Closing summary
The death toll from an Israeli air strike on a Gaza City school has risen to 80, Palestinian health authorities said. The Israeli military acknowledged the strike on the Tabeen school on Saturday morning, claiming it hit a Hamas command centre within the school. Hamas denied having a base at the school. Fadel Naeem, director of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, said the facility received the bodies of 80 people killed in the strike.
Around 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating from the Gaza City school that was struck by the Israeli air force on Saturday, an Israeli military spokesperson said. “The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility,” lieutenant colonel Nadav Shoshani said on X.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force targeted a command and control centre where Hamas fighters were hiding. The military said it had taken steps to reduce the risk of harming civilians, “including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and intelligence information”. It did not immediately comment on the casualty reports from Gaza, Reuters reported.
A spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, has urged the US to put an end to the “blind support that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly”. Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have condemned the overnight strike, which came as mediators were pushing to resume ceasefire talks. Reuters reports that senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the strike should serve as a turning point in their efforts.
The presumptive Democratic nominee for the US presidential election addressed Gaza protesters after they interrupted her campaign speech in Glendale, Arizona. Harris stopped her speech looking to the area in the audience where the protesters were chanting from and told them she “respected” their voices. “Let me just speak to that for a moment, and then I’m going to get back to the business at hand,” she said, adding that she believed “now is the time” to agree a ceasefire and secure the release of hostages held in Gaza.
The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell has said there is “no justification” for the attack on the school in Gaza. He posted on X: “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, w/ reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims. At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres We are dismayed by the terrible overall death toll.”
At least 39,790 Palestinians have been killed and 91,702 have been injured in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry has said in a statement.
According to the United Nations, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged in the war as of July 6. In June, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and children, according to local health officials. Israel has blamed the civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying the group endangers noncombatants by using schools and residential neighborhoods as bases for operations and attacks.
Israeli tanks returned to the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis on Friday, forcing thousands to evacuate along congested roadways, as Palestinian fighters continued to attack Israeli troops from the ruins. Families fled eastern Khan Younis in vehicles and on foot, belongings heaped on donkey carts and motorcycle rickshaws as they made their slow escape along congested roads. The Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering residents and displaced people sheltering in the city to evacuate from an area that has already seen repeated waves of fighting.
Iran is set to carry out an order by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to “harshly punish” Israel over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, a Revolutionary Guards deputy commander was quoted as saying on Friday by local news agencies. Ali Fadavi said Khamenei’s orders were “clear and explicit” and “will be implemented in the best possible way”. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, asked about Fadavi’s remarks, said the US was ready to defend Israel with plenty of resources in the region, adding: “When we hear rhetoric like that we’ve got to take it seriously, and we do.”
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Israel-Gaza war live blog. Thanks for following along.
