Closing summary
Here’s a recap of the main developments:
The US added new individuals and organisations to a growing sanctions list on Wednesday aimed at targeting violent Israeli settlers. “Extremist settler violence in the West Bank causes intense human suffering, harms Israel’s security, and undermines the prospect for peace and stability in the region,” a US state department statement announcing the latest sanctions.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed at least 10 Palestinians in the West Bank in overnight raids and airstrikes. Palestinian health authorities said 10 people were killed in the Jenin and Tubas areas of the West Bank, and gun battles were reported to be continuing on Wednesday morning. At least 652 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli fire since the war in Gaza began nearly 11 months ago, according to Palestinian health officials.
Israel said the overnight IDF raids in the West Bank were intended to contain attacks on Israelis using Iranian-supplied arms. The escalation of Israeli military operations reflect growing Israeli unease that the occupied territory is emerging as an increasingly significant third front as its forces battle in Gaza and on the northern border.
A Palestinian Authority spokesperson said the escalation of Israeli military operations, at the same time as the war in Gaza, would “lead to dire and dangerous results”. Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative party, said the IDF operation in the West Bank was a “unilateral declaration of war”.
The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia to return to Ramallah following the launch of a large scale Israeli military operation in the West Bank. Abbas began an official visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday where he held talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.
At least 34 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday as Israeli forces sent tanks deeper into Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and launched strikes, according to medics. Residents of Khan Younis said Israeli tanks made a surprise advance into the centre of the city, and the military ordered evacuations in the east, forcing many families to run for safety, while others were trapped at home.
At least 40,534 Palestinians have been killed and 93,778 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, health authorities said on Wednesday.
Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators met in Doha on Wednesday for “technical/working level” talks on a ceasefire in Gaza. The deputy CIA director, David Cohen, said the fate of a ceasefire deal is “largely a question that is going to be answered” by the leader of the Palestinian militant group, but he did not refer to Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, by name.
An Israeli drone strike on a car crossing through a Syrian checkpoint near the border with Lebanon on Wednesday killed three Palestinian fighters and one member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, according to Reuters. Local Syrian reports said that a car was targeted on Wednesday morning on the road between the Syrian capital Damascus and Lebanon’s capital Beirut, and four people were killed.
A member of Israel’s Bedouin minority who was rescued after being held hostage by Hamas has been released from hospital and returned home, according to Israeli media reports.
Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative party, said the Israeli military operation in the West Bank is a “unilateral declaration of war”.
“They are trying to imitate what is happening in Gaza,” Barghouti told the Telegraph.
Power and water supplies are destroyed, houses are being destroyed. The operation is expanding and they will expand it even further.
US announces new sanctions against Israeli settlers
The US has stepped up efforts to target violent Israeli settlers, adding new individuals and organisations to a growing sanctions list on the same day at least 10 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in Israeli military raids and airstrikes.
The latest sanction targets included Hashomer Yosh, an Israeli group that has supported the unauthorized settler outpost of Meitarim Farm in the south Hebron Hills. A US state department statement said:
After all 250 Palestinian residents of Khirbet Zanuta were forced to leave in late January, Hashomer Yosh volunteers fenced off the village to prevent the residents from returning.
The US is also imposing sanctions against Yitzhak Levi Filant, who is accused of leading armed settlers in setting up roadblocks and patrols “to pursue and attack Palestinians in their lands and forcefully expel them from their lands.”
A statement from the US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, reads:
Extremist settler violence in the West Bank causes intense human suffering, harms Israel’s security, and undermines the prospect for peace and stability in the region. It is critical that the Government of Israel hold accountable any individuals and entities responsible for violence against civilians in the West Bank.
The UN’s security council has unanimously voted to extend its long-running peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as Unifil, for another year.
Unifil was established in 1978 and patrols Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.
The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia to return to Ramallah following the launch of a large scale Israeli military operation in the West Bank.
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Abbas decided to cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia “due to Israel’s escalating aggression in the northern West Bank.”
Abbas began an official visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday where he held talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh. The pair discussed Palestinian and Arab efforts to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, Wafa reported.
The deputy CIA director has said that the fate of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is “largely a question that is going to be answered” by the leader of the Palestinian militant group.
David Cohen, at an intelligence and national security summit in Washington reported by Reuters, did not refer to Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, by name. Cohen added that the Israelis were showing seriousness in the negotiations.
As we reported earlier, Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators have been meeting in Doha on Wednesday for “technical/working level” talks on a ceasefire in Gaza.
Qaid Farhan Alkadi is only the eighth hostage the Israeli military claims to have rescued during months of operations in Gaza, including during two operations that killed scores of Palestinians.
Hamas has said several hostages have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and failed rescue attempts, while Israeli troops mistakenly killed three Israelis who escaped captivity in December.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that Alkadi was rescued from a tunnel “in a complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip”, but Israeli media accounts reported that Alkadi had managed to escape the tunnel in which he was being held before being rescued by IDF forces.
According to one report, Alkadi was found alone inside a tunnel by IDF troops and it was unclear whether he had escaped or whether his captors had fled.
An Israeli military spokesperson did not confirm or deny the possibility that Alkadi had initially escaped. Hamas claimed it had “released” him.
A member of Israel’s Bedouin minority who was rescued after being held hostage by Hamas has been released from hospital and returned home, according to Israeli media reports.
The Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday that it had rescued Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, who was abducted in the Hamas attack on 7 October, from a tunnel “in a complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip”.
Later reports in some Israeli media, however, suggested that Alkadi may have initially escaped from the tunnel where he was being held and made his own way to where Israeli forces were operating in Gaza.
Alkadi was hospitalised but the Times of Israel reports that he is back at his home near the Bedouin town of Rahat in southern Israel, where he told reporters that he is “feeling 100%”, adding:
I’m enjoying every minute I have in the light. I was in the dark for so long … I’m enjoying every minute of family.
Updated
Ten Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the Jenin and Tubas areas of the West Bank in overnight raids and airstrikes, and gun battles were reported to be continuing on Wednesday morning.
Here’s a map of where the escalation of Israeli military operations on the West Bank took place:
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said the operations in the West Bank overnight, which killed at least 10 Palestinians, were intended to “thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures”.
In a post on X, Katz wrote:
Iran is working to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel in the West Bank, according to the Gaza and Lebanon model, by financing and arming terrorists and smuggling advanced weapons from Jordan.
He suggested that evacuation orders for civilians should be issued for the West Bank, of the sort used to empty districts before Israeli military operations in Gaza.
צה"ל פועל מהלילה בעוצמה במחנות הפליטים ג'נין וטול כרם לסיכול תשתיות טרור איסלמיות-אירניות שהוקמו במקום. איראן פועלת להקים חזית טרור מזרחית נגד ישראל ביו"ש, לפי מודל עזה ולבנון, באמצעות מימון וחימוש מחבלים והברחת נשק מתקדם מירדן.
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) August 28, 2024
עלינו לטפל באיום בדיוק כפי שמטפלים בתשתיות הטרור…
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority said the escalation of Israeli military operations on the West Bank, at the same time as the war in Gaza, would “lead to dire and dangerous results”.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, in a statement carried by the Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said:
The world must take immediate and urgent action to curb this extremist government that poses a threat to the stability of the region and the world as a whol.
Ten Palestinian militants killed in Israeli operation in West Bank
Ten Palestinian militants were killed during a large-scale Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank, authorities said Wednesday, with troops sealing off the city of Jenin – long a militant stronghold.
Israeli forces were also operating in Tulkarem and the Al-Faraa refugee camp. All of the locations are in the northern West Bank. Hamas said that 10 of its fighters had been killed in the West Bank.
At least 652 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli fire since the war in Gaza began nearly 11 months ago, Palestinian health officials say. Most of the fatalities come during raids that Israel says target militants.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said he shares Jordan’s “concerns about the repeated violations of the Status Quo of the Holy Sites, under continued threat including from Minister Ben Gvir.”
I share DPM @AymanHsafadi’s concerns about the repeated violations of the Status Quo of the Holy Sites, under continued threat including from Minister Ben Gvir.
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) August 28, 2024
They are fully legitimate and must be addressed by the international community.
Regional stability is at stake. https://t.co/k3y65BsPjK
The Israel Defense Forces said that today it has dismantled a “3km-long terrorist attack tunnel in Gaza.”
🔴DISMANTLED: 3km-long terrorist attack tunnel in Gaza.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 28, 2024
During Operation “Protective Edge” in 2014, part of the tunnel route was destroyed. Over the years, Hamas has attempted to restore and to make the tunnel route operational. Today, our troops investigated and dismantled it. pic.twitter.com/kjEqedx0fn
The day so far
Israeli strikes in the West Bank killed at least nine people, Palestinian health authorities said on Wednesday, in a major operation in the occupied territory. Clashes with the Israeli military in the West Bank have risen sharply since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, as Israel steps up operations against armed militant groups, including Iranian-backed Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The overnight IDF raids in the West Bank reflect growing Israeli unease that the occupied territory is emerging as an increasingly significant third front as its forces battle in Gaza and on the northern border. Haaretz is quoting military sources as saying one focus of the raids, in which at least nine people are reported dead, was a network suspected of being behind a suicide bombing last week in Tel Aviv.
An Israeli drone strike on a car crossing through a Syrian checkpoint near the border with Lebanon on Wednesday killed three Palestinian fighters and one member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, two security sources told Reuters. The car was not transporting weapons, the sources said. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah or from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, to which one of the sources said the three Palestinian fighters belonged.
Israeli forces sent tanks deeper into Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and launched strikes as they battled Hamas-led militants, killing at least 34 Palestinians on Wednesday, according to medics. Residents of Khan Younis said Israeli tanks made a surprise advance into the centre of the city, and the military ordered evacuations in the east, forcing many families to run for safety, while others were trapped at home.
Israeli forces are also deploying bulldozers to destroy Palestinian infrastructure as part of their latest assault on the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian news agency Wafa is reporting. Israel routinely bulldozes Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the occupied West Bank claiming they lack building permits, although these are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain.
Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators were meeting in Doha on Wednesday for “technical/working level” talks on a ceasefire in Gaza, a source with knowledge of the meeting told Reuters without giving further details.
At least 40,534 Palestinians were killed and 93,778 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, health authorities said on Wednesday.
President Joe Biden ordered the construction of a temporary pier to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza earlier this year even as some staffers for the US Agency for International Development (USAid) expressed concerns that the effort would be difficult to pull off and undercut the effort to persuade Israel to open “more efficient” land crossings, according to a USAid inspector general report. Biden announced plans to use the temporary pier in his State of the Union address in March to hasten the delivery of aid to the Palestinian territory besieged by war between Israel and Hamas.
A member of Israel’s Bedouin minority who was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October last year has been reunited with his family amid conflicting accounts about his rescue from Gaza. The Israeli military said it had rescued Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, from a tunnel “in a complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip”. Later reports in some Israeli media, however, suggested that Alkadi may have initially escaped from the tunnel where he was being held and made his own way to where Israeli forces were operating in Gaza. Hamas claimed it had “released” him.
Alkadi is only the eighth hostage the Israeli military claims to have rescued during months of operations in Gaza, including during two operations that killed scores of Palestinians. Israel believes there are still 108 hostages inside Gaza and that more than 40 of them are dead.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has said that cyberspace needed to be regulated, citing the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France, Reuters reported. “There need to be laws to regulate cyberspace. Everyone does it. Look at the French, they arrested this man and threatened him with 20 years in prison for breaching their laws,” Khamenei said.
The UN has said its ability to function in Gaza is being crippled by a flurry of Israeli evacuation orders, herding Palestinians into ever smaller and remote areas, days before a critical effort to contain a polio outbreak. Aid workers warn that without a humanitarian pause, a vaccination drive due to begin this weekend could fail to reach enough children to stop the spread of the virus, which was detected there this month for the first time in 25 years.
The UN says it has had to halt the movement of aid and aid workers within Gaza on Monday due to a new Israeli evacuation order for the Deir al-Balah area, which had become a hub for its workers. A senior UN official had earlier said that UN operations had stopped completely within the Strip, but officials later clarified that operations “in situ” and “embedded” with local populations would continue.
Slovakia’s government approved plans on Wednesday to buy six mobile air defence systems from Israel for 554.3 million euros ($616.88m), it said on its website, as the Nato member state strengthens protection of its airspace.
The government also approved the purchase of more than 1,300 6x6 and 8x8 heavy terrain vehicles in a joint acquisition with the Czech Republic, at an expected cost of 708.3 million euros, which will replace ageing trucks.
Slovakia, whose neighbour Ukraine has fought against a Russian invasion since 2022, has sought to boost air defence capabilities, Reuters reported.
Israeli forces sent tanks deeper into Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and launched strikes as they battled Hamas-led militants, killing at least 34 Palestinians on Wednesday, according to medics.
Residents of Khan Younis said Israeli tanks made a surprise advance into the centre of the city, and the military ordered evacuations in the east, forcing many families to run for safety, while others were trapped at home.
Palestinian health officials said the Israeli strikes in Khan Younis killed at least 11 people, Reuters reported.
British prime minister Keir Starmer has said a new defence agreement is “at the heart” of the UK’s relationship with Germany and added the nations have a “common commitment” to resolve the Middle East crisis.
Speaking after meeting chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, he said: “At the heart of this treaty will be a new defence agreement, an agreement that builds upon our already formidable defence cooperation, but which expands that relationship to face the threats of a volatile world together.
“That, of course, means a shared resolve to stand up for the security of our people and the wider European continent, and that begins with our unyielding support for Ukraine, and we discussed that in some detail today.”
He added: “So, today we affirmed our commitment to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.
“We also share a common commitment to resolve the crisis in the Middle East, as you just referenced, and we agree on Israel’s right to self-defence in compliance with international humanitarian law, the need for de-escalation across the region, and for restraint and caution to be exercised.
“Unfettered humanitarian access into Gaza, agreement to a ceasefire and release of all hostages, and the importance of working together towards a political solution, based on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel, the only way to provide long-term peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.
“And that, of course, is not an easy goal, but it is one that we are committed to pursuing together.”
Israeli strike kills four fighters on Syria-Lebanon border, security sources say
An Israeli drone strike on a car crossing through a Syrian checkpoint near the border with Lebanon on Wednesday killed three Palestinian fighters and one member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, two security sources told Reuters.
The car was not transporting weapons, the sources said. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah or from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, to which one of the sources said the three Palestinian fighters belonged.
Local Syrian official Abdo al-Taqi told a Syrian radio station that a car was targeted on Wednesday morning on the road between the Syrian capital Damascus and Lebanon’s capital Beirut, and four people were killed.
Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and other armed factions have launched rockets and drones at Israel from southern Lebanon. The groups have strong ties to Iran and to Syria’s government and have transported fighters and weapons through the porous Syrian-Lebanese border.
Israel has not commented on the incident. While it takes responsibility for strikes it carries out on Lebanon, it almost never does the same for strikes it is accused of carrying out in Syria.
Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators were meeting in Doha on Wednesday for “technical/working level” talks on a ceasefire in Gaza, a source with knowledge of the meeting told Reuters without giving further details.
At least 40,534 Palestinians were killed and 93,778 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, health authorities said on Wednesday.
The overnight IDF raids in the West Bank reflect growing Israeli unease that the occupied territory is emerging as an increasingly significant third front as its forces battle in Gaza and on the northern border.
Haaretz is quoting military sources as saying one focus of the raids, in which at least nine people are reported dead, was a network suspected of being behind a suicide bombing last week in Tel Aviv.
The backpack bomb is thought to have gone off before the bomber reached his intended target, and only one passerby was hurt. But the incident on 18 August came as a shock to the Israeli public. It was the first suicide bombing in Tel Aviv for eight years.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility the day after the blast. The bomber was named as Jaafar Mona, from Nablus on the West Bank, but Haaretz’s sources said the attack was organised by a network based in the Tulkarem area.
The West Bank is being radicalised by the huge scale of civilian deaths from more than ten months of Israeli bombing of Gaza, and by the brutality of radical Israeli settlers seeking to grab Palestinian land by terrorising its residents, who are barely restrained by Israeli security forces.
In a letter to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, the head of the Shin Bet security agency, Ronen Bar, said that the violence of extremist settlers known as the “hilltop youth” was terrorism and could create a significant threat to national security.
At the same time as the West Bank is being radicalised, increasing numbers of weapons are being smuggled into the territory, reportedly with the active involvement of Iran.
Israeli operation in the West Bank kills at least nine, Palestinian officials say
Israeli strikes in the West Bank killed at least nine people, Palestinian health authorities said on Wednesday, in a major operation in the occupied territory.
Clashes with the Israeli military in the West Bank have risen sharply since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, as Israel steps up operations against armed militant groups, including Iranian-backed Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The latest military operation occurred Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarm in the West Bank, Reuters reported.
The Israeli military said on Wednesday it killed “five terrorists in an operations room” in Nur Shams camp in Tulkarm.
Reuters was able to verify CCTV footage that showed military vehicles moving down a street in Jenin on Wednesday.
Updated
Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz says the IDF “has been operating with full force since last night in the Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps to dismantle Iranian-Islamic terror infrastructures established there”. He added:
We must address this threat with the same determination used against terror infrastructures in Gaza, including temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and any necessary measures. This is a war, and we must win it.
Foreign Minister @Israel_katz :
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) August 28, 2024
“The IDF has been operating with full force since last night in the Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps to dismantle Iranian-Islamic terror infrastructures established there. Iran is working to establish an eastern terror front against Israel in Judea… https://t.co/2TGvrzDgbo
Israel has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians including thousands of children in its attempt to defeat Hamas in Gaza, not including the thousands thought to be buried under the rubble. Tens of thousands more have been wounded.
Most of the Strip’s 2.2 million residents have been forced out of their homes and left with inadequate access to shelter and food while Israel has destroyed much of the health system.
Biden ordered construction of ill-fated Gaza pier despite aid agency doubts, report says
President Joe Biden ordered the construction of a temporary pier to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza earlier this year even as some staffers for the US Agency for International Development (USAid) expressed concerns that the effort would be difficult to pull off and undercut the effort to persuade Israel to open “more efficient” land crossings, according to a USAid inspector general report.
Biden announced plans to use the temporary pier in his State of the Union address in March to hasten the delivery of aid to the Palestinian territory besieged by war between Israel and Hamas.
But the $230m military-run project known as the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system, or JLOTS, would operate for only about 20 days. Aid groups pulled out of the project by July, ending a mission plagued by repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other emergency supplies could get to starving Palestinians.
“Multiple USAid staff expressed concerns that the focus on using JLOTS would detract from the agency’s advocacy for opening land crossings, which were seen as more efficient and proven methods of transporting aid into Gaza,” according to the inspector general report published on Tuesday. “However, once the president issued the directive, the agency’s focus was to use JLOTS as effectively as possible.”
Israeli forces are also deploying bulldozers to destroy Palestinian infrastructure as part of their latest assault on the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian news agency Wafa is reporting.
Israel routinely bulldozes Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the occupied West Bank claiming they lack building permits, although these are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain.
Israeli forces had deployed four bulldozers in Tulkarm on Wednesday, Wafa reported, and were razing infrastructure and water networks.
Ten Palestinians killed in Israeli raids across West Bank
At least 10 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids and airstrikes across the north of the occupied West Bank, a Red Crescent spokesperson has said, in what a Palestinian news agency described as a “major” Israeli offensive.
The Israeli military (IDF) has continually raided Palestinian communities in the West Bank since the 7 October Hamas attack that sparked the Israel-Gaza war. More than 640 Palestinians have been killed in the assaults and in attacks by Israeli settlers, including more than 100 children.
The IDF expected the latest operation to last several days, the Times of Israel reported citing military sources.
Two Palestinians were killed in the city of Jenin, four others in a nearby village, and four more in a refugee camp near the town of Tubas, said the Red Crescent’s Ahmed Jibril. Fifteen others had been wounded, he said according to AFP.
The Israeli army said early Wednesday it was carrying out an “operation to thwart terrorism in Jenin and Tulkarm” in the northern West Bank. Several “wanted Palestinians” had been detained, the Times reported.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces were carrying out a “major offensive in the city of Tulkarm”, besieging hospitals and preventing Palestinians from moving in and out of the city.
Military vehicles had stationed themselves around al-Israa Specialized hospital in west Tulkarm and the Shahid Thabet Thabet Governmental hospital, hampering the movement of ambulances, Wafa reported.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider crisis in the Middle East.
At least 10 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids and strikes in several towns in the north of the occupied West Bank, a spokesman for the Red Crescent has said.
Two Palestinians were killed in the city of Jenin, four others in a nearby village, and four more in a refugee camp near the town of Tubas, said the Red Crescent’s Ahmed Jibril. Fifteen others had been wounded, he said according to AFP.
The Israeli army said early Wednesday it was carrying out an “operation to thwart terrorism in Jenin and Tulkarm” in the northern West Bank.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces were carrying out a “major offensive in the city of Tulkarm”, besieging hospitals and preventing Palestinians from moving in and out of the city.
The operation comes two days after Israel said it carried out an air strike on the West Bank that the Palestinian Authority reported killed five people.
Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 640 Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas’ 7 October attack on Gaza, including many children, according to UN figures.
At least 19 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
In other developments:
A member of Israel’s Bedouin minority who was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October last year has been reunited with his family amid conflicting accounts about his rescue from Gaza. The Israeli military said it had rescued Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, from a tunnel “in a complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip”. Later reports in some Israeli media, however, suggested that Alkadi may have initially escaped from the tunnel where he was being held and made his own way to where Israeli forces were operating in Gaza. Hamas claimed it had “released” him.
Alkadi is only the eighth hostage the Israeli military claims to have rescued during months of operations in Gaza, including during two operations that killed scores of Palestinians. Israel believes there are still 108 hostages inside Gaza and that more than 40 of them are dead.
An Israeli delegation of working-level officials from the Mossad, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet will travel to Doha on Wednesday to continue talks with US, Qatari and Egyptian officials with the aim of closing the remaining gaps in the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, according to multiple reports.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has said that cyberspace needed to be regulated, citing the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France, Reuters reported. “There need to be laws to regulate cyberspace. Everyone does it. Look at the French, they arrested this man and threatened him with 20 years in prison for breaching their laws,” Khamenei said.
The UN has said its ability to function in Gaza is being crippled by a flurry of Israeli evacuation orders, herding Palestinians into ever smaller and remote areas, days before a critical effort to contain a polio outbreak. Aid workers warn that without a humanitarian pause, a vaccination drive due to begin this weekend could fail to reach enough children to stop the spread of the virus, which was detected there this month for the first time in 25 years.
The UN says it has had to halt the movement of aid and aid workers within Gaza on Monday due to a new Israeli evacuation order for the Deir al-Balah area, which had become a hub for its workers. A senior UN official had earlier said that UN operations had stopped completely within the Strip, but officials later clarified that operations “in situ” and “embedded” with local populations would continue.
Jen Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office OCHA, has given some details on an uptick in the number of evacuation orders Israel’s military has issued over the past month. Speaking at a UN briefing, Laerke said Israel has issued three evacuation orders since Friday and 16 mass evacuation orders throughout this month. The three issued since Friday have affected 8,000 people in 19 neighbourhoods, Laerke said.
At least 40,476 Palestinians have been killed and 93,647 have been wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 18 people, including eight children. The Civil Defense, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, said three children and their mother were killed in an airstrike late Monday in the Tufah neighbourhood of Gaza City. It said three other people were missing after the strike, AP reported.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right extremist Israeli national security minister, threatened that he would build a Jewish synagogue on al-Aqsa mosque compound, the holiest Muslim site in Jerusalem. The comments by Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist and champion of the settler movement, were condemned by Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Israeli officials.
The near-term risk of a broader war in the Middle East has eased somewhat after Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah exchanged fire without further escalation but Iran still poses a significant danger as it weighs a strike on Israel, America’s top general said. Air force Gen CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to Reuters after emerging from a three-day trip to the Middle East that saw him fly into Israel just hours after Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel, and Israel’s military struck Lebanon to thwart a larger attack.
Brown also cautioned that there was also the risk posed by Iran’s militant allies in places such as Iraq, Syria and Jordan who have attacked US troops as well as Yemen’s Houthis, who have targeted Red Sea shipping and even fired drones at Israel. “And do these others actually go off and do things on their own because they’re not satisfied – the Houthis in particular,” Brown said, calling the Shia group the “wild card.”
The new evacuation orders forced many families and patients to leave al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people had taken shelter, for fear of Israeli bombardments. Gaza’s health ministry called for the 100 patients inside the hospital, and the medical teams who remained to care for them, to be protected.
The UN’s World Food Programme warned that the food distribution centres and community kitchens it supports in Gaza are increasingly being disrupted by Israeli evacuation orders.
The Irish taoiseach has said he is “deeply disturbed” by the “widespread disruption” to aid operations in Gaza with Polio detect and reports overnight by the UN that 50,000 children born shortly before the war, or since, have not been immunised. Simon Harris is due to raise what he said are the “catastrophic” issues at a bilateral meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris this afternoon.
Updated
