Beit Lahia, Gaza on February 3, 2025. (Photo: Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
British lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn called for Israeli officials, and countries that have funded the bombardment of Gaza, to “face justice for every single life lost.”
Authorities in Gaza and human rights advocates have warned for months that because of the decimation of the enclave’s healthcare system and civil services, the official death toll was likely a significant undercount—and on Monday, officials said thousands more Palestinians had been confirmed killed by Israel’s U.S.-backed onslaught since October 2023.
Salama Maarouf, head of Gaza’s government media office, told the press gathered at the mostly destroyed al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City that the death toll currently stands at 61,709, with thousands of Palestinians who had previously been listed as missing now presumed dead.
The death toll was previously reported to be 47,487 on Saturday. Journalist Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News said Monday that the number is rapidly going up as “people returning to their neighborhoods discover mass graves and people buried under the rubble or killed and their bodies left at the scene.”
Maarouf said officials now believe the bodies of about 76% of those killed have been recovered, but noted that 14,222 people are still believed to be trapped under rubble or inaccessible to rescue and recovery crews.
Those confirmed to have been killed include 17,881 children, including 214 newborn babies. More than 200 journalists were also killed by Israeli forces before a cease-fire deal was reached in mid-January.
Days after the cease-fire agreement, journalist Prem Thakker of Zeteo News noted that the death toll was expected to explode due to the bodies “recovered.”
“The horrors we are about to discover if a cease-fire actually holds will underscore why Israel didn’t want international journalists inside—and why they kept targeting Palestinian journalists,” said Thakker.
The updated death toll was publicized as mediators from the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt began talks on the second phase of the three-part cease-fire agreement. In the first phase, nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners are set to be freed from Israeli prisons by March, and 33 Israeli hostages are scheduled to be released by Hamas as Palestinians return to their neighborhoods—many of which have been reduced to rubble—and hundreds of aid trucks are allowed into the enclave.
The talks that began Monday aim to establish a permanent cease-fire, with Israeli forces making a complete exit from Gaza.
Fighting could begin again in March if a long-term deal isn’t reached in the coming weeks.
British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn said that as the “true scale of Israel’s atrocities” emerges, “officials must face justice for every single life lost.”
“So should those who continued to send weapons,” said Corbyn, “knowing full well they were enabling genocide.”
As humanitarian and medical workers continued recovery missions in Gaza, the death toll in the West Bank on Monday rose to 70 since the beginning of 2025, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Israeli forces and settlers have waged attacks in several West Bank towns and refugee camps in recent weeks, and the Trump administration said late last month that it would continue providing military aid to Israel as it froze nearly all foreign assistance.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Israeli military vehicles patrol the streets and alleys of the area during the second day of the raid on the Tulkarem Refugee Camp in the West Bank on December 25, 2024 [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
Palestinian factions called, Monday, for escalating resistance operations in the Occupied West Bank in retaliation for Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Anadolu Agency reports.
Three illegal Israeli settlers were killed and six others injured early Monday in a shooting attack near the Kedumim settlement in the northern West Bank.
In a statement, Hamas hailed the attack as
a heroic response to the ongoing crimes and war of extermination committed by the (Israeli) occupation against our people in Gaza, the displacement plans in the West Bank, and the settler aggression on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and holy sites
“This operation is a message to the extremist Israeli government and its ministers that there is a free and rebellious nation that will not abandon its rights and that the resistance will continue until the occupation is removed from all of our lands,” it added.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) called the shooting attack a “powerful message” to the Israeli occupation.
It called for escalating resistance operations in the West Bank “to confuse the occupation’s calculations and weaken its security system.”
The Popular Resistance Committees termed the attack “a natural response” to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and the Judaisation and annexation plans in the West Bank.
Tension has been running high across the Occupied West Bank due to Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 45,800 people, mostly women and children, since 7 October, 2023.
At least 835 Palestinians have also been killed and nearly 6,700 others injured by Israeli army fire in the Occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian figures.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
