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Dozens of Israeli Airstrikes in Recent Weeks Killed 'Only Women and Children'
"The international community... must end its silence and inaction as the Palestinian people face mass destruction, torture, forced starvation, slaughter, and ethnic cleansing," wrote one advocacy group.
Apr 11, 2025
The United Nations announced Friday that dozens of strikes carried out by the Israeli military in Gaza in recent weeks only killed women and children as it issued a stark warning about Israel's blockade of essential aid.
"Between 18 March and 9 April 2025, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people," said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, according to press briefing notes.
"In some 36 strikes about which the U.N. Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children," she said.
In response to reports of the strikes that exclusively killed women and children, the Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a Friday statement that "the intentional mass slaughter of women and children further exposes the genocidal intent of the far-right Israeli government."
"The international community—and our own government—must end its silence and inaction as the Palestinian people face mass destruction, torture, forced starvation, slaughter, and ethnic cleansing," according to the group.
According to Shamdasani, Israel's increasing issuance of evacuation orders, which she called tantamount to displacement orders, have forced Palestinians in Gaza into "ever shrinking spaces where they have little or no access to lifesaving services, including water, food, and shelter, and where they continue to be subject to attacks."
Israel shattered a shaky, two-month long cease-fire deal when it resumed strikes on Gaza on March 18. Not long after strikes resumed, local health officials in Gaza announced that the death toll of Israel's deadly campaign on the enclave had surpassed 50,000 people.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Friday that the death toll since March 18 has reached over 1,540 people.
Israel also has imposed a blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza, leading a top official with the U.N. Children's Fund to warn in mid-March that children in Gaza are "living without the very basics they need to survive—yet again."
Shamdasani said Friday that Israel's closure of crossings into Gaza, which has prevented food, medicine, and other essentials from entering the enclave, is now in its sixth week.
"Israeli officials have made statements suggesting that the entry of humanitarian aid is directly linked to the release of hostages, raising serious concerns about collective punishment and the use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of war, both of which constitute crimes under international law," she said.
What's more, she said, "in light of the cumulative impact of Israeli forces' conduct in Gaza, the office is seriously concerned that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza."
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Foreign Aid Cuts by Trump Will Be 'Death Sentence for Millions,' Warns UN
The Trump administration cut $1.3 billion in foreign assistance over the weekend—slashing lifesaving programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had previously said would be preserved.
Apr 08, 2025
The World Food Program (WFP) at the United Nations warned Monday that the Trump administration's new cuts to lifesaving U.S. foreign aid programs "could amount to a death sentence for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation."
The programs had previously been protected from sweeping cuts made by the President Donald Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio granting waivers for the funding after 83% of the US Agency for International Development's provisions had been slashed.
Rubio claimed in March that DOGE's weekslong purge of USAID was "officially ending"—only for the State Department and USAID to spend this past weekend cutting more nutrition, healthcare, education, and financial stability programs in at least 14 countries.
On Monday, it became clear that the administration was not actually finished slashing programs aimed at promoting nutrition, education, and financial stability around the world, after the and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent the weekend terminating aid programs, putting vulnerable people in some of the poorest nations on earth at risk of starvation or death.
The grassroots advocacy group Stand Up for Aid toldReuters that a total of $1.3 billion had been cut over the weekend, including $562 million for Afghanistan, $107 million for Yemen, $170 million for Somalia, $237 million for Syria, and $12 million for Gaza.
"Every remaining USAID award for Afghanistan was terminated," one source told Reuters.
The cuts targeted a $24 million grant for Afghanistan and a $17 million grant for Syria that were provided to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), a sexual and reproductive health aid agency. Both grants had previously been terminated by DOGE but then reinstated—before the State Department, which took control of all remaining USAID programs last month, decided to again pull back the funding.
The administration is also ending a program that sends Afghan girls overseas to study, which they are prohibited from doing under restrictions imposed by the Taliban government, and terminating $169.8 million for WFP food assistance and malnutrition support for babies and children in Somalia and $111 million in WFP assistance in Syria.
In Yemen, 19 million of the war-torn country's 35 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. According to a letter from USAID to an aid contractor in Yemen, the decision to end its contract was made by Jeremy Lewin, a DOGE operative now serving as an acting USAID assistant administrator.
"The decision to terminate this individual award is pursuant to a review and determination that the award is inconsistent with the administration's priorities," the letter read, according toReuters.
Cindy McCain, executive director of the WFP, warned that the new cuts to the agency's emergency operations "will deepen hunger, fuel instability, and make the world far less safe."
U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted in a statement that the Trump administration had previously provided to Congress "continued assurances that lifesaving programs would be protected during the Trump administration's 'review' of foreign assistance."
Shaheen said she looked forward to speaking with Rubio about the "devastating consequences" the cuts would have around the world.
She added on social media that women and girls will be "disproportionately" impacted by the State Department's decision to gut foreign assistance.
"It will increase maternal deaths and increase poverty, eliminate support for family planning programs in developing countries, [and] cut off 50 million women from access to contraception," said the senator.
U.S. officials who are involved in humanitarian aid and spoke on condition of anonymity toldReuters that in Afghanistan, the cuts could worsen economic stability and other conditions that have propelled people to join extremist groups like ISIS-K.
In Gaza, where Israel is again blocking humanitarian aid after breaking a brief cease-fire earlier this year, the cuts came days after the WFP warned it was distributing its final food packages to Palestinians.
All of the U.N. agency's bakeries in the besieged enclave are inoperable due to a lack of supplies, and the WFP said last week that it had enough provisions to make hot meals for another two weeks.
While the cease-fire "offered a short respite," said the heads of several U.N. agencies in a joint statement on Monday, "assertions that there is now enough food to feed all Palestinians in Gaza are far from the reality on the ground, and commodities are running extremely low."
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Scientists Warn Major Glaciers Won't 'Survive This Century,' With Grave Impacts for Billions
"Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity," said one expert. "It's a matter of survival."
Mar 21, 2025
Scientists on Friday spent the United Nations' World Water Day and first-ever World Day for Glaciers warning about how fossil fuel-driven global warming melts ice across the planet, endangering freshwater resources and causing seas to rise, with implications for ecosystems, economies, and billions of people.
In a Friday statement, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo pointed to a publication that the U.N. agency released earlier this week: "WMO's State of the Global Climate 2024 report confirmed that from 2022-224, we saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record."
"Seven of the 10 most negative mass balance years have occurred since 2016," Saulo continued. "Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity. It's a matter of survival."
The WMO report was followed by the Friday launch of a 174-page document from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that stresses how "billions of people depend on the fresh water that flows from increasingly fragile mountain environments."
"As the water towers of the world, mountains are an essential source of fresh water for (irrigated) agriculture, power generation, industry, and large and growing populations—in the mountains and also downstream," the report details. "Generally, due to higher precipitation and lower evaporation, mountains supply more surface runoff per unit area than lowlands, providing 55-60% of global annual freshwater flows."
The document, The United Nations World Water Development Report 2025—Mountains and glaciers: Water towers, notes that "major cities that have been critically dependent on mountain waters include Addis Ababa, Barcelona, Bogotá, Jakarta, Kathmandu, La Paz, Lima, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mexico City, New Delhi, New York, Quito, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo."
"Globally, up to two-thirds of irrigated agriculture may depend on mountain waters," the report states, "while the number of people in lowlands that strongly depend on water from mountains increased worldwide from around 0.6 billion in the 1960s to some 1.8 billion in the 2000s. An additional 1 billion people in the lowlands benefit from supportive mountain runoff contributions."
"Most of the world's glaciers, including those in mountains, are melting at an accelerated rate worldwide," the publication adds. "Combined with accelerating permafrost thaw, declining snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns... this will have significant and irreversible impacts on local, regional, and global hydrology, including water availability."
“The 21st of March 2025 is being celebrated as the first-ever World Day for Glaciers. ‘Celebrate’? Yes, we should celebrate glaciers and their crucial role in sustaining life on Earth for future generations,” says @iceblogger.bsky.social. Great stats here on the importance of glaciers 🧊
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— Covering Climate Now (@coveringclimatenow.org) March 21, 2025 at 8:31 AM
The UNESCO publication follows the international Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) team's study, published in the journal Nature last month, showing that glaciers have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000.
That figure "amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three liters per person and day," Michael Zemp, a professor at Switzerland's University of Zurich and director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service who co-led the GlaMBIE study, explained at the time.
Zemp pointed to that finding and others on Friday, noting that from 2000-23, glacier melt caused global seas to rise 18 mm or about 0.7 inches. He said, "This might not sound much, but it has a big impact: Every millimeter [of] sea-level rise exposes an additional 200,000 to 300,000 people to annual flooding."
In a U.N. video, experts also highlighted parts of the globe that are particularly impacted by melting glaciers. Zemp explained that in "the European Alps, we are one of the regions that is most affected by climate change. Warming is about double the global average, and indeed, glaciers in the Alps are one of the most suffering around the world."
"We have lost, since 2000, almost 40% of the remaining ice. And that means under current melt rates, glaciers will not survive this century in the Alps," he warned.
Today is the first-ever #WorldGlaciersDay! Glaciers provide water for millions of people, regulate sea levels, and support biodiversity. Yet glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate. #ClimateAction is key to protecting them & supporting those who rely on glaciers. www.un.org/en/observanc...
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— IngerAndersen.bsky.social (@ingerandersen.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Scientists are also concerned about the Hindu Kush in the Himalayas, which are often called the "third pole because they hold a lot of water resources," WMO's Sulagna Mishra said in the video. "Here, more than 120 million farmers in the downstream areas are impacted directly because of the melting of the glaciers."
"So, when there are a lot of floods, for example, happening because of melting of glaciers, the livelihoods are changed, people tend to migrate from one place to another," she continued. "So when you ask me how many people are actually impacted, it's really everyone."
As Carbon Briefreported Friday:
Dr. Aditi Mukherji—the director of the climate change, adaptation, and mitigation impact action platform of the CGIAR—tells Carbon Brief that the report is an important call for more "adaptation efforts and funding."
She says that mountain-dwelling communities are "already quite vulnerable due to their remote location and other developmental deficits" and are "increasingly losing their way of life due to no fault of theirs."
However, in some parts of the world, especially the United States, such calls face the pro-fossil fuel agenda of polluting companies and right-wing policymakers that are working to quash the movement for a just transition to clean energy by any means necessary.
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