PHOTO COLLECTION: AP Top Photos of the Day, Wednesday, April 2, 2025

This is a photo collection curated by AP photo editors.

Storks sit in their nests on a power pole on the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany, as a plane passes by on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

People watch as large swells hit Sydney's Bronte Beach Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Palestinians inspect the site hit by an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

A damaged pagoda is seen in the aftermath of Friday's earthquake in Amarapura township, Mandalay, Myanmar, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo)

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel makes his concession speech to a crowd at his election night party Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Pewaukee, Wis. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)

Us President Donald Trump appears on a television screen at the stock market in Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

A container ship approaches the port of Santos in Brazil, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reacts to a remark by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., on screen, as he arrives for a joint subcommittee hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Protesters stage a rally calling for impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to step down in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. The letters read "Dismiss Yoon Suk Yeol." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A rescuer works through rubble of a collapsed building following Friday's earthquake in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo)

Lily Travis, 18, and Noah Masom, 17, both of northern Virginia, hug while attending a rally in support of people who are transgender during the Trans Day of Visibility, on the National Mall, Monday, March 31, 2025, in Washington. "I'm not the biggest protester, but I wanted to show my friends that their struggles are important," says Masom, "they need to know that people are on their side." (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

A person crosses a downtown street as the sun sets, Monday, March 31, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A crane operator wipes the glass of his machine as he gets ready to clear the debris from the site of an under-construction high-rise building that collapsed after Friday's earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

TCU guard Hailey Van Lith (10) drives to the basket between Texas guard Rori Harmon and forward Madison Booker (35) during the second half in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Monday, March 31, 2025. in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Stereo Picnic music festival in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

Muslim women react during a sack race as they celebrate Eid al-Fitr at a park in Quezon City, Philippines, Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Palestinian girls dressed for Eid al-Fitr celebrations walk next to destructions in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Visitors walk along a flooded section of the seawall amid the cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin, Monday, March 31, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Men play chess in a park of Odesa, Ukraine, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Naruemol Thonglek, right, with her daughter, waits for news of her partner, who is missing after the collapse of an under-construction high-rise building after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, March, 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

A person works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

A man leaves a bank building in Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Horse riders cut off a cow during a competition at the Nuestros Ceballos equestrian event, at La Rural fairgrounds in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

South Carolina forward Joyce Edwards, left, and Duke guard Jadyn Donovan battle under the basket during the second half in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, March 30, 2025. in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Hyo Joo Kim, of South Korea, celebrates after winning on the 18th green during the final round of the Ford Championship LPGA golf event, Sunday, March 30, 2025, in Chandler, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Elon Musk tosses a cheesehead during a town hall Sunday, March 30, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Rescuers work at the Sky Villa Condo that collapsed In Friday's earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)

A rescuer looks for survivors at the site of an under-construction high-rise building that collapsed after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, March, 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)

Muslims pray at a street as they celebrate Eid Al-Fitr, marking the end of the Muslims' holy fasting month of Ramadan, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Muslim worshippers gather for Eid al-Fitr prayer in the mixed Arab Jewish city of Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel is establishing a new security corridor across the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory.

The announcement came after Netanyahu’s defense minister said Israel would seize large areas of Gaza and add them to its so-called security zones.

A wave of Israeli strikes overnight into Wednesday, meanwhile, killed more than 40 Palestinians, including several women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.

One Israeli strike killed at least 17 people in a United Nations building, previously a clinic, that had been converted into a shelter for more than 700 displaced people. Israel said it struck Hamas militants in a "command and control center."

Israel has vowed to escalate the nearly 18-month war with Hamas until the militant group returns dozens of remaining hostages, disarms and leaves the territory. Israel ended a ceasefire in March and has cut off all food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza — a tactic that rights groups say is a war crime.

Here's the latest:

That’s after more than 408 humanitarian aid workers have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas, according to U.N. deputy humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya.

She spoke Wednesday at the U.N. Security Council alongside U.N. security chief Gilles Michaud, with Msuya asking the council for answers, justice and an end to the killings.

Michaud lamented that, “Impunity for attacks on humanitarian personnel has become the new normal. A pervasive normal. An accepted normal.”

Both officials cited what they said were two recent Israeli attacks — a strike on a clearly marked U.N. building on March 19 that killed one U.N. staff member and injured six others, and an attack March 23 on ambulances and other marked vehicles that killed a U.N. staff member and eight Palestinian Red Crescent and six civil defense staff.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as the Morag corridor, using the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis. That suggests the military-controlled corridor would run between the two cities in southern Gaza.

“We are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages. And the more they do not give, the more the pressure will increase until they do,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued Wednesday.

Last month, the Israeli military retook control of the Netzarim corridor, which bisects northern Gaza from the south. Israeli forces had withdrawn from the corridor as part of the ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testified again on Wednesday in his ongoing trial for alleged corruption.

Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli leader to take the stand as a criminal defendant. He denies wrongdoing, saying the charges are a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media and a biased legal system out to topple his lengthy rule.

Israeli authorities are also conducting separate investigations into whether the Gulf state of Qatar — which has close ties with Hamas — hired Netanyahu advisers to launch an influence campaign in Israel.

The corruption trial testimony is another low point for Israel’s longest-serving leader, who also faces an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Netanyahu is expected to travel to Hungary later Wednesday for a meeting with the country's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, despite the international arrest warrant.

Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said the building was previously a medical clinic but had been converted into a shelter with more 700 displaced people from 160 families living there.

Officials at the Indonesian Hospital said the Israeli strike killed 15 people, including nine children and two women, at the building for the U.N. agency known as UNRWA in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Civil Defense rescue agency said the attack hit two rooms in the building, and that Civil Defense teams evacuated the bodies of seven dead and 12 wounded.

The Israeli military said it struck Hamas members in the area, adding that they were hiding inside “a command and control center that was being used for coordinating” armed activity and served as a central meeting point for the Palestinian group.

Despite UNRWA staff warning people about the dangers of remaining at the facility after Wednesday’s strike, many displaced families haven’t left “simply because they have absolutely nowhere else to go,” Touma said, adding that no UNRWA staff were killed or wounded in the strike.

The Hostage Families Forum, which represents most captives’ families, said that it was “horrified to wake up this morning to the Defense Minister’s announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza.”

The group said the Israeli government “has an obligation to free all 59 hostages from Hamas captivity — to pursue every possible channel to advance a deal for their release.” They stressed that every passing day puts their loved ones’ lives at greater risk.

“Their lives hang in the balance as more and more disturbing details continue to emerge about the horrific conditions they’re being held in — chained, abused, and in desperate need of medical attention,” said the forum, which called on the Trump administration and other mediators to continue pressuring Hamas to release the hostages.

“Our highest priority must be an immediate deal to bring ALL hostages back home — the living for rehabilitation and those killed for proper burial — and end this war,” the group said.

Germany has rejected Israel’s suggestion that it took part in the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to third countries.

The Israeli Interior Ministry said hundreds of Gaza residents, accompanied by German diplomats, were flown from southern Israel to the German city of Leipzig on Tuesday. It said Interior Minister Moshe Arbel visited Israel’s Ramon Airport “with the aim of examining the process of voluntary departure of Gazans to a third country.”

“This is wrong,” the German Foreign Office said on the social platform X in response to a post that summarized the Israeli statement.

In a statement, the German Foreign Office said it had worked with Israeli authorities to assist 19 German citizens and their close family members in traveling from Gaza to Germany, describing it as a routine wartime evacuation.

“Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, the German government has repeatedly and intensively advocated for the departure and safety of German citizens,” it said.

Israel has vowed to carry out President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza in other countries, referring to it as “voluntary emigration.”

Palestinians have universally rejected the plan, describing it as forced expulsion from their homeland.

Human rights experts say implementing the plan would likely violate international law, and the proposal drew widespread international opposition when Trump announced it in February.

Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip have killed 17 people, hospital officials say.

The bodies of 12 people killed in an overnight airstrike were brought to Nasser Hospital, officials said Wednesday, and the victims included five women, one of them pregnant, and two children. Three men from the same family were killed, as were the owners of the house that was bombed, officials said.

Gaza European Hospital received the bodies of five people who were killed in two separate airstrikes, officials there said.

Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip is expanding to seize “large areas,” the defense minister said Wednesday.

Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and seizing large areas that will be added to the security zones of the State of Israel,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a written statement.

The Israeli government has long maintained a buffer zone just inside Gaza along its security fence and has greatly expanded since the war against Hamas began in 2023.

Katz called on Gaza residents to “expel Hamas and return all hostages.” The militant group still holds 59 captives, of whom 24 are believed to still be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the United Nations is “at the tail end of our supplies,” forcing the U.N. World Food Program to close all 25 of its bakeries in Gaza because of a lack of flour and cooking fuel.

“WFP doesn’t close its bakeries for fun,” Dujarric said.

He said the food situation remains “very critical” since Israel closed all crossings into Gaza a month ago, cutting off all humanitarian deliveries.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said Tuesday that nearly 450,000 tons of aid entered Gaza during the ceasefire. COGAT claimed at least some of the aid from the U.N. and its humanitarian partners was being diverted to Hamas.

Responding to that, Dujarric said, “The U.N. has kept a chain of custody, and a very good chain of custody, on all the aid.”

Suspected U.S. airstrikes battered rebel-controlled areas of Yemen into Wednesday, with the Houthis saying one strike killed at least four people near the Red Sea port city of Hodeida.

The intense campaign of airstrikes under President Donald Trump, targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Mideast waters stemming from the Israel-Hamas war, has killed at least 65 people, according to casualty figures released by the Houthis.

The campaign appears to show no signs of stopping as the Trump administration again linked their airstrikes on the Iranian-backed Houthis to an effort to pressure Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program. While so far giving no specifics about the campaign and its targets, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt put the overall number of strikes on Tuesday at over 200.

Palestinians react next to the bodies of their relatives, killed in an Israeli army strike, before their burial at a hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinians inspect a UN building after it was hit by an Israeli strike, in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians inspect a UN building after it was hit by an Israeli strike, in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Buildings that were destroyed during the Israeli ground and air operations stand in northern of Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Palestinians grieve over the bodies of their relatives, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, as they prepare for burial at a hospital in Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians grieve over the bodies of their relatives, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, as they prepare for burial at a hospital in Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians inspect the site hit by an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends his trial on corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (Yair Sagi/Pool Photo via AP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends his trial on corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (Yair Sagi/Pool Photo via AP)

FILE - Palestinians inspect the rubble caused by an Israeli bombardment in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip on Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana, File)

FILE - Displaced Palestinians carry their belongings on the outskirts of Gaza City, Friday March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana, File)