Unrwa says attack on school sheltering refugees in Nuseirat led to highest death toll among its staff in a single incident
Israel has bombed a UN school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 18 people, including the shelter manager and five other Unrwa staff.
The al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat is home to about 12,000 displaced people, mostly women and children, the UN said. It has been hit five times since the start of the war in Gaza.
Continue reading...At least 19 people killed as missiles hit overcrowded area in attack that Israel says targeted a Hamas command centre
Israeli airstrikes on al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone” in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 19 people and injured a further 60, according to witnesses and medical officials in the blockaded Palestinian territory.
At least four missiles hit the overcrowded supposed “safe zone” on the coast in the early hours of Tuesday, causing dozens of tents to catch fire and leaving craters as deep as 9 metres, the civil emergency service said. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are sheltering in Mawasi, where conditions are dire, after being ordered to move there by the Israeli military.
Continue reading...US secretary of state says Israeli forces need to make ‘fundamental changes’ to operations in occupied West Bank after Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead during protest
We’re pausing our blog here. We will return to the live coverage if there are any major updates to bring you.
For now, you can read out full coverage of the search and rescue efforts after the deadly strike on the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone here:
Continue reading...Deputy director of Gaza Civil Emergency Service and four family members killed in Jabalia, say Gaza health officials; three Israeli civilians killed in shooting near Jordan border crossing, says IDF
Here is more on the earlier incident (see 9.08am post) in which three Israelis were killed.
Reuters reports that Israeli authorities said a gunman crossing from Jordan killed the three civilians at the Allenby Bridge border in the occupied West Bank on Sunday before being shot dead by security forces.
A terrorist approached the area of the Allenby Bridge from Jordan in a truck, exited the truck, and opened fire at the Israeli security forces operating at the bridge.
The terrorist was eliminated by the security forces, three Israeli civilians were pronounced dead as a result of the attack.
Continue reading...Palestinians say they have no faith in Israel Defense Forces inquiry into killing as US officials insist Gaza ceasefire is near
US officials have insisted that a ceasefire in Gaza is close even as fighting rages unabated in the blockaded Palestinian territory and violence spirals in the occupied West Bank, where witnesses told the Observer an American-Turkish dual national was killed by Israeli forces on Friday.
William Burns, who is also the US’s chief negotiator in the indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, echoed secretary of state Antony Blinken during a speech in London on Saturday in which he said that “90% of the text had been agreed but the last 10% is always the hardest”.
Continue reading...Bill Burns calls Vladimir Putin a ‘bully’ whose ‘sabre-rattling’ should not always be taken literally
Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, amid a debate over whether Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles should be used inside Russia.
Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Israel-Gaza war coverage here
CIA director William Burns, the chief US negotiator trying to help secure a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages by Hamas, said a more detailed proposal on the ceasefire would be made in the coming days.
“We will make this more detailed proposal, I hope in the next several days, and then we’ll see,” Burns said at an FT event in London on Saturday.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed, you can read more of our Israel-Gaza war coverage here
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that three people have been killed in an apparent Israeli strike on Gaza City in the north of the territory. The attack happened in the al-Zaytoun neighbourhood.
There has been an apparent shooting attack near the Israeli consulate in Munich in Germany on the anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics attack on Israeli athletes and staff at the Games. There are no reports of casualties, but the suspected attacker has been shot and killed. My colleague Lili Bayer has the latest developments here …
Continue reading...Unicef calls inoculations ‘rare bright spot’ in war, as minister appears to suggest Israel might eventually fully withdraw
The United Nations children’s agency has said that a polio vaccination campaign to inoculate more than 640,000 children in Gaza is surpassing expectations at the end of the first phase of the programme.
Describing the campaign as a “rare bright spot” in almost 11 months of war, Unicef said that 189,000 children had been reached so far as more than 500 teams were deployed across central Gaza this week.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Israel-Gaza war coverage here
The main United Nations agency for Palestinians says it is making good progress in rolling out a polio vaccine to children in Gaza, but called for a permanent ceasefire in the 11-month war to ease humanitarian suffering.
UNRWA said that three days into the campaign in areas of central Gaza around 187,000 children have received the vaccine. The campaign will move to other areas of the enclave in the second stage.
Continue reading...James Kirby was among seven WCK staff killed when an Israeli airstrike targeted their marked vehicle in April
The family of James Kirby, a World Central Kitchen aid worker killed in Gaza, have called for an independent investigation into his death and said neither British nor Israeli diplomats had been in touch, even though an internal Israeli inquiry said his death had been a tragic accident.
Kirby was among seven aid workers, including Britons John Chapman and James Henderson, who were killed when an Israeli airstrike targeted their clearly marked vehicle on 1 April. The Israeli inquiry led to the dismissal of two officers.
Continue reading...Yahya Sinwar and at least five others accused by US justice department of planning and orchestrating the deadly attacks in which 1,200 people were killed
The United States has announced criminal charges against Hamas’ top leaders over their roles in planning, supporting and perpetrating the 7 October attack in southern Israel.
The charges against Yahya Sinwar, the militant group’s chief, and at least five others accuse them of orchestrating the attack, which killed 1,200 people, including more than 40 Americans.
Continue reading...Israel’s justice ministry ‘cautiously optimistic’ court will decide against issuing warrants, Haaretz reports. This live blog is closed
Julian Borger is the Guardian’s world affairs editor
The mass protests in Tel Aviv over the past two nights, and the smaller ones every Saturday night for the past few months, have been almost entirely about a deal with Hamas so that Israeli hostages are freed and come home.
Continue reading...Shona Robison, Scottish finance secretary, says current financial situation facing Scottish government is ‘not sustainable’
Tom Tugendhat, the former security minister, is launching his campaign for the Tory leadership. There is a live feed here.
Tugendhat started by saying that he did not actually want the job, because he does not want to be leader of the opposition. He wants to be prime minister, he said.
Politics is not a game, and we all know the cost when government isn’t sober and serious. We saw it in the lives lost in Afghanistan and then in that wasted chaos of that withdrawal. We saw it during Covid, not just in the lost years of education that cost so many or the opportunities missed, or even in the grief for lost loved ones or those left to cope alone, but through the disrespect.
That’s why I’m standing before you today, because this country can change. We must change, and Britain deserves better, and we need a different government.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands take to streets as anger rises at Netanyahu government after deaths of six hostages
Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Sunday night and a general strike was called amid an eruption of public outrage over the government’s handling of the war in Gaza after the deaths of six hostages being held deep underground by Hamas.
The discovery of the hostages’ bodies in Gaza over the weekend threatened to bring deep divisions over the war to breaking point. An estimated 100,000 protested in Tel Aviv, while others demonstrated in Jerusalem as pressure on the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to reach a ceasefire deal to bring the remaining hostages home reached a new peak.
Continue reading...Mass protests follow call for general strike by head of Israeli labour union after six hostages held by Hamas were recovered overnight
The Associated Press has put together a profile of the six hostages whose bodies were discovered by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Here’s a look at their lives:
Continue reading...IDF says Hamas killed captives shortly before bodies found, as families’ group accuses Netanyahu of ‘abandoning’ abductees
Israel has confirmed the deaths of six more hostages taken in the 7 October attack by Hamas, saying they were killed by their captors shortly before their bodies were found on Saturday in a tunnel complex under Gaza.
“According to our initial estimation, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” a military spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, told reporters in an early-morning briefing.
Continue reading...Anera says four men who died in Gaza were locals who asked to serve as escort for convoy, but IDF describes them as ‘armed assailants’
Continue reading...Opinion differs only over whether leadership is merely incompetent or actively working with Netanyahu
Israel said it has killed three militants including a senior Hamas official in an airstrike on a car outside Jenin on the third day of extensive military operations across the West Bank.
The campaign, according to Israeli leaders, is designed to pre-empt attacks on Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv this month, the first for eight years.
Continue reading...Wassem Hazem, commander in Jenin, killed in car Israel says container weapons and cash
There is more coming to us on reports from the Israeli military of the death of local Hamas commander in Jenin, Wassem Hazem (see 9.48am post) and two Hamas gunmen.
Hamas has not yet commented on the incident.
In the village of Zababdeh, just outside Jenin, a burnt-out car riddled with bullet holes stood against a wall where the driver crashed the vehicle after being pursued by an Israeli special forces unit, residents said.
Villager Saif Ghannam, 25, said one of the two other men who escaped from the vehicle was killed just outside his house by a small drone strike that shattered the windows, while a second man was killed a short distance away.
Continue reading...