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.
