 It's been five months since the beginning of Israel's brutal and genocidal war on Gaza. The death toll due to Israeli attacks and its various consequences is close to 31,000. Over 72,400 people have been injured. Over the past few months, we have talked about the number of ways in which the brutal Israeli assault has affected the people of Palestine. In addition to the bombs and the tanks and the snipers, Israel has severely restricted the flow of aid to a territory which already faced a blockade. Meanwhile, the war has also had a regional dimension with what has been described as the axis of resistance, mounting a strong fight back against Israel and its ally, the US. We go to Abdul for more details. Abdul, thank you so much. Five months since the beginning of this very brutal war, maybe could you take us through what is happening on the ground and then we'll go to some of the international responses in some of the global trends as well. Well Prashant, the Gaza situation is in the last five months, at least we can say has gone bad towards each passing day since the war began on October 7. Gaza was already kind of under blockade for almost more than one and a half decade and the conditions were not that good, of course. But since October 7, the way Israel has bombed the territory completely flattened more than 60% of the residential buildings destroyed all the universities, destroyed most of the hospitals, destroyed all the civil infrastructure in the region by killing more than 30,000 people every day. Even if apparently the number of casualties have gone down on the daily basis, there are still in hundreds, more than 100, 150, 200 Palestinians are killed every day even in the last months and so and that is the case in last 24 hours as well. The number of Palestinians who have been wounded is also has crossed 70,000 and plus among all of this, more than 10,000 of them are children, those who are killed and around 9,000 plus are women. So it shows that the majority, almost two-third of the people who were killed who were killed in Palestine in Gaza in the last five months by the Israelis are either women or children who are not active members of any resistance group. So most of them are civilians. Apart from that, because of the war and because of the Israel's insistence on not allowing any kind of humanitarian aid to flow in the Gaza, the overall humanitarian situation has become back to us now. Even the UN agencies are claiming that within a few weeks, most probably there will be a declaration of famine in Gaza because there are already reports of starvation deaths coming, primarily the death of children. As for the latest report, more than 20 Palestinian children have died because of the lack of nutritious food and that number is going to explode in the coming days. So overall situation has basically completely deteriorated and because of the war in the last five months and there has been a complete, you can say, failure by both the regional players and the international community to kind of force Israel to stop the war and even force them to kind of carry or allow enough adequate humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip and that basically defines the five months' war inside Gaza, which still continues. Abdul, in this context also important to kind of look at the regional dynamics that is taking place. Of course, the conflict has gone way beyond just Gaza. Could you maybe talk about what is happening in the wider region as well? Well, in West Asia, there are two kinds of responses, of course, since the war began on October 7th. A large number of countries, particularly the states, have basically taken stand. Of course, all of them have taken stand against Israel's war in Gaza and it has also led to some kind of, you can say, halt in the so-called normalization process which the U.S. has pushed for in the last couple of years, kind of forcing Arab countries or incentivizing them normalizing relationships with Israel, which has completely stopped some of the countries like Saudi Arabia have had to go back on these normalization process of normalization and take stand against Israel and kind of reiterate their demand for the independent Palestinian state, which it seemed before the war that they are likely to abandon in return of some diplomatic gains here and there. Now that is not the case primarily because of the popular pressure, which Arab people have created on their government. So that is one set of response. The other set, of course, is coming from what we call the axis of resistance, the different groups, militias, which are in some places like Yemen running the governments also. Ansarullah in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon or the popular mobilization forces in Iraq, apart from other smaller groups in different parts of the region have taken a strict stand against war, not only supporting the Palestinian cause, but also opposing the Israeli occupation and US imperialism, imperialist interventions, and taking action against them. And that basically has kind of created not only a broader solidarity across the region, but also pressure on the imperialist and colonialist power to take measures, which basically to kind of address some of the issues raised by them. Right. Abdul, thank you so much for that update. Continuing with Palestine is the World Marks International Working Women's Day on March 8. The situation of women in Palestine continues to be especially grim. Gaza's health ministry said 9,000 women have been killed since the war began. The ministry spokesperson added that 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza suffer from malnutrition, dehydration, and a lack of proper health care. From lack of nutrition to lack of hygiene products to huge barriers in every aspect of life, Gaza's women face horrible persecution. We go to Anna for an update. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. So on March 8, a lot of focus on the impact of this Israeli brutal assault on the women of Gaza at the death toll, I believe, among women itself is 9,000 or so. So could you maybe take us through what has been the impact in terms of the various aspects of life? Well, I mean, we can start from the fact that women's health is one of the areas of health care that has been most impacted since October. So this covers, of course, a lot of things. So one of the first things that jumps out is that virtually all maternity services in Gaza have been wiped out. So there are very, very few hospitals or very few centres that can still provide this kind of care in Gaza right now. Some of those hospitals, like the Alavda hospital in the north, they had been targeted since the very early stages of this war. They have faced both physical destruction, as well as the kidnapping and the arrest of several of the health workers. Then again, if we look at what's happening in the south, we know that Emirati Hospital there is, again, one of the locations which is quite central, central for maternal and neonatal health. But as everything else, that hospital too is struggling with the fact that there are not enough incubators and there are essentially not enough beds and not enough health workers to support women who are giving birth or who are supposed to get prenatal checks. So maternal health is one of the areas of women's health that has been most affected, of course. But then one should also look at how girls are living and other women who have been displaced to camps are living. What they're reporting is that, of course, they're struggling with the hygiene standards or lack of infrastructure in the camps. There is a shortage of beds. There is a shortage of infant formula. There is a shortage of diapers. So essentially everything that women and families need and girls need to lead a dignified life is either not physically there or is outpriced. So some of the reports that had been coming in over the last couple of days had even reported that some girls and women are only able to take a shower once every 10 days to 14 days. So the scale to which this has grown is really tremendous. Right. And also, could you talk a bit about how the denial of AIDS, so to speak, is also having an impact in this crisis? Well, of course, because if we look at how the blockade is playing out, again, it is those products that health workers who are also in a large part women and women who are patients, those resources that they need are the ones that are being cut off. Of course, we are seeing that every now and then there is news of a trickle of AIDS coming in. But then again, this is not diversed. We know that some of the international agencies are only allowed to bring some goods in. And it's essentially not the same thing. If you're not able to bring, if you're only allowed to bring flour in, it's not like being able to provide the diversity of food that people need, including breastfeeding women whose nutrition status has deteriorated incredibly over the past weeks. And these women are essentially not able to feed their children because they're not able to initiate breastfeeding because they're giving up their food so other children can eat or other family members can eat. So that's one way that the AIDS blockade impacts women as well as other people in Gaza right now. Right, and that was another update. And that's all we have in today's DLD. Briefly, we'll be back with a fresh episode tomorrow. Meanwhile, do visit our website. Follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.