Palestine in Pictures: April 2026

Jump to navigation Palestine in Pictures: April 2026 Palestinians mourn three security personnel killed in Israeli attacks at Nasser Medical Complex, Khan Younis, southern Gaza, 1 April. Doaa Albaz ActiveStills At least 122 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip during April, At least 111 people, including 18 children and seven women, were killed in Gaza during April amid continued Israeli “airstrikes, artillery and naval shelling, UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones] attacks and gunfire.” “Fatalities included at least 22 children, eight women, two journalists and six police personnel with many more injured from all age groups and categories,” the UN office said. The UN office, citing the interior ministry in Gaza, said that it has “recorded six Israeli attacks killing 26 police personnel (25 men and one woman)” since the beginning of the year. “Members of the police are civilians, and therefore, unless they are directly participating in hostilities, targeting them would violate the principle of distinction and amount to a war crime of directing an attack against civilians,” the UN office added. As of 30 April, 824 people in Gaza have been killed and another 2,300 injured by Israeli airstrikes, shelling and gunfire since a nominal ceasefire was declared in October last year, The bodies of more than 750 people were recovered during the same period. An estimated 8,000 bodies remain under the rubble, A cumulative total of 72,601 fatalities and 172,419 injuries have been recorded by the health ministry in Gaza since 7 October 2023, as of 30 April. People protest against a new Israeli law that makes the death penalty the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks against Israelis, al-Mawasi, southern Gaza Strip, 2 April. Doaa Albaz ActiveStills Nearly 100 incidents involving unexploded ordinance have occurred in Gaza since the October ceasefire, leading to 49 fatalities and nearly 250 injuries, The Government Media Office in Gaza Between October 2023 and December 2025, more than 38,000 women and girls were among the more than 71,200 people killed in Gaza. An average of 47 women and girls were killed per day during that period, according to an “Women, children and older persons together represent more than half of all fatalities,” the analysis “Women and girls accounted for proportions of deaths far higher than those observed in previous conflicts in Gaza,” UN Women adds. “Women and girls accounted for 15 percent of fatalities in the 2008-2009 and 22 percent in the 2014 conflicts.” Women and girls continue to be killed, despite the nominal ceasefire declared in October 2025. Ritaj Rihan, a third-grade student, was Muhammad Nassir, photographed in Gaza City on 2 April, lost his leg in an Israeli airstrike at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza in the early days of the war. After months of displacement, he reunited with his family in a tent in Gaza City, where he began cultivating a small plot of land near his temporary shelter to earn an income to support his five children. Matar Al-Zaq APA images At least four Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank during April. Six people, four of them children, were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank during the month. “An additional killing couldn’t be definitively attributed because Israeli security forces and settlers were shooting together,” according to the UN human rights office. Of the 11 Palestinians killed in the West Bank during April, four were children, according to initial reports. Additionally, a woman died from injuries sustained during a military raid in 2023. Forty-five Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, or died from injuries sustained previously, including 11 children and two women, as of 4 May. Israel marked its 100th murder of 2026 during April after a 35-year-old man was shot dead in Ein al-Asad, a village in the Upper Galilee. The Israeli daily _Haaretz_ Eighty-eight of the victims – the vast majority – “are from Israel’s Arab community,” the paper added, referring to Palestinian citizens of the state and other groups indigenous to the land. “Only 6 percent of murder cases in 2026 have been solved so far,” according to _Haaretz_. “In 2025, the overall clearance rate was 27 percent, with only 18 percent of cases in Arab society solved.” The paper pointed to “steady increase in killings in Arab society in recent years” coinciding with the appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir as national security minister with authority over Israel’s police. “The state knows who’s shooting and who has weapons, but does nothing,” Zuhair Abbas, whose 21-year-old daughter Suwar was gunned down along with her fiancé Odai Shaban during April, Israeli police harass Palestinians in the streets near the Old City of Jerusalem as Al-Aqsa Mosque remains closed by the Israeli authorities, 3 April. For more than a month, as part of emergency measures during the war on Iran, Israeli police have blocked the entrances to Al-Aqsa Mosque and the main gates into the Old City. Consequently, many Palestinians prayed in the surrounding streets, trying to get as close as possible to the mosque. Omri Eran Vardi ActiveStills The US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire on 8 April, nearly six weeks after the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February. The ceasefire US President Donald Trump More than 3,000 people were killed in Iran during the war, Iranian missiles killed 21 civilians during the war. They included an 11-year-old girl who Four Palestinians were killed by Iranian missile debris in a single strike in the West Bank during March. “At least four other people died of injuries sustained on the way to shelters or other protected spaces,” _Haaretz_ , an Israeli newspaper, According to the Israel Tax Authority, “more than 15,000 claims were filed for damage to buildings, 2,200 for damage to belongings and equipment and at least 5,300 for damage to motor vehicles,” the paper added. More than 5,500 Israelis were displaced “due to damage caused to their homes by the attacks,” _The Times of Israel_ Iran fired some 650 missiles towards Israel, according to the Israeli military. The Israeli air force dropped more than 18,000 bombs on Iran in more than 1,000 waves of strikes while the US military claimed it carried out 13,000 strikes on the country. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, was killed in the opening strikes on 28 February. The US military lost 13 service members and nearly 400 others were reported injured. Fatalities were also People observe the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that targeted a vehicle on Salah al-Din Street near the entrance to al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on 4 April. One person was killed in the attack that left others injured. Ahmed Ibrahim APA images More than 300 people were killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon on 8 April alone, in what UN human rights experts Israel’s simultaneous strikes on more than 150 locations across Lebanon came hours after an announcement by Pakistan, which brokered the ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran, that the agreement included Lebanon. “We are witnessing the continuing utmost contempt for the international legal order, for diplomacy, and above all for the lives of civilians and the environment in Lebanon,” where more than a million people have been displaced, the UN experts added. A ceasefire brokered by the US that went into effect in Lebanon on 16 April reduced the pace of attacks “without entirely stopping the exchanges of fire” between Hizballah and Israel, as Reuters More than 2,500 people have been killed in ongoing Israeli attacks in Lebanon since 2 March, when Hizballah opened up a front in support of Iran and following repeated Israeli violations of a ceasefire declared in Lebanon in November 2024. Lebanon’s health ministry Amal Khalil, a prominent reporter for the Lebanese newspaper _Al-Akhbar_ , was The Israeli military dropped a sound grenade to prevent rescue workers from reaching Khalil before she died. The Committee to Protect Journalists The press freedom watchdog noted that “Khalil received numerous threats prior to her killing, including a reported death threat in September 2024, and public incitement against her by an Israeli military official days before her killing.” Hamza al-Hashash, 20, continues his university studies in al-Bureij, central Gaza, on 5 April after losing his right eye and sustaining other serious injuries in an Israeli airstrike that targeted his uncle’s house while he and his family were displaced. Al-Hashash, who lost several family members in the attack, finished high school at the start of the war and enrolled in a university in Gaza, determined to continue his education despite his injuries. Moiz Salhi APA images Hizballah continued to land blows against the Israeli military after the ceasefire, which was extended by three weeks on 23 April, and Sixteen Israeli soldiers have died in Lebanon since 2 March – Hizballah fired approximately 5,500 rockets towards Israeli troops operating in southern Lebanon and 2,500 towards Israel since 2 March, with “at least 75 rocket impact sites in Israel,” _The Times of Israel_ , citing Israeli military figures. Hizballah launched around 300 drones, 25 of them striking Israel. Two French peacekeeping soldiers died in April “in an attack presumed to have been committed by Hizballah,” the foreign ministry of that country An Indonesian UNIFIL peacekeeper died on 24 April as a result of “injuries sustained following a projectile explosion from an Israeli tank on 29 March,” the French foreign ministry added. “His death follows the death of three other Indonesian soldiers in two separate incidents” on 29 and 30 March. Ambulance crews and citizens attempt to recover the body of a victim and rescue wounded individuals after an Israeli aircraft targeted a man riding an electric bicycle in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on 6 April. Hadi Daoud APA images Israel warned residents of southern Lebanon not to return to dozens of villages along the latter’s southern border following the 16 April ceasefire. Israeli soldiers deployed to southern Lebanon said the military is “systematically destroying buildings in villages” in the area, _Haaretz_ An officer told the paper that “at the end of every day, there’s a report on how many homes were destroyed.” Soldiers told _Haaretz_ that “civilian contractors are paid based on how much they demolish,” the paper reported. “We’re there to guard them, risking our lives,” one soldier said of the civilian contractors hired to destroy homes in southern Lebanon amid deadly drone attacks by Hizballah. “There is no other mission,” an officer told the paper. UNIFIL peacekeepers from Italy Israeli soldiers and commanders _Haaretz_ that military personnel have looted “significant amounts of civilian property from homes and businesses in southern Lebanon.” “The accounts describe the theft of motorcycles, televisions, paintings, sofas and rugs” with commanders taking no “disciplinary action to curb it.” Israeli rescue teams retrieve a body from the rubble of a residential building destroyed by an Iranian missile in the city of Haifa, 6 April. The bodies of four people were eventually recovered from the rubble. Oren Ziv ActiveStills Food security in Lebanon deteriorated as a result of the escalated conflict in that country, with the latest analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification and UN agencies projecting that one-fourth of the population is expected to face crisis levels of food insecurity between April and August 2026. “This marks a significant deterioration from the period of November 2025 through March 2026, when an estimated 874,000 people, roughly 17 percent of the population, were experiencing acute food insecurity,” the World Food Program A senior UN official said in April that more than 30 million people will be pushed into poverty as a result of the impacts of the war on Iran. The blocking of ships in the Strait of Hormuz has resulted in fertilizer shortages that “have already lowered agricultural productivity,” Reuters During the 40 days of attacks on Iran, the US nearly exhausted its stockpile of costly