Closing summary
It is has gone 6.30pm 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:
Hezbollah identified a top commander, that was killed in a reported Israeli strike outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Wednesday, as Mohammed Nasser. Reuters’ sources said Nasser was responsible for a section of Hezbollah’s operations at the frontier. One of the sources said a second Hezbollah fighter and a civilian were also killed. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military to Reuters.
Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said the country will reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon. He said Israel would prefer to reach a negotiated agreement, but if not, the country knows how to fight. Earlier it was reported that Lebanon’s foreign minister had sent a message to his Israeli counterpart saying the country was seeking peace, not war, in a rare diplomatic engagement between the two nations, who have no formal diplomatic ties.
Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe of the territory’s south. Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shejaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters said.
The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists”, located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the Israeli military said.
Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in two military operations in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli sources said on Wednesday. A night-time airstrike killed four men at a refugee camp near the town of Tulkarm, while another man was killed by Israeli fire in a separate Israeli operation in Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. An Israeli military statement said forces “carried out a precise strike on the terrorist cell,” killing four militants it identified as Muhammad Shehade, Muhammad Kanouah, Yazid Shafa and Namer Ibrahim.
The Associated Press (AP) reported that some of the Palestinian people killed in airstrikes on Tuesday by Israel had followed Israeli military instructions to flee their homes, only to be targeted in an area which had been designated as a safe area. Nine members of the Hamdan family were killed.
The UN relief works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa) said 250,000 people had been affected by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt. UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the southern evacuation order covers 117 square kilometres (45 square miles), “making it the largest such order since October”.
Almost all patients in the European Gaza hospital and the Red Cross field hospital decided to flee after the evacuation order, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. Though the European Gaza hospital itself is not under evacuation instructions, the order has affected operations. “Now only three patients remain at the European Gaza hospital and three at the ICRC field hospital,” the WHO said, citing figures from Tuesday.
A man was killed in a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in Karmiel in northern Israel which left another person injured. The suspect was shot and killed on the scene. Three members of the suspect’s family have been arrested by Israeli police.
Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, a settlement tracking group said on Wednesday. Authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley, according to a copy of the order obtained by the Associated Press (AP). The news agency said that data from Peace Now, the tracking group, indicates it was the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords at the start of the peace process.
More than 37,953 Palestinians have been killed and 87,266 have been injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Over the same period, Israel says 320 of its troops have been killed during ground operations in the territory. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
At least 20 Palestinians were detained by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Most of the detentions were in the Hebron region, it said.
Slovenia’s conservative opposition on Wednesday filed a demand for the country’s constitutional court to nullify parliament’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state. Slovenia’s parliament on 4 June passed a decree recognising a Palestinian state, pushing ahead with a vote in defiance of an opposition motion to derail it.
Yemen’s Houthis will release Mohammed Qahtan, a member of the Islah party, under a deal reached with the Saudi-backed government in Aden, the head of the Houthi negotiating delegation at prisoners swap talks in Muscat, told Reuters on Wednesday.
Joe Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein was in Paris today to talk to French officials about a pathway to defuse tensions in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, according to the New York Times.
Updated
The UN relief works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa) said 250,000 people had been affected by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Almost all patients in the European Gaza hospital and the Red Cross field hospital decided to flee after the evacuation order, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
Though the European Gaza hospital itself is not under evacuation instructions, the order has affected operations, reports AFP
“Now only three patients remain at the European Gaza hospital and three at the ICRC field hospital,” the WHO said, citing figures from Tuesday.
UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the southern evacuation order covers 117 square kilometres (45 square miles), “making it the largest such order since October”.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN security council on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80% of Gaza’s population.
Forced displacement is once again pushing people to look for safety where there is none in #Gaza.
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 3, 2024
This was yesterday around Hamad City. After fleeing the area affected by the latest evacuation orders from the Israeli Authorities, families were setting up tents among the rubble. pic.twitter.com/voGYPIwpbS
Kaag also said not enough aid was reaching Gaza and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.
“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”
Amid the war, siege and mass displacement, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions, the WHO said.
