Summary
We’re now closing the live blog, 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 summary of today’s events:
Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least 48 people in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian health authorities said, as clashes took place in central and southern areas of the territory. On Saturday, as more than 2,000 medical and community workers prepared for the start of the campaign, medics in Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, medics said separate Israeli strikes killed at least 19 people, including nine members of the same family. More than 30 other people were killed in a series of strikes in other areas of Gaza, medics said.
An aid agency whose convoy was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday has said that the four men killed were local community members who had asked to serve as an escort for the convoy.
Israel’s military said its forces killed two people in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, after one infiltrated an Israeli settlement and another shot at soldiers after his car exploded, Reuters reports.
At least 40,691 Palestinians have been killed and 94,060 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a regular update on Saturday.
The World Health Organization has said it has already delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century. The WHO said that Israel’s military and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for the first round of vaccinations of 640,000 children against polio.
The polio vaccination campaign in Gaza is planned to begin on Sunday, with the pauses scheduled to take place between 6am and 3pm, the WHO said. The UN has warned that failure to deliver the polio vaccination programme would be “disastrous” for children in Gaza and beyond.
The Director-General of the WHO has called for a ceasefire ahead of plans to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza against polio. “Humanitarian pauses are welcome, but ultimately, the only solution to safeguard the health of the children of Gaza is a ceasefire,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.
Executive director of Unicef, Catherine Russell, has said the area-specific humanitarian pauses to allow the polio vaccine rollout must be respected. She added that failure to do so would be an “unforgivable failure” for children in Gaza and the region.
The UK is “deeply concerned” by Israel’s military operation in West Bank and “deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed”, a statement from the Foreign Office said.
Israeli border police killed a senior Hamas commander in the West Bank and two Hamas gunmen on Friday, the Israeli military said. The Israeli military said its troops identified and killed Hamas leader, Wassem Hazem, while he was driving. When two others in the car - whom the military also identified as militants – attempted to flee, troops killed both in an airstrike.
The Israeli military said on Friday it had wrapped up a month-long operation in southern and central Gaza that it said killed more than 250 Palestinian fighters. “The troops of the 98th Division have completed their divisional operation in the Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah area, after about a month of simultaneous above and underground operational activity,” a military statement said.
A broader regional war in the Middle East where conflict already rages between Hamas and Israel remains a “significant risk”, the head of the UN peacekeeping force warned on Friday. United Nations undersecretary-general for peace operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said: “There is still a very significant risk of escalation at the regional level. We are still very much in a very, very dangerous type of situation.”
Israel told the United States that an initial review found that shots were fired at a clearly marked World Food Programme (WFP) vehicle in the Gaza Strip after a “communication error” between Israeli military units, the deputy US envoy to the United Nations said on Thursday. “We have urged them to immediately rectify the issues within their system,” deputy US ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told a UN security council meeting on Gaza. “Israel must not only take ownership for its mistakes, but also take concrete actions to ensure the IDF does not fire on UN personnel again.”
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris told CNN on Thursday that a ceasefire and hostage release deal was needed in Gaza. She reiterated support for Israel and maintained her position that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Harris said that she would not change US president Joe Biden’s policy on supplying Israel with arms for its war in Gaza if elected in November.
The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has launched a process that could lead to sanctions on Israeli ministers he said were responsible for “unacceptable hate messages” against Palestinians. Borrell said he had begun consultations with the EU’s 27 member states on whether they consider it “appropriate including in our list of sanctions some Israeli ministers [who] have been launching unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians” and made proposals that “go clearly against international law” and incite war crimes.
World football’s governing body FIFA delayed again its decision on a Palestinian bid to have Israel suspended from international football over the war in Gaza.
At least 48 people killed in Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials say
Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least 48 people in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian health authorities said, as clashes took place in central and southern areas of the territory ahead of the planned start of a polio vaccination campaign.
The United Nations is due to start vaccinating 640,000 children in the territory against polio, relying on daily eight-hour pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in specific areas of the besieged territory.
Yousef Abu Al-Reesh, Gaza’s deputy minister of health, said vaccination teams would try to get to as many areas as possible to ensure wide coverage but he said only a comprehensive ceasefire could guarantee enough children are reached.
“If the international community truly wants this campaign to succeed, it should call for a ceasefire, knowing that this virus does not stop, and can reach anywhere,” he told reporters at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
On Saturday, as more than 2,000 medical and community workers prepared for the start of the campaign, medics in Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, medics said separate Israeli strikes killed at least 19 people, including nine members of the same family.
More than 30 other people were killed in a series of strikes in other areas of Gaza, medics said.
Residents and militant sources said fighters from Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and other groups fought against Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Zeitoun neighbourhood, where tanks have been operating for days, and in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
The Israeli military said in a statement it continued to operate in the central and southern Gaza Strip. It said troops killed militants and dismantled military infrastructure in Gaza City, while they located weapons and killed gunmen in Tel Al-Sultan in western Rafah.
In Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, families returned to their areas after the army ended a 22-day offensive it said was aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping. Footage showed large areas were flattened, and buildings and infrastructure were destroyed.
Medics said they recovered at least nine bodies from the area where the army operated.
At least 40,691 Palestinians have been killed and 94,060 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a regular update on Saturday.
The Director-General of the WHO has called for a ceasefire ahead of plans to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza against polio.
“The #polio vaccination teams must be protected and allowed to conduct the upcoming campaigns in #Gaza safely. We urge all parties to ensure their protection, and that of health facilities and children,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.
A series of pauses in fighting are due to begin this weekend in Gaza to allow vaccination against polio, which has returned to the Strip.
“Humanitarian pauses are welcome, but ultimately, the only solution to safeguard the health of the children of Gaza is a ceasefire.”
The #polio vaccination teams must be protected and allowed to conduct the upcoming campaigns in #Gaza safely. We urge all parties to ensure their protection, and that of health facilities and children.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) August 30, 2024
Humanitarian pauses are welcome, but ultimately, the only solution to… pic.twitter.com/B8ftmJn22A
Updated
World football’s governing body FIFA has delayed again its decision on a Palestinian bid to have Israel suspended from international football over the war in Gaza.
FIFA said late on Friday it would now consider the Palestine Football Association’s (PFA) proposals against the Israel Football Association (IFA) in October.
The PFA had submitted a proposal to suspend Israel in May, with FIFA ordering an urgent legal evaluation and promising to address it at an extraordinary meeting of its council in July.
FIFA said it had now moved the assessment back to October.
“FIFA has received the independent legal assessment of the Palestine Football Association’s proposals against Israel,” FIFA said.
“This assessment will be sent to the FIFA Council to review in order that the subject can be discussed at its next meeting which will take place in October.”
FIFA declined to give further details of the assessment, or when in October the meeting would take place.
The Palestinian proposal accuses the IFA of complicity in violations of international law by the Israeli government, discrimination against Arab players, and inclusion in its league of clubs located in Palestinian territory. The IFA has rejected the allegations.
The PFA has said at least 92 Palestinian players have been killed in the war, football infrastructure has been destroyed, its leagues suspended and its national team required to play World Cup qualifiers abroad.
In its proposal, the PFA wanted FIFA to adopt “appropriate sanctions” against Israeli teams, including the national side and clubs.
Updated
Here are the latest photos from the Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, after Israel’s two-day military operation there.
Israel’s army pulled out of Nur Shams camp on Friday morning, but its wider operation across the north of the occupied West Bank continues.
UN’s ambitious plan to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza against polio
The UN health agency and partners are launching a campaign starting Sunday to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children in Gaza against polio, an ambitious effort amid a devastating war that has destroyed the territory’s healthcare system, the Associated Press reports.
The campaign comes after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years – a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg. The World Health Organization says the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.
The vaccination effort will not be easy: Gaza’s roads are largely destroyed, its hospitals badly damaged and its population spread into isolated pockets.
WHO said Thursday that it has reached an agreement with Israel for limited pauses in the fighting to allow for the vaccination campaign to take place. Even so, such a large-scale campaign will pose major difficulties in a territory blanketed in rubble, where 90% of Palestinians are displaced.
The three-day vaccination campaign in central Gaza will begin Sunday, during a “humanitarian pause” lasting from 6am until 3 pm, and another day can be added if needed, said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories.
In coordination with Israeli authorities, the effort will then move to southern Gaza and northern Gaza during similar pauses, he said during a news conference by video from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
The vaccination campaign targets 640,000 children under 10, according to WHO. Each child will receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds, the second to be administered four weeks after the first.
Around 1.3m doses of the vaccine traveled through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint and are currently being held in “cold-chain storage” in a warehouse in Deir al-Balah. That means the warehouse is able to maintain the correct temperature so the vaccines do not lose their potency.
Another shipment of 400,000 doses is set to be delivered to Gaza soon.
The vaccines will be trucked to distribution sites by a team of over 2,000 medical volunteers, said Ammar Ammar, a spokesperson for Unicef.
Israeli forces kill two attackers in West Bank, military says
Israel’s military on Saturday said its forces killed two people in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, after one infiltrated an Israeli settlement and another shot at soldiers after his car exploded, Reuters reports.
Israel’s ambulance service said two men were wounded by gunshots in the incidents, but did not identify them. There was no immediate Palestinian comment.
“Terrorists attempted to run over a security guard at the entrance to the community Karmei Tzur a short while ago and infiltrated the community,” the military said, referring to an Israeli settlement.
Soldiers who arrived at the scene killed one assailant who had opened fire at them and were searching for others, it said.
In another incident, a car caught fire and exploded in a gas station, the military said. It said forces sent to the scene “shot and eliminated the terrorist who exited the vehicle and tried to attack them.” The military said it was too soon to know if the incidents were related.
Hamas issued a statement on Saturday praising what it called a “double heroic operation” in the West Bank, saying it “is a clear message that resistance will remain striking, prolonged and sustained as long as the brutal occupation’s aggression and targeting of our people and land continue”. The group, however, did not claim direct responsibility for the attacks.
Violence in the West Bank, already on the rise before the war in Gaza, has escalated recently, with stepped-up Israeli military raids and settler and Palestinian street violence.
Four men killed by Israeli airstrike in Gaza were local escort, aid agency says
An aid agency whose convoy was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday has said that the four men killed were local community members who had asked to serve as an escort for the convoy.
US-based NGO Anera said the four men were the only casualties from the strike, which hit the lead vehicle in which they were travelling. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described them as “armed assailants” who had hijacked the convoy.
The convoy was on the way to the hospital when the lead vehicle was hit by an apparent drone strike.
Its route had been coordinated in advance with the IDF, under a deconfliction process intended to prevent aid vehicles from being bombed. But, according to an Anera statement on Friday, shortly after the convoy had crossed into Gaza, four men from the local community who had worked with Move One before “stepped forward and requested to take command of the leading vehicle, citing concern that the route was unsafe and at risk of being looted”.
For more on this story:
Updated
Opening summary
Welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider crisis in the Middle East.
US-based aid group Anera, whose convoy was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday, has said that the four Palestinians killed were local community members who had volunteered to serve as an escort for the convoy. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described them as “armed assailants” who had hijacked the convoy.
Israel’s military on Saturday said its forces killed two people in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, after one infiltrated an Israeli settlement and another shot at soldiers after his car exploded, Reuters reports. Israel’s ambulance service said two men were wounded by gunshots in the incidents, but did not identify them. There was no immediate Palestinian comment.
More details on those stories shortly, in other recent developments:
The World Health Organization has said it has already delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century. The WHO said that Israel’s military and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for the first round of vaccinations of 640,000 children against polio.
The polio vaccination campaign in Gaza is planned to begin on Sunday, with the pauses scheduled to take place between 6am and 3pm, the WHO said. The UN has warned that failure to deliver the polio vaccination programme would be “disastrous” for children in Gaza and beyond.
Executive director of Unicef, Catherine Russell, has said the area-specific humanitarian pauses to allow the polio vaccine rollout must be respected. She added that failure to do so would be an “unforgivable failure” for children in Gaza and the region.
The UK is “deeply concerned” by Israel’s military operation in West Bank and “deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed”, a statement from the Foreign Office said.
Israeli border police killed a senior Hamas commander in the West Bank and two Hamas gunmen on Friday, the Israeli military said. The Israeli military said its troops identified and killed Hamas leader, Wassem Hazem, while he was driving. When two others in the car - whom the military also identified as militants – attempted to flee, troops killed both in an airstrike.
The Israeli military said on Friday it had wrapped up a month-long operation in southern and central Gaza that it said killed more than 250 Palestinian fighters. “The troops of the 98th Division have completed their divisional operation in the Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah area, after about a month of simultaneous above and underground operational activity,” a military statement said.
A broader regional war in the Middle East where conflict already rages between Hamas and Israel remains a “significant risk”, the head of the UN peacekeeping force warned on Friday. United Nations undersecretary-general for peace operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said: “There is still a very significant risk of escalation at the regional level. We are still very much in a very, very dangerous type of situation.”
Israel told the United States that an initial review found that shots were fired at a clearly marked World Food Programme (WFP) vehicle in the Gaza Strip after a “communication error” between Israeli military units, the deputy US envoy to the United Nations said on Thursday. “We have urged them to immediately rectify the issues within their system,” deputy US ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told a UN security council meeting on Gaza. “Israel must not only take ownership for its mistakes, but also take concrete actions to ensure the IDF does not fire on UN personnel again.”
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris told CNN on Thursday that a ceasefire and hostage release deal was needed in Gaza. She reiterated support for Israel and maintained her position that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Harris said that she would not change US president Joe Biden’s policy on supplying Israel with arms for its war in Gaza if elected in November.
The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has launched a process that could lead to sanctions on Israeli ministers he said were responsible for “unacceptable hate messages” against Palestinians. Borrell said he had begun consultations with the EU’s 27 member states on whether they consider it “appropriate including in our list of sanctions some Israeli ministers [who] have been launching unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians” and made proposals that “go clearly against international law” and incite war crimes.
