Summary
It’s 6pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. Thanks for following our liveblog today.
Israeli airstrikes across southern Lebanon on Friday killed at least six Hezbollah fighters and one child as Hezbollah fired artillery rounds and rockets over the border, Reuters is reporting. According to the party’s death notices and a Reuters security source, the Israeli strikes on the southern Lebanese towns of Mays al-Jabal and Tayr Harfa on Friday killed four Hezbollah fighters. Another fighter was killed in a separate strike outside Aitarun, but it was not immediately clear if the combatant was a Hezbollah member.
The child was killed in a separate Israeli strike on the village of Aita in which, the IDF confirmed, Hezbollah member Muhammad Mahmoud Najam was also killed. The Israeli military, in a statement posted online, said it had targeted Najam in Aita because he was a member of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile unit. It said it had targeted two other Hezbollah fighters across the south. More than 600 people in Lebanon have been killed since the conflict began in October – including more than 400 Hezbollah combatants and more than 130 civilians, according to a Reuters toll.
With the UNRWA readying to launch two rounds of a polio vaccination campaign at the end of the month, the ministry of health in Gaza emphasised on Friday that a ceasefire was necessary for a success in inoculating Palestinians against the virus. “The vaccination campaign will not be successful alone in the absence of sanitary water, personal hygiene supplies and sewage water spread among the tents of the displaced, and in the absence of a healthy environment,” the ministry posted on Facebook.
Earlier, the UNRWA announced that a 10-month-old baby in Gaza was paralysed by polio, the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years. The polio virus was detected last month in waste water samples in Deir al-Baleh and Khan Younis. Aid workers and health experts have attributed the return of polio to the lack of clean water, untreated sewage and poor sanitation of the overcrowded living conditions that Palestinian refugees have been forced into in camps throughout Gaza.
Ceasefire talks continued in Cairo on Friday, with Israeli negotiators participating “to advance a hostage (release) agreement”, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson Omer Dostri told AFP late on Thursday. A main sticking point remains Hamas’s longstanding demand for a “complete” Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which Netanyahu has opposed. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday that the talks have been “constructive”, but said Hamas should participate. “We’re in Cairo. They’re in Cairo. We need Hamas to participate, and we need to get down to the brass tacks of locking in these details. And that’s what we’re focused on here in the next, coming days here over the course of the weekend,” Kirby said.
Meanwhile, a Hamas official on Friday accused Netanyahu of refusing to agree to a final truce accord for Gaza. Osama Badran, told AFP on Friday that Netanyahu’s insistence that troops remain on the Philadelphi border strip reflects “his refusal to reach a final agreement”.
Thirty UK-based doctors, nurses and medical staff who volunteered in Gaza have written an open letter to UK prime minister Keir Starmer, calling for a total end to arms sales to Israel. “We demand that the UK government acts immediately to bring an end to the continued Israeli military escalation of catastrophe in Gaza,” the letter states.
Successive Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza, including 12 just this month, have displaced 90% of its 2.1 million residents since the Israel-Hamas war began last October, often multiple times, the top United Nations humanitarian official for the Palestinian territory says. Muhannad Hadi said the evacuation orders are endangering civilians instead of protecting them. “They are forcing families to flee again, often under fire and with the few belongings they can carry with them, into an ever-shrinking area” that is crowded and unsafe.
Netanyahu met today with six hostages who were released from Hamas captivity in November, Haaretz is reporting. All six of the released hostages still have family being held by Hamas: Elena Trupanov, whose 28-year-old son Sasha is still in Gaza; IIlana Grichevsky, whose partner, Matan Zangauker, 24, remains a hostage; Raz Ben Ami, wife of 55-year-old hostage Ohad Ben Ami; Aviva Siegel, wife of hostage Keith Siegel, 65; Yocheved Lifshitz, wife of hostage Oded Lifshitz, 84; and Adi Shoham, wife of hostage Tal Shoham, 39. A family member of a hostage told Haaretz after the meeting: “I left with a bad feeling that [the deal] is not going to happen soon.”
White House: Some progress made in ceasefire talks
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday that the talks in Cairo aimed at reaching a Gaza ceasefire have been “constructive”, Reuters is reporting.
All sides need to come together to work toward implementation of a proposed agreement, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said. Kirby said Hamas militants should participate in the negotiations, which on Thursday included negotiators from Israel, the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
“We’re in Cairo. They’re in Cairo. We need Hamas to participate, and we need to get down to the brass tacks of locking in these details. And that’s what we’re focused on here in the next, coming days here over the course of the weekend,” Kirby said.
