Updates: Israel kills 143 in a day as Gaza death toll passes 53,000

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To learn more about Israel’s continuing blockade on Gaza and the extreme food shortages it is creating in the Palestinian enclave, read this.

To hear more about how Palestinians are reflecting on the Nakba as they mark its 77th anniversary amid unrelenting death and destruction, watch this.

You can follow all of our coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.

The US tech conglomerate announced on Thursday that following an interview review, it found no evidence that its technology has been used by the Israeli military to harm civilians during its war on Gaza.

The review came following months of protests and allegations from Microsoft employees that the company is complicit in international law violations through its commercial relationship with the Israeli military.

“We take these concerns seriously,” Microsoft said in in a blog post on the review, which involved dozens of employee interviews and a review of internal documents.

It added that it “found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza”.

Microsoft, which provides software, cloud infrastructure and AI services to Israel’s Ministry of Defence, said it maintains a standard commercial relationship with Israel’s government.

Beyond the violence of the Nakba, targeting water resources has been a consistent strategy to displace Palestinians.

During its war on Gaza, Israel’s blockade has included deliberate destruction of water infrastructure there. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli authorities have sealed wells while settlers routinely seize springs and destroy agricultural land vital to Palestinian livelihoods.

Al Jazeera’s Colin Baker reports:

Here are the latest developments:

• The Israeli military has continued its deadly assault on Gaza, carrying out several deadly overnight attacks across the Strip, which have killed at least 26 Palestinians.
• At least six people were killed in a strike on a house in the Jabalia camp, while another strike on a home in the as-Sultan neighbourhood of Beit Lahiya killed at least three.
• Israeli ground forces have also stormed the Beit Lahiya area, where they have besieged shelters and caused hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes.
• Israel’s army has said it killed five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank town of Tammun on Thursday, in an operation launched after the killing of a pregnant Israeli settler in a shooting on Wednesday night.
• Israeli settlers have set fire to Palestinian-owned vehicles after storming the occupied West Bank town of Bruqin west of Salfit and the Ramin Plain area east of Tulkarem.
• More than two dozen US senators have introduced a resolution urging the Trump administration to “use all diplomatic tools at its disposal” to end Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The head of the UN Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, said the world should be shocked by the killing of 45 children in Israeli air strikes in just two days.

Instead, the slaughter of children in Gaza is “largely met with indifference”.

“More than 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation. They are deprived of food, water and medicine,” Russell wrote in a post on social media.

“Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza,” she said.

“This horror must stop.”

Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world remember the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel.

Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist militias attacked Palestinian towns and cities, killing about 13,000 Palestinians and destroying more than 530 villages.

At least 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes, becoming refugees.

Here are the stories of five Palestinians who share their memories of displacement and loss – as well as their hopes to return home.

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We have reported several Israeli military attacks that have taken place across the Gaza Strip since midnight local time (21:00 GMT), killing at least 26 people.

Here is a roundup of some of those attacks:

• At least six people have been killed and more wounded in a strike on a house on al-Ajarma Street in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
• At least two people have been killed and more injured after the Israeli military bombed a home in al-Fakhoura, west of the Jabalia camp.
• Israeli forces have bombed a tent in the al-Amal neighbourhood, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing at least one person and injuring several more.
• Israeli fighter jets have bombed the Beit Lahiya area of northern Gaza several times over recent hours, including a strike on a home in the as-Sultan neighbourhood, which killed at least three people.
• Two people have been killed by Israeli artillery shelling targeting areas housing displaced Palestinians in Beit Lahiya.
• Hundreds of Beit Lahiya residents have fled the area as they attempt to escape Israel’s assault, while Israeli ground forces have also stormed the city and besieged shelters.

طائرات الاحتلال تواصل شن غارات عنيفة على مناطق متفرقة في شمال غزة pic.twitter.com/TenyGOUcyM

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) May 16, 2025

Translation: Occupation aircraft continue to launch violent raids on various areas in northern Gaza.

The Israeli military has killed 16 Palestinians in strikes on northern Gaza over the past few hours, following a series of deadly attacks across the Strip on Thursday that killed at least 136 people.

Some of the deadliest attacks targeted the southern city of Khan Younis.

The Israeli military has also issued forced evacuation orders to displaced Palestinians in the north of the territory as it continues to block aid from entering Gaza for more than two months.

Listen to the full report:

Harvard University has settled a lawsuit filed by Orthodox Jewish student Alexander Kestenbaum, who alleged that the Ivy League school allowed anti-Semitism to flourish on campus.

“Harvard and Mr Kestenbaum are pleased to have resolved the litigation,” the university said in a statement on Thursday, after both sides agreed to end the case.

“Harvard and Mr Kestenbaum acknowledge each other’s steadfast and important efforts to combat antisemitism at Harvard and elsewhere,” it added.

Harvard, which has already resolved two other lawsuits accusing the college of being a hotbed of anti-Semitism, has also come under assault from the Trump administration over recent months.

Accusing Harvard’s administration of allowing unchecked anti-Semitism during pro-Palestine campus protests last year, the White House has frozen or terminated more than $2.6bn in federal grants and contracts to the university.

Harvard is suing the Trump administration, claiming the cuts are unconstitutional and an attack on free speech.

Here are a few highlights we have published over recent days on Israel’s war on Gaza and related conflicts across the region:

• Features: In Gaza, the Nakba is being relived in 2025
• Watch: Nakba survivor says Israeli ‘brutality’ worse than 77 years ago
• Opinion: From 1948 to now, a Nakba that never ended
• Watch: Israel intensifies Gaza war during Trump visit

And there’s plenty more here.

Speaking at a meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on Thursday, Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, urged the body to implement Resolution 2474, calling on parties to armed conflict and UN states to search for and return missing persons.

Danon, who was joined by Ruby Chen and Leah Goldin, the parents of slain Israeli captives Itay Chen and Hadar Goldin, said Hamas had “violated every letter of that resolution, repeatedly and openly”.

“Where is the response? Where is the demand for compliance? Where is the basic moral outrage?” he asked.

“We call on the Secretary-General [Antonio Guterres] to fulfil his mandate under Resolution 2474 by including a dedicated section in his next report on the protection of civilians,” Danon added.

Footage obtained by Al Jazeera shows Israeli settlers assaulting a Palestinian woman who had reportedly been trying to stop the group from trespassing on her family’s land near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Watch below:

Israel’s military said it killed five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Thursday. The killing of the five followed after an Israeli settler was killed in a shooting in the West Bank.

The military said in a statement that it surrounded a house and killed five “terrorists” and arrested a sixth person following an exchange of gunfire and the use of shoulder-fired missiles by Israeli forces to destroy the house in the Palestinian town of Tammun.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad later issued a statement saying five of its members were killed while clashing with Israeli forces in Tammun.

The town is located some 35km (22 miles) from the area where a pregnant Israeli settler, Tzeela Gez, was killed on Wednesday night when shots were fired at the vehicle in which she was travelling. No link has been made between the killing of the five and the Israeli settler.

The Reuters news agency reports that pro-settler leaders, including an Israeli minister, called for Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank to be razed following the killing of the settler.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the rights of Israeli settlers outweigh the rights of Palestinians to move freely, calling for checkpoints to be permanently established throughout the occupied West Bank.

He also called for the death penalty for “terrorists”.

Al Jazeera is reporting from Jordan because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military confirms that they successfully intercepted a missile launched by the Houthis in Yemen.

Sirens sound across several different parts of the country, especially throughout the central part of Israel, where Tel Aviv is located.

Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a missile that actually made an impact right outside Ben Gurion airport, causing air traffic to completely stop. It also caused several different airlines to cancel their flights to and from Israel.

Since the Israelis broke the ceasefire agreement back in March, the military says the Houthis have launched at least 34 different projectiles into Israeli airspace, some of which have been intercepted outside of that airspace.

Now, the military says that they are going to be dealing with the Houthis on a different scale. But, despite the air strikes the Israelis have conducted and despite the air strikes the Americans have conducted, the Houthis still continue to launch these missiles against Israel.

And they say they are going to continue to do it as long as the war on Gaza continues.

Palestinians across Gaza and the occupied West Bank observed Nakba Day on May 15.

That date marks the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which resulted in the mass displacement of Palestinian communities in what is known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, or the Nakba.

In this video, we compare and contrast the effects of the 1948 Nakba with Israel’s ongoing devastating war on Gaza.

Watch below: