Israeli forces kill two Palestinian fighters in West Bank gun battle

Palestinian authorities confirm death of two men and say six more were wounded during clash in Nablus

Israeli forces have killed two Palestinian fighters in a pre-dawn clash in the occupied West Bank and attacked a fishing boat off the Gaza Strip coast that was accused of smuggling in Hamas supplies from Egypt.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade militant group claimed the two Palestinians killed on Sunday at a house in Nablus as its members. The Palestinian health ministry said six others were wounded.

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Palestinian Authority routinely tortures detainees, says rights group

Human Rights Watch calls for donors to cut off funding to security forces and urges international court to investigate

Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip systematically torture critics in detention, a practice that could amount to crimes against humanity, an international rights group has said.

In its report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for donor countries to cut off funding to Palestinian security forces that commit such crimes and urged the international criminal court to investigate.

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Hamas releases video of Israeli citizen held captive since 2015

Hisham al-Sayed seen lying in bed wearing a mask, with what appears to be an oxygen canister next to him

Gaza’s Hamas rulers have released a video of a captive Israeli citizen held incommunicado since 2015, showing the man lying in a hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask.

It was the first image of Hisham al-Sayed to be released since he wandered across the frontier from southern Israel into Gaza. Its release came a day after Hamas said the condition of one of the Israelis it was holding captive had deteriorated.

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Ukrainian spouses in Gaza suffer from double conflict

Women who relocated to Gaza are unable to visit or contact family, and face similar problems in their adoptive home

For more than a decade, Natalya Hassoumi’s family in Ukraine have worried about her safety in the Gaza Strip; they have been unable to reach her for days at a time while airstrikes have pummelled the isolated Palestinian territory. Now, Hassoumi is experiencing something similar. She has not heard from her parents and siblings in Russian-occupied Kherson for three weeks.

“I think the Russians must be making people switch to using Russian networks and sim cards, but I don’t know what’s happening,” the 41-year-old doctor said. “It’s very hard not knowing.”

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Impact of Israeli strike in Gaza akin to chemical weapons, NGO report finds

Shells fired at agrochemical warehouse created toxic plume that has left residents with health problems

An Israeli airstrike on an agrochemical warehouse during last year’s war in Gaza amounted to the “indirect deploying of chemical weapons”, according to a report analysing the attack and its impact.

Incendiary artillery shells fired by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) hit the large Khudair Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Tools warehouse in the north of the Gaza Strip on 15 May last year, setting fire to hundreds of tonnes of pesticides, fertilisers, plastics and nylons. The strike created a toxic plume, which engulfed an area of 5.7 sq km and has left local residents struggling with health issues, including two reports of miscarriages, and indications of environmental damage.

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Clashes in Jerusalem as Israeli nationalists march through Muslim Quarter

Israeli media estimated around 25,000 people took part in contentious annual flag march through Muslim parts of Ohld City

Thousands of Israeli religious nationalists have paraded through Muslim parts of the Old City of Jerusalem, putting the city on edge after violence during the same event last year helped spark an 11-day-war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip.

The annual flag march, in which Israelis enter the highly symbolic Damascus Gate and walk through the Muslim Quarter to the Western Wall waving the national flag, takes place around sunset on what Israel calls Jerusalem Day, the celebration of the capture and annexation of East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, a move that is not internationally recognised.

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‘My only hobby is crying’: the boy who lost his family to an Israeli airstrike

Omar Abu al-Ouf’s father, mother, brother and sister were all killed in the attack on their apartment building last May

Omar Abu al-Ouf is revising for his final school exams, hoping to do well enough to pursue his dream of becoming an engineer, but it’s difficult for the 17-year-old to focus. His mind constantly drifts to his family, all of whom died last year when an Israeli airstrike destroyed their apartment building in a middle-class neighbourhood of Gaza city.

“It’s like he goes somewhere else,” said his grandmother, Manar, in the living room of the boy’s uncle’s house, where he now lives. “His whole family is gone, for nothing.”

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Guardian wins Amnesty media award for best use of digital media

Award given for the interactive reconstruction of the moment Israeli forces hit a residential tower block in Gaza

The Guardian has won a prestigious Amnesty media award for the interactive reconstruction Countdown to the airstrike: the moment Israeli forces hit al-Jalaa tower, Gaza, showing the race to evacuate residents of a block of flats before their homes were turned to rubble.

The Best Use of Digital Media award was given to the Guardian’s Global Development reporter Kaamil Ahmed and interactive designer Garry Blight, Airwars’ Joe Dyke and the Gaza-based journalist Anas Baba for their use of video, images and audio captured by the residents of al-Jalaa tower in the hour after Israeli forces called to tell them it would be demolished.

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Israeli police and Palestinians clash at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem

Red Crescent says at least 42 injured at site revered by Muslims and Jews as police fire rubber bullets at youths throwing rocks

Israeli police have fired rubber bullets and stun grenades towards Palestinian youths throwing rocks in the latest outbreak of violence at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, a site revered by Muslims and Jews.

At least 42 Palestinians were injured in the early morning clashes on Friday at Islam’s third-holiest site, the Palestine Red Crescent said.

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Israel strikes Gaza after rocket attack as Jerusalem tensions soar

Hamas ‘weapons manufacturing site’ targeted in response to rocket fired from Palestinian enclave

Israel has carried out its first airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in months in response to a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave as tensions soared after a weekend of violence around a Jerusalem holy site.

Warning sirens sounded in southern Israel on Monday night after the rocket was fired from the enclave controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, the first such incident since early January. The projectile crashed into the sea off Tel Aviv.

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Palestinian baby dies after treatment delayed by Israeli blockade of Gaza

Fatima al-Masri, a 19-month-old with a hole in her heart, waited five months for Israel to issue a permit allowing her to travel for treatment

A 19-month-old child has died in Gaza after waiting for five months for Israel to grant her permission to leave the blockaded enclave for treatment.

Human right groups said Israel’s blockade of Gaza was responsible for the death of Fatima al-Masri, who was diagnosed last year with a hole in the heart and who died on Friday.

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Two Palestinians die in gun battle as Israel raids Jenin refugee camp

West bank raid comes two days after a Palestinian shot and killed five people in central Israel

Israeli forces have raided a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, setting off a gun battle in which two Palestinians were killed and more than a dozen were wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said.

In a separate incident, a Palestinian stabbed a 28-year-old Israeli man on a bus in the West Bank before being killed by a bystander, the Israeli military said. The Magen David Adom emergency service said the stabbing victim was treated and taken to hospital.

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Israel under pressure to conclude flawed case against aid worker

Latest court order raises hopes of verdict in trial of World Vision’s Mohammed El Halabi

Pressure is mounting on Israel to conclude the trial of a Gazan aid worker accused of funnelling relief money to Hamas in a six-year-old case widely derided by the international community as “not worthy of a democratic state”.

Mohammed El Halabi, the head of the US-based charity World Vision’s Gaza office, was detained in 2016 after being accused by Israel’s Shin Bet security service of transferring $7.2m (£5.4m) a year to the Palestinian militant group in control of the Gaza Strip.

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‘More than wonderful’ … Gaza bookshop to reopen after unexpectedly successful global campaign

After it was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, Samir Mansour’s beloved book store has been rebuilt and restocked, as tens of thousands of books flood in from around the world

Tens of thousands of donated books have started to arrive at the new location of a Gaza bookshop that was destroyed by Israeli air strikes last year, and owner Samir Mansour now plans to reopen its doors next month.

The two-storey Samir Mansour bookshop, which was reduced to rubble last May, had been founded by the Palestinian Mansour 22 years ago and was a beloved part of the local community. Its destruction during the 11-day conflict, which killed more than 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel, prompted a campaign that raised $250,000 (£187,000) to help rebuild it, plus donations of 150,000 books. The Israeli military has said that the store was not its target, claiming that the building that housed it also contained a Hamas facility for producing weapons and intelligence-gathering.

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‘She stood in silence, remembering’: photographing Gaza under airstrikes

Fatima Shbair’s photo of a girl in her ruined home is an indelible image of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s resurgence in May

For 11 days in May, Fatima Shbair hardly slept. When the most recent rounds of fighting in Gaza broke out between Israelis and Palestinians on 10 May, the 24-year-old freelance photographer said goodbye to her mother and left her home to document the stories of her neighbours in Gaza, as their lives were racked by terror.

The conflict featured waves of pre-dawn Israeli air raids and rocket fire from Gazan territory. Palestinians made up the vast majority of more than 250 people killed.

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Palestinian boy shot by Israeli soldiers during clashes on Gaza border dies

Omar Hassan Abu al-Nile was hit on the sidelines of a demonstration near the fence separating the Gaza Strip

A 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot last week by Israeli soldiers during clashes along the border with Gaza has died of his injuries, the territory’s health ministry said on Saturday.

Omar Hassan Abu al-Nile was hit last Saturday on the sidelines of a demonstration near the border fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said. He “succumbed to his injuries”, Gaza’s health ministry said in a statement. About 100 mourners attended his funeral in the afternoon.

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Israeli aircraft strike Hamas sites in Gaza as hostilities escalate

Cross-border gunfire earlier on Saturday seriously injured an Israeli soldier and wounded 41 Palestinians

Israeli aircraft struck Hamas sites in Gaza late on Saturday, the military said, in an escalation of hostilities after earlier cross-border gunfire seriously injured an Israeli soldier and wounded 41 Palestinians, including two critically.

The injuries came during a Gaza protest organised by the enclave’s Islamist rulers, Hamas, and other factions in support of Jerusalem, where Palestinian clashes with Israeli police helped spark an 11-day Israel-Hamas conflict in May.

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How a lone aid worker in Gaza ended up on trial for the largest theft of aid money in history

Mohammed El Halabi is accused of stealing relief money and giving it to Hamas for their war effort against Israel. But five years on, the evidence against him looks seriously flawed

At about 9am on 12 July 2016, dozens of Israeli security officers stormed through the gates of the Augusta Victoria hospital complex in East Jerusalem. They surged past the hospital, which mostly serves the local Palestinian population, and through the main car park to a three-storey building where the offices of the international charity World Vision were located.

The officers, some armed with rifles, ordered the charity’s few dozen staff into a meeting room and seized their phones to prevent them contacting the outside world. According to witnesses, they were kept there for the next four hours. Occasionally, Israeli police and intelligence agents called an employee out of the room for questioning, while others roamed the offices, searching through files.

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Among ruins of bombed city towers, Gazans still reel from shock and pain

Three months on from the devastating conflict, little has been rebuilt of the bombed high-rises that were homes and offices

Four years ago, Jehad Judah was pleased to be able to afford to buy his family a flat in al-Jalaa, a 14-storey building in downtown Gaza City. The upscale tower block was home to about 700 people as well as lawyers, computer software businesses and journalism bureaus belonging to the Associated Press of the US and Qatar’s Al Jazeera.

The 54-year-old bespectacled civil servant spent the first 30 years of his life living in the jumble of breeze-block housing of a nearby refugee camp. After he met his wife in 2001, the couple moved to Gaza to start a family. The Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the strip which came along a few years later made life in the city hard, but al-Jalaa still offered a decent standard of living, he said.

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Israel targets Hamas sites after balloons from Gaza ignite fires

Israeli military says strikes target rocket launching site as balloons aim to pressure Israel to ease restrictions

Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip in response to incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian enclave, Israel’s military said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the strikes on Saturday that targeted what the military said was a rocket launching site and a compound belonging to Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza.

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