Closing summary
It is coming up to 5.30pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. This blog will be closing shortly but you can keep follow the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Peter Beaumont has the latest on today’s headline:
Here is a summary of today’s key updates:
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 43 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families, medics said. They said the 11 included women and children in the al-Mawasi district, which was designated as a humanitarian zone for civilians earlier in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Among those killed in the al-Mawasi strike was the director general of Gaza’s police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his deputy, Hussam Shahwan, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry. “By committing the crime of assassinating the director general of police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation is insisting on spreading chaos … and deepening the human suffering of citizens,” Hamas added in a statement.
The Israeli military said it had conducted an intelligence-based strike in al-Mawasi, just west of the city of Khan Younis, and eliminated Shahwan, calling him the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza. It made no mention of Salah’s death.
Other Israeli airstrikes killed at least 26 Palestinians, including six in the interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis and others in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the al-Shati beach camp and central Gaza’s Maghazi camp. Israel’s military said it had targeted Hamas militants who intelligence indicated were operating in a command and control centre “embedded inside the Khan Younis municipality building in the humanitarian area”. The military has accused Gaza militants of using built-up residential areas for cover. Hamas denies this.
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of Unrwa, the UN’s refugee agency for Plaestinians, said today’s Israeli strikes were “another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a ‘safe zone’” in Gaza. He added: “Enough misleading and killing of civilians. Every day without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.”
Later on Thursday, separate Israeli airstrikes killed at least four people in central Gaza City and two in its Zeitoun district, medics said. The latest deaths in Gaza came as the Palestinian Authority on the occupied West Bank ordered the suspension of broadcasts by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera across the Palestinian territories, accusing the network of incitement, official media reported. Al Jazeera is already banned from broadcasting from Israel amid a long-running feud with the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The Al Jazeera news network issued a statement denouncing the Palestinian Authority for its decision to close the network’s office. It said: “The decision to freeze Al Jazeera’s work and prevent its journalists from conducting their duties is an attempt to hide the truth about events in the occupied territories, especially what is happening in Jenin and its camps.”
An Israeli hostage held by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad militant group has tried to take his own life, the spokesperson for the movement’s armed wing said in a video posted on Telegram on Thursday. One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying, the Al Quds Brigades spokesperson added, without going into any more detail on the hostage’s identity or current condition. Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz defended plans for a new conscription law in Israel after his predecessor Yoav Gallant announced yesterday he would resign from the Knesset over the issue. In a post to social media on Thursday morning Katz said: “There is no place for cynical political use of a moral issue like conscription into the IDF.”
Hebrew media outlet Ynet, citing Syrian media, on Thursday reported of an Israeli strike in the Syrian countryside west of Damascus. The claims have not been independently verified.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reports that Israeli forces fired two shells “targeting a house in the town of Beit Lif”, which is in the south of the country.
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of Unrwa, the UN’s refugee agency for Plaestinians, has issued a statement on today’s Israeli strikes.
He said:
Gaza: No place has been safe. No one has been safe since the war started in October 2023.
As the year begins, we got reports of yet another attack on al-Mawasi with dozens of people killed and injured.
Another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a “safe zone”. Enough misleading and killing of civilians. Every day without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.”
