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War & Peace
67 Children Have Been Killed in Gaza Since 'Ceasefire' Began, as Israel Committed Hundreds of Violations
“This is during an agreed ceasefire," a UNICEF spokesperson said. "The pattern is staggering."
Nov 21, 2025
Eight children have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza over the past two days. They are among 67 children who have been killed since last month's agreement for a "ceasefire" in Gaza was signed, according to a new report from the United Nations Children's Fund.
“Yesterday morning, a baby girl was reportedly killed in Khan Younis by an airstrike, while the day before, seven children were killed in Gaza City and the south,” said UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires on Friday.
The seven children were among dozens of Palestinians who were killed or injured by an Israeli quadcopter attack in Gaza City on Wednesday, according to Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
“At around 11:00 am, we heard gunfire from quadcopters,” said Zaher, an MSF nurse working at a mobile clinic in Gaza City. “Shortly after, we received two casualties. The first was a woman with a leg injury. A little later, a 9-year-old girl arrived with an injury on her face caused by gunfire from the quadcopters.”
Last month, Israel signed an agreement with Hamas that required both parties to cease hostilities with one another. But since the deal went into effect on October 11, Israel has carried out attacks in Gaza on 35 of the last 42 days.
The Gaza Media Office alleges that Israel has committed nearly 400 ceasefire violations in just over a month—which have included airstrikes, shellings, and direct shootings of civilians, as well as frequent incursions by Israel past the agreed-upon yellow withdrawal lines. At least 312 Palestinians have been killed and 760 injured.
“This is during an agreed ceasefire," Pires emphasized to reporters. "The pattern is staggering,”
Shortly after Pires' announcement, Israel launched a new ground invasion across the yellow line on Friday afternoon, which has reportedly left another displaced person dead near Khan Younis and thousands more people in North Gaza neighborhoods fleeing for their lives.
After two years of genocidal warfare, over 20,000 Palestinian children are confirmed to have been killed, while another 3,000 to 4,000 have lost either one or both of their limbs.
“As we have repeated many times, these are not statistics: Each was a child with a family, a dream, a life–suddenly cut short by continued violence," Pires said.
Gaza's health infrastructure lies in disrepair following two years of relentless bombing, which left nearly all of its hospitals and clinics either partially or fully destroyed.
As another stipulation of the ceasefire deal, Israel was required to lift its blockade on humanitarian aid entering the strip, which had left the people of Gaza on the brink of starvation and unable to perform basic medical care.
But in retaliation for what Israel alleged was a failure by Hamas to return the remains of some hostages abducted by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, Israel cut off the largest port of entry for humanitarian aid, the Rafah Crossing, which remains closed.
After several weeks in which aid was nearly all choked off, the number of trucks entering the strip has increased in recent days. But according to the World Food Program (WFP), hundreds of thousands of people still remain in dire need of food assistance, and the amount currently entering the strip is far too little.
Only about 30% of WFP's target food parcels have been allowed to be distributed, though it says that it has been able to move that number upward more quickly in recent days.
Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the WFP, said that while this is “a step in the right direction... a lot of these food supplies stay in border crossing points for long days and therefore you know the possibility of them going bad is high.”
Pires said that as winter approaches, hundreds of thousands of children are “sleeping in the open” and “trembling in fear while living in flooded, makeshift shelters."
“For hundreds of thousands of children living in tents over the rubble of their former homes, the new [winter] season is a threat multiplier," he said. "Children are shivering through the night with no heating, no insulation, and too few blankets.”
As Gaza's medical system lies in ruin, UNICEF says over 4,000 children urgently need to be evacuated from the strip. But even after the ceasefire deal, Palestinian journalist Eman Abu Zayed reports in Truthout that securing medical referrals from the Israeli government and traveling for treatment outside the strip is a "near-impossible task."
“Gaza's doctors tell us of children they know how to save but cannot,” said Pires. He said they were children "with severe burns, shrapnel wounds, spinal injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and children with cancer who have lost months of treatment. Premature babies who need intensive care. Children who need surgeries that simply cannot be done inside Gaza today.”
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Leaders Across EU Deliver Unified Message to the US: 'No War on Venezuela'
"We condemn in the strongest terms the military escalation against Venezuela," said progressive leaders from countries including the United Kingdom, Spain, and Greece.
Nov 21, 2025
With thousands of US troops patrolling the Caribbean, at least eight warships deployed in the region, and the BBC reporting that it tracked four US military planes that flew near Venezuela Thursday night, lawmakers and other leaders from across Europe on Friday issued a unified demand for the Trump administration to deescalate the tensions it has ratcheted up in recent weeks.
The administration's "show of force has already proved lethal," said the leaders, with more than 80 people—including fishermen and an out-of-work bus driver—having been killed in the US military's strikes on more than 20 boats, which the administration has insisted were trafficking drugs to the US. The White House has publicized no evidence of the claims.
President Donald Trump has not taken further military action against Venezuela since he was presented with "options" for potential strikes last week by officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, nor has he followed through with threats he's made against Mexico and Colombia.
But the European leaders—including British Members of Parliament Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, and Spanish Member of European Parliament Irene Montero Gil—noted that Trump "severed diplomatic channels with Caracas and approved covert [Central Intelligence Agency] operations in Venezuela" as the military buildup continues in the region.
The Trump administration has insisted it is engaged in a legal "armed conflict" with drug cartels in Venezuela, which it has accused of trafficking fentanyl to the US—though experts say drug boats originating in Venezuela are "are mainly moving cocaine from South America to Europe," and analysis by both the United Nations and US intelligence agencies have shown the South American country plays virtually no role in the production or transit of fentanyl.
The US Congress has not authorized any military action against drug cartels or Venezuela's government, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have attempted to pass war powers resolutions blocking the US from striking more boats or targets on land in Venezuela, only to have the resolutions voted down.
In his second term, Trump has sought to tie Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to drug cartels—despite a declassified US intelligence memo showing officials rejected the claim—and designated Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organization last week, giving the White House what Hegseth called "new options" to go after the group.
But the escalation that Trump claims is the latest battle in the "War on Drugs" comes two years after he explicitly announced his desire to take control of Venezuela's oil, and following years of condemnation of Maduro's socialist government from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The European leaders said the administration's narrative about the threat Venezuela poses to the US and the escalation is simply the "latest attempt to threaten and undermine the sovereignty of Latin America and the Caribbean nations."
"Declassified documents have confirmed the CIA’s hand in overthrowing democratically elected governments in Latin America, such as Salvador Allende’s Chile in 1973, João Goulart’s Brazil in 1964, and Jacobo Árbenz’s Guatemala in 1954. The human cost of these regime change operations was catastrophic, and their political legacy endures," reads the letter, which was organized by Progressive International.
A military intervention by the US in Venezuela "would mark the first interstate war by the United States in South America," the leaders said, yet "the pretext for intervention is as tired as it is familiar."
"Under the banner of combating the 'narco-terrorists,' Trump celebrates lethal strikes against peaceful fishermen arbitrarily labeled as carrying drugs," the leaders said.
As in the past, they added, moving the War on Drugs to Venezuela would deliver "not security but a torrent of bloodshed, dispossession, and destabilization."
"Therefore, we condemn in the strongest terms the military escalation against Venezuela," they said. "Our demand is clear and our resolve is firm: No war on Venezuela."
As Peoples Dispatch reported Thursday, many European leaders have "subordinated" themselves to Trump and have avoided speaking out against the US escalation with Venezuela, but left-wing political parties have led the way in denouncing the US deployment of soldiers and warships to the region.
The Workers' Party of Belgium said recently that the world is "witnessing an unprecedented military escalation in 20 years, a multifaceted aggression that threatens not only Venezuela, but any project of sovereignty and social justice in Latin America."
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Top Military Lawyer's Objection to Trump Boat Bombings Off Venezuela Were Sidelined: Report
"There is no world where this is legal," a current judge advocate general said.
Nov 20, 2025
The Trump administration's deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific have alarmed legal experts, Democratic lawmakers, and a small number of Republicans in Congress since they began in early September, but new reporting Thursday revealed that before the White House began the campaign that has now killed more than 80 people, a high-level military lawyer warned officials that the attacks would not be lawful—and was swiftly pushed aside.
NBC News reported that Senior Judge Advocate General (JAG) Paul Meagher, a Marine colonel at US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami, raised legal concerns in August about planned operations involving lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the region.
Other military lawyers also raised concerns, according to two senior congressional aides and one former senior US official who spoke about Meagher's attempt to stop the strikes from happening.
Meagher specifically said that killing people aboard boats that the administration suspected of carrying drugs could amount to extrajudicial killing and expose service members involved in the operations to legal disputes.
President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have called the victims of the strikes "narco-terrorists" without providing any proof publicly of their crimes. They have insisted that the strikes are part of an "armed conflict" the US is engaged in with Venezuela, which they have claimed is harboring drug cartels that are "poisoning" Americans with drugs including fentanyl.
US agencies and the United Nations have assessed that Venezuela plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl to the US. It is a hub for the transport of cocaine, mainly from Colombia, which is sometimes sent via boat to the US, but the military has previously intercepted boats, arrested those aboard if contraband was found, and seized the drugs.
Meagher's concern that the administration was planning to commit extrajudicial killings was not previously known, but it has been echoed by US-based legal experts, Venezuela's ambassador to the UN, and an official with Amnesty International.
Months after Meagher raised the concern that US service members could face legal repercussions for carrying out the attacks, an American lawyer last week said he was preparing to file a legal claim on behalf of the family of one Colombian fisherman who was killed, Alejandro Carranza.
“This is murder, and it is destroying rule of law," said the lawyer, Dan Kovalik.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told NBC News Thursday that the agency "categorically denies that any Pentagon lawyers, including SOUTHCOM lawyers, with knowledge of these operations have raised concerns to any attorneys in the chain of command regarding the legality of the strikes conducted thus far because they are aware we are on firm legal ground."
He repeated the administration's claim that the strikes are lawful under "both US and international law."
Congress has not authorized any military action against Venezuela or drug cartels. Lawmakers in recent weeks have introduced war powers resolutions to require congressional authorization for strikes against either target, but they were voted down by the Republican majority.
A current JAG who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity said that "there is no world where this is legal."
Considering the concerns raised by Meagher, veteran and former trial lawyer John Jackson asked: "Where are the veterans who serve in the GOP right now? There’s no place left to hide."
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At Least 28 Palestinians—Including 17 Children—Killed by Israeli Strikes on Gaza
The strikes follow a massacre by Israeli forces of 13 Palestinians in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
Nov 19, 2025
Israel Defense Forces strikes killed at least 28 Palestinians including a woman and 17 children in the Gaza Strip Wednesday in the latest of what local officials say are over 400 Israeli violations of a tenuous ceasefire.
The IDF said it carried out strikes targeting neighborhoods in Gaza City and Khan Younis after "terrorists" opened fire on occupation troops—none of whom were harmed—in what the IDF called "a violation of the ceasefire agreement."
Gaza officials said that more than 100 people were also wounded in Wednesday's attacks, including one which medical personnel said targeted a building housing displaced families in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.
Hamas—which rules Gaza and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—condemned the attacks as “a dangerous escalation” and refuted the IDF’s claim while accusing Israel of attempting to “justify its ongoing crimes and violations.” Hamas also urged the United States to exert “immediate, serious pressure” on Israel to “respect the ceasefire and halt the aggression against our people.”
Israeli forces also continued bombing southern Lebanon on Wednesday, a day after at least 13 people were killed in an IDF airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Ain al-Hilweh near Sidon. Local officials said most of the victims were children playing soccer.
Israel has been accused of repeatedly violating its ceasefire agreements with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
More than 300 Palestinians have been killed and over 750 others wounded in what officials say are nearly 400 Israeli violations of the October ceasefire with Hamas.
Since agreeing to a truce with Hezbollah in November 2024, Israeli forces have also killed at least 121 civilians, including 21 women and 16 children, in Lebanon, according to officials there.
Overall, Israel's 775-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 249,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, and sickened.
Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Lebanon killed more than 4,000 people, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. This figure includes at least 790 women and 316 children. More than 16,600 others have been wounded. Upward of 1.2 million Lebanese were also forcibly displaced by Israel’s attacks and invasion.
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