Closing summary
It is 5.45pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Israel-Gaza war coverage here and on the Middle East here.
Here is a recap of the latest developments:
A wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting central and southern Gaza have killed at least 50 and injured an estimated 200 people, with one strike hitting a school where thousands were seeking shelter. Palestinian health ministry officials said that at least 30 people were killed in an airstrike on the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, resulting in a wave of critical injuries.
The Associated Press reported that people searched the ruined classrooms for remains, combing through the rubble to gather body parts. They added that close to the hospital, where those killed in the strike were taken, their reporters witnessed people fleeing as an ambulance drove in the opposite direction. Inside the ambulance, they said, lay a dead toddler as well as a body shrouded in a blanket.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they targeted the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah because the area was used as a “command and control complex,” by Hamas militants. They claimed “many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians,” including precision weapons and intelligence, although tens of thousands of civilians have sought shelter in Deir al-Balah for months, crowding into every available piece of space after many were displaced several times from other parts of Gaza.
Hamas issued a statement condemning the Israeli airstrike that killed dozens of people after hitting a school in Deir Al-Balah on Saturday. Hamas said the “massacre at Khadija School is a crime that confirms the Israeli enemy’s estrangement from all human values and its defiance of all laws of war”. Gaza’s civil defence agency said that the school was housing about 4,000 displaced people who had taken refuge there.
The strike in Deir al-Balah was accompanied by further strikes on Khan Younis, after a week of deadly fighting in Gaza’s second city. Strikes in Khan Younis killed at least 23 people since the early morning and injured 89 according to Palestinian health officials, as civilians were forcibly displaced from the city for the fourth day. Gaza’s civil defence agency said that about 170 people had been killed and “hundreds wounded” during an Israeli offensive in the Khan Younis city area over several days.
In Al-Bureij refugee camp, five Palestinians were killed earlier in an Israeli airstrike on a house, while four others were killed in another strike on a house in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, medics said.
Israel’s military ordered residents from more parts of Khan Younis “to temporarily evacuate to the adjusted humanitarian area in al-Mawasi – the second such adjustment made to the safe zone within a week. Juliette Touma, the director of communications for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said: “Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don’t do any justice to what this means. These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”
Witnesses and rescuers said heavy battles continued around eastern Khan Younis on Friday, and medics at the city’s Nasser hospital reported at least 16 bodies brought to the facility from different parts of the southern governorate.
The Khan Younis evacuation orders and “intensified hostilities” have “significantly destabilised aid operations”, the UN said, reporting “dire water, hygiene and sanitation conditions” in the Palestinian territory.
CIA director William Burns will meet this weekend in Rome with his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts and Qatar’s prime minister for talks on a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages by Hamas, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday. Reuters reported that the source, who requested anonymity, said Burns would meet Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and the Egyptian and Israeli intelligence officials on Sunday. The CIA declined to comment. The meeting was first reported by Axios.
US president Joe Biden spoke on Friday with Jordan’s King Abdullah, discussing the push to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict, the two countries said. “The president updated King Abdullah on his ongoing efforts to secure a hostage release and ceasefire deal, and preparations for a surge in humanitarian assistance during a ceasefire period,” the White House said in a statement. Jordan’s royal court confirmed the call, saying that King Abdullah “stressed the need to end the war on Gaza immediately”.
Members of Israel’s rightwing government have hit back at Kamala Harris over her demands for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after she met Benjamin Netanyahu during his US visit. An unnamed Israeli official accused Harris of endangering a potential deal to free Israeli and dual-national hostages in Gaza. “Hopefully the remarks Harris made in her press conference won’t be interpreted by Hamas as daylight between the US and Israel, thereby making a deal harder to secure,” the Israeli media reported the official as saying.
Netanyahu visited Donald Trump at the former president’s Florida resort, concluding the Israeli leader’s week-long US visit that has been marked by large protests against the war. The two men have had a strained relationship in the past after Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the 2020 election, but on Friday photographs showed Trump warmly greeting Netanyahu and the two appeared to have reconciled. “We’ve always had a good relationship,” Trump said before the meeting, while also saying Harris’s statement on the Gaza war was “disrespectful”.
Israeli forces detained at least 40 Palestinians, including, children and former detainees, in the occupied West Bank over the past day, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported. The Detainees and Ex-Detainees Commission and the Palestine Prisoners Society said the detention operations took place across the governorates of Qalqiliya and Nablus.
Foreign ministers of the South-east Asian regional bloc Asean on Saturday expressed concern over the dire humanitarian situation and “alarming casualties” in Gaza. It also urged peaceful resolutions to the conflicts in Gaza, as well as in Ukraine. It came via a joint communique issued two days after their closed-doors retreat in Laos.
At least 39,258 Palestinians have been killed and 90,589 injured in Israel’s military offensive on the Gaza Strip since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday. The ministry of health in Gaza does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The deputy commissioner general of Unrwa, Antonia De Meo, said that “in Gaza the blatant disregard for international humanitarian law is now commonplace”. Addressing the UN security council on Friday, De Meo said: “In Gaza, the blatant disregard for international humanitarian law is now commonplace. Women, children, journalists, humanitarian workers – all continue to pay a tragically high price.”
Britain said on Friday it would not proceed with efforts to question whether the international criminal court (ICC) has jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant. In May, the ICC’s prosecutor said he had requested arrest warrants for the two as well as three Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes.
Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi, said the need for sustainable peace is urgent and international law should be applied to all. The comment from the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, was a veiled reference to recent decisions by two international courts over Israeli’s Gaza offensives, reported Reuters. “We cannot continue closing our eyes to see the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza,” she said.
In Australia, NSW Labor sent a message to its counterparts in Canberra, passing a motion demanding the federal government recognise Palestinian statehood. The motion, moved by state minister Jihad Dib at the state’s party conference on Saturday, called on the Australian government “to recognise Palestine as a sovereign and independent state and as a priority”.
The Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East dating back to the fourth century, has been added to a list of Unesco’s world heritage sites in danger due to the war in Gaza.
Updated
Israeli airstrikes that hit school kill 50 people in Gaza
A wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting central and southern Gaza have killed at least 50 and injured an estimated 200 people, with one strike hitting a school where thousands were seeking shelter.
Palestinian health ministry officials said that at least 30 people were killed in an airstrike on the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, resulting in a wave of critical injuries.
Wounded people poured into the nearby al-Aqsa hospital, while images from Deir al-Balah showed families carrying injured children for treatment.
The Associated Press reported that people searched the ruined classrooms for remains, combing through the rubble to gather body parts.
They added that close to the hospital, where those killed in the strike were taken, their reporters witnessed people fleeing as an ambulance drove in the opposite direction. Inside the ambulance, they said, lay a dead toddler as well as a body shrouded in a blanket.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they targeted the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah because the area was used as a “command and control complex,” by Hamas militants.
They claimed “many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians,” including precision weapons and intelligence, although tens of thousands of civilians have sought shelter in Deir al-Balah for months, crowding into every available piece of space after many were displaced several times from other parts of Gaza.
The strike in Deir al-Balah was accompanied by further strikes on Khan Younis, after a week of deadly fighting in Gaza’s second city. Strikes in Khan Younis killed at least 23 people since the early morning and wounded 89 according to Palestinian health officials, as civilians were forcibly displaced from the city for the fourth day.
You can read the full report here:
