Many women and children among 13 killed in the latest Israeli aerial attacks across Gaza.

Israel has maintained an eight-week blockade on food, medicine and aid entering Gaza, while continuing aerial attacks on homes and tent shelters – deepening what the United Nations describes as the war’s “worst humanitarian crisis”.

Overnight and early Thursday morning, at least 13 people were killed in Israeli attacks, according to Al Jazeera correspondents. Among the dead were three children in a tent near Nuseirat in central Gaza, and a woman and four children in a home in Gaza City.

Also reportedly killed in a recent attack was local journalist Saeed Abu Hassanein, whose death adds to at least 232 slain reporters in Gaza during the war.

“The Gaza Strip is witnessing a clear military escalation and a soaring humanitarian crisis,” reported Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah. He noted that rescuers, with much of their equipment damaged or destroyed, are increasingly struggling to reach victims trapped under wreckage.

The communication centre of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the occupied West Bank, said there was “no pause”, “no mercy”, “no humanity” to Israel’s attacks.

The statement accompanied video footage showing an Israeli tank moving through the apparent remains of the Shaboura refugee camp in southern Gaza.

“In Shaboura refugee camp, as in every other corner in Gaza, the devastation never ends,” the centre said.

‘Dismantling’ Palestinian life

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is compounded by Israel’s continued aid blockade, which the acting head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has described as a seeming “deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life”.

“The Gaza Strip is now likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the escalation of hostilities in October 2023,” said OCHA in its latest situation update on April 23.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health highlighted the “dangerous and catastrophic” toll on women and children facing malnutrition, with many lacking adequate food, drinking water and baby formula.

Israel’s continued refusal to let aid into Gaza defies a World Court order dating back to May 2024 for it to urgently facilitate aid into the enclave to prevent famine and starvation.

Souab is a fierce critic of President Kais Saied and was arrested for comments about the judiciary acting under duress.

A Tunisian judge has ordered the detention of prominent lawyer Ahmed Souab, a fierce critic of President Kais Saied, lawyers said, two days after his arrest for comments about the judiciary.

Souab’s arrest sparked widespread anger among political parties and civil society groups, which said the move was a dangerous escalation of a crackdown on dissent and marked a further entrenchment of the country’s authoritarian regime.

Activists took to the streets in protest this week, calling for his release, chanting slogans against Saied and demanding an end to the harassment, silencing and imprisonment of critics.

Souab was on the legal defence team in the mass trial last week, in which dozens of defendants, including vocal critics of Saied, were handed jail terms of up to 66 years.

The lawyer was arrested on Monday in a police raid on his home in the capital Tunis, after saying before his clients’ sentencing that “knives are not on the necks of detainees, but on the neck of the judge issuing the ruling,” criticising political pressure judges were allegedly under.

An anti-terrorism court interpreted the comment as a threat to the judges, but Souab’s lawyers said it was a reference to the huge political pressure on judges.

Souab had been detained on “terrorism-related charges” over the comment, a spokesperson for the court said.

Souab is a retired administrative judge and lawyer, and a vocal critic of Saied, who has repeatedly said the judiciary had lost its independence.

His lawyers boycotted Wednesday’s hearing after the judge informed them that he had accepted the representation of only four lawyers out of the dozens present to defend him.

Saeb Souab, the detained lawyer’s son, told journalists that “based on a metaphor, my father is now suspected of terrorism”.

Addressing President Saied, his former law professor Saeb Souab said, “This is not the law you taught us.”

He called for the release of his father, who he said suffers from heart problems.

‘Hasty trial’

Since Saied launched a power grab in the summer of 2021, rights advocates and opposition figures have decried a rollback of freedoms in the North African country where the 2011 Arab Spring began.

Critics have denounced the recent mass trial as politically motivated and baseless. The defendants faced charges including “conspiracy against state security” and “belonging to a terrorist group”, according to their lawyers.

Among those targeted are figures from what was once the biggest party, Ennahdha, such as the leader and former Speaker of Parliament Rached Ghannouchi, former Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, former Minister of Justice Noureddine Bhiri, and Said Ferjani, a member of the party’s political executive.

But the crackdown has also hit many non-Ennahdha figures, including Abir Moussi, a fierce critic of Ennahdha, and Abderrazek Krimi, the project director of the Tunisian Refugee Council.

Some of them had been arrested in February 2023, after which Saied labelled them “terrorists”.

“The Tunisian court did not give defendants so much as a semblance of a fair trial,” said Bassam Khawaja, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Tunisia was “making it clear that anyone participating in political opposition or civic activism risks years in prison after a hasty trial without due process”, he added.

Several Tunisian legal scholars also denounced in a petition on Tuesday “flagrant violations of all the bases of a fair trial”.

Israel’s national security minister says he met with ‘senior Republican Party’ officials at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has claimed that top US Republican lawmakers support bombing “food and aid depots” in Gaza.

The statement, made in a social media post on Wednesday, came after the Israeli national security minister said he had met with “senior Republican Party officials at [US President Donald] Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate” in Florida in the United States.

“They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely,” Ben-Gvir posted on X in Hebrew.

The US president was not at the event, according to his public schedule.

Ben-Gvir’s post did not specify which Republicans were in attendance. However, Ben-Gvir’s office told Israeli media that Republican Congressman Tom Emmer, considered to be the third-highest-ranking member of the US House of Representatives, was among the lawmakers present.

The Times of Israel and the Jewish News Syndicate were among the news outlets that cited Ben-Gvir’s office in reporting Emmer’s presence, which also appeared to be confirmed by video of the event.

The congressman has been one of the leading voices in the US Congress supporting Israel amid the war in Gaza, and has regularly said that Hamas, and not Israel, was to blame for the high rate of civilian deaths in the Palestinian enclave.

A spokesman for Emmer did not reply to a request for comment from Al Jazeera regarding the Mar-a-Lago visit and whether the congressman supported Ben-Gvir’s position on attacking food and aid sites.

To date, the Health Ministry in Gaza has said at least 51,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war began in the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, during which at least 1,139 people were killed.

Israeli attacks, aid block continue

Ben-Gvir has been one of the leading voices in Israel calling for the escalation of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

A resident of an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, he has called for the resettlement of Gaza and glowingly endorsed Trump’s plan to forcibly displace residents of the Palestinian enclave.

He initially resigned from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January, in opposition to a temporary ceasefire deal.

Before rejoining the government in March, he called for Israel to cut off electricity and water and to bomb aid depots in Gaza as a six-week pause in fighting reached its end.

Israeli attacks have continued after military operations resumed on March 18, with 1,928 Palestinians killed since then.

While Trump had vowed to end the war upon taking office, a lasting ceasefire agreement has remained elusive.

Meanwhile, France, Germany and the United Kingdom condemned on Wednesday the ongoing Israeli blocking of aid, food and medicine entering Gaza.

They called the actions “intolerable”.