Closing summary
This blog is now closing. Thank you for following along. Below is a roundup of today’s stories:
The UK, France and Germany have said there must be “no further delay” in agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza and called on Iran and its allies to refrain from attacks against Israel that would further escalate tensions. In a joint statement released on Monday, they endorsed the latest push by the US, Qatar and Egypt to broker an agreement to end the 10-month-old war.
Gaza officials told AFP on Monday that they had identified 75 bodies of Palestinians killed in a weekend strike by Israel on a school building where rescuers reported at least 93 dead. The Israeli military claimed that Saturday’s pre-dawn strike on the Al-Tabieen religious school compound in Gaza City killed at least 19 Palestinian militants who were allegedly using it as a base.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the deployment of a guided missile submarine to the Middle East amid escalating tensions in the region, the Pentagon said on Sunday. The moves come as the US and other allies push for Israel and Hamas to reach a ceasefire deal that could help calm soaring regional tensions after the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, for which Iran has vowed to retaliate, as well as a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, has said the bloc should consider sanctions in response to calls by Israel’s far-right national security minister to cut off aid to Gaza, calling them an “incitement to war crimes”. Writing on the X platform late on Sunday, EU foreign policy chief Borrell said the recent remarks by Itamar Ben-Gvir constitute “incitement to war crimes,” adding that “sanctions must be on our EU agenda.”
142 people have been killed and 150 others have been injured by Israeli strikes in Gaza in the past 48 hours, the Palestinian health ministry has said, as the overall death toll from the war nears 40,000. On Monday, the health ministry said 39,897 Palestinians have been killed and 92,152 have been injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October.
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has responded to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who had referenced the far-right politician when calling for the consideration of sanctions against Israel on Sunday (see post at 11.09BST).
Writing on X, Smotrich accused Borrell of “siding with terror”.
Borrell, who doesn’t stop misleading the public by claiming that the IDF’s retaliatory bombing in Gaza is worse than that of Nazi Germany, and who had the audacity to call the IDF’s Operation Arnon aimed at rescuing the hostages a “massacre of the Palestinian people” has clearly… https://t.co/VWIiYd3EQT
— בצלאל סמוטריץ' (@bezalelsm) August 12, 2024
