Summary of the day
It is 5.18pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv and 6.18pm in Sana’a. Here are the latest developments from today:
Rafah is a “pressure cooker of despair”, said the UN humanitarian office, as Palestinians flee south today. It said hostilities in Khan Younis had forced more people to flee to Rafah in the south of Gaza. “Thousands of Palestinians have continued to flee to the south, which is already hosting over half the population of about 2.3 million people … Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN agency.
Israeli forces will continue their Gaza military campaign to Rafah, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant has said, despite the huge numbers of Palestinian civilians there.
Israel and Hamas appear to be inching closer towards a deal for a ceasefire and a release of some of the hostages still being held by the militant group in Gaza. Qatar, which has been mediating between Israel and Hamas, indicated that the militant group had given its initial support for a deal after weeks of delicate and secretive negotiations. However, while an aide to Hamas’s political leader said the group had received details of the proposed deal, it had yet to deliver a reply.
Fighting in Gaza raged on Friday with scores of people reportedly killed overnight. The Hamas press office reported Israeli air and artillery bombardment around Khan Younis – southern Gaza’s main city and the focus of recent fighting. AFP said that Israeli aircraft had again dropped leaflets calling on civilians to leave the area around al-Shifa hospital’s compound.
Nearly four months of fighting has left Gaza “uninhabitable”, the UN said, while the Israeli siege had resulted in dire shortages of food, water, fuel and medicines.
UNRWA said vital supplies of fuel and bread flour for Gaza risked running dry, while schools, clinics and rubbish collections in the West Bank and three countries across the Middle East could cease operating by the end of the month if funding cuts for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were not restored.
A Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) employee was killed due to Israeli gunfire towards the organisation’s building in Khan Younis. Hidaya Hamad, who was the director of the youth and volunteers department in Gaza for the PRCS, was at the organisation’s headquarters when she was killed.
More than 1 million children in Gaza are in need of mental health support, says Unicef. Jonathan Crickx, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef in the Palestinian territories told a media briefing in Geneva, via video link from Jerusalem on Friday: “Children don’t have anything to do with this conflict. Yet they are suffering like no child should ever suffer.”
At least 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip have been left unaccompanied or separated, according to estimates from the UN. Crickx called for a ceasefire so that Unicef could conduct a proper count of children who are unaccompanied or separated, trace relatives, and deliver mental health support.
The UK could officially recognise a Palestinian state after a ceasefire in Gaza without waiting for the outcome of what could be years of talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution, the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said. Speaking during a visit on Thursday to Lebanon intended to tamp down regional tensions, the foreign secretary said no recognition could come while Hamas remained in Gaza, but that it could take place while Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders were continuing.
Catherine Russell, Unicef’s executive director, has said that “the situation for children in Gaza grows bleaker every day”. In a post on X, Russell said: “The world cannot abandon them.”
The latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said 112 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes and 148 were injured in the past 24 hours.
Belgium’s ministry of foreign affairs has summoned the Israeli ambassador to Belgium and strongly condemned the bombing of the Belgian development agency Enable. Idit Rosenzweig-Abu, the Israeli ambassador to Belgium, said: “Israel has been notified by the Belgian MFA on this incident yesterday at 22.00 [23.00 Israeli time]. We are currently investigating the circumstances around the alleged incident and will update the authorities once we receive more information.”
President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran said in a televised speech: “We will not start any war, but if anyone wants to bully us they will receive a strong response.”
Israeli security forces continued to limit the number of people able to worship at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem for Friday prayers. It is the 17th consecutive week that restrictions on worship have been imposed.
An Iranian Revolutionary Guards adviser in Damascus has allegedly been killed in an Israeli missile attack that targeted a southern district of the Syrian capital, according to semi-official Iranian news sites, reported Al Jazeera. The news organisation said Iranian news sites had identified the adviser as Saeid Alidadi without sharing his rank.
The towns of Tayr Harfa and the outskirts of Wadi Hassan and Majdel Zoun in Lebanon were targeted by Israeli aerial and artillery strikes, reported Al Jazeera citing Lebanon’s NNA news agency. It added that Israeli warplanes also targeted the outskirts of the southern towns of Marwahin, Zibqin, and Jabal Balat.
The Syrian military says it downed a number of Israeli missiles launched from the Golan Heights that it said were targeting south Damascus on Friday, state news agency Sana reported citing a military source.
Attacks against US forces will continue, said Iraq’s armed group al-Nujaba. The Iran-backed Iraqi armed group said on Friday it will continue launching attacks on US forces until they withdraw from Iraq and the Gaza war ends. “Any [US] strike will result in an appropriate response,” al-Nujaba’s leader, Akram al-Kaabi, said in a statement.
A US federal court has dismissed a case accusing President Joe Biden and other senior US officials of being complicit in Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza, reports Al Jazeera. Despite the dismissal, the court’s decision urged Biden and his colleagues to examine “the results of their unflagging support” for Israel, including its human rights implications, says the Qatar-funded media organisation.
Turkish police arrested seven people on Friday on suspicion of selling information to the Israeli intelligence service the Mossad, reports Associated Press, citing the state-run Anadolu news agency.
Joe and Jill Biden will join families at Dover air force base in Delaware on Friday to honour three US service members killed in a drone attack in Jordan. The deaths were the first US fatalities blamed on Iran-backed militia groups in the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas war began. Biden vowed on Thursday to never forget their sacrifice to the nation and said they “risked it all”.
Large crowds of Houthi supporters took to the streets in Sana’a, Yemen on Friday to protest against US-led strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen and to show support to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Saudi Arabia would be willing to accept a political commitment from Israel to create a Palestinian state, rather than anything more binding, in a bid to get a defence pact with Washington approved before the US presidential election, three sources have told Reuters.
Half of US adults believe Israel’s war in Gaza has “gone too far”, a finding driven mainly by growing disapproval among Republicans and political independents, according to a poll by the Associated Press (AP) and the Norc centre for public affairs research.
Sweden’s intelligence service said on Friday that the investigation into a foiled attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm this week was being treated as a potential terrorist crime.
A far-right Israeli minister has been disinvited from a German-Israeli conference due to be opened by the German justice minister, Marco Buschmann, Germany’s Taz newspaper has reported.
Israel has accused the Australian government of forgetting “Hamas’s culpability” for the war in Gaza, in a sign of growing tensions as ministers consider reinstating funding to UNRWA.
Turkish authorities have formally arrested 25 suspects in connection with the shooting of a man during a service at a church in Istanbul last weekend, justice minister Yılmaz Tunç said on Friday.
Several members of the Palestinian-American community have refused to meet the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Washington, the Huffington Post has reported.
The latest pro-Palestine march of hundreds of thousands of protesters through central London will end with a rally near Downing Street after a climbdown from the Metropolitan police. After a meeting on Thursday afternoon, organisers of the march said they had been given permission for the end stage of Saturday’s demonstration to take place on Whitehall.
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Thousands of Houthi supporters took to the streets in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city, on Friday to protest against US-led strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen and to show support to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Here are a couple of images from the news wires:
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