Closing summary
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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
Ryanair, the low-cost Irish airline, is canceling all flights to and from Ben Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv from Tuesday until 26 August “due to operational restrictions which are beyond our control.” The airline did provide any further details.
The Vatican has called on Iran to refrain “in every way” from escalating a potential conflict in the Middle East after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, in Tehran last month.
The Israeli government has officially declined to comment on Haniyeh’s death, but the strike was widely acknowledged as an Israeli operation both inside the country and beyond.
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, appealed instead for Tehran to embrace dialogue, negotiation and peace, during a phone call Monday with Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Parolin spoke with Pezeshkian to congratulate him on the start of his mandate.
According to a Vatican statement, Parolin “expressed the Holy See’s serious concern about what is happening in the Middle East, reiterating the need to avoid in any way the widening of the very serious conflict under way and preferring instead dialogue, negotiation and peace.”
75 bodies identified after Israeli strike on school building, Gaza officials say
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 said that Saturday’s pre-dawn strike on the Al-Tabieen religious school compound in Gaza City killed at least 19 Palestinian militants who were using it as a base.
AFP was unable to independently verify the toll.
“There are 93 dead in the Al-Tabieen school strike, 75 of them have been identified,” Gaza civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP. “The others have not yet been identified because some bodies are torn and charred by the bombardment.”
He said the dead included 11 children and six women.
Amjad Aliwa, an emergency doctor at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, confirmed that 75 people killed in the strike had been identified.
“There are still bodies (whose identities are unknown) that are completely destroyed,” he told AFP. “There are also some families who have been displaced to the south (of the Gaza Strip) and cannot come to identify their loved ones.”
Meanwhile, Israeli news website Walla, citing the military, reported that 38 militants were killed in the strike.
Asked by AFP about the report, the Israeli military said that it would respond later.
Reuters reports that Israel's air force has suspended travel abroad for its service personnel, a military spokesperson said.
The region is bracing for possible attacks against Israel by Iran and its allies after the killing of senior members of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Safety instructions from the military for the general public remained unchanged.
A hospital in southern Gaza has received the bodies of 13 people, including a child, who were killed in Israeli strikes on Khan Younis, the Associated Press reports.
The strikes came as Israel has ordered mass evacuations from Gaza’s second-largest city in recent days, claiming Palestinian militants are firing rockets from the area. Khan Younis suffered heavy destruction earlier this year during a major Israeli air and ground offensive.
An AP journalist counted the bodies at the nearby Nasser hospital and saw funeral prayers being held Monday morning.
The dead include a medic who was killed along with two others in a strike on his house, according to the hospital records.
This footage from Gaza City shows the moment an Israeli airstrike hit a house in the suburb of Sheikh Radwan on Sunday. One person was killed and several others were wounded, according to Palestinian medics. According to Reuters, the cameraman who filmed the video said the Israeli army had notified people of a possible strike in the area.
142 Palestinians killed in Gaza in past 48 hours
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.
EU should consider sanctions against after Israeli minister calls for aid cut off in Gaza, top diplomat says
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.”
In his own post on X and in media interviews, Ben-Gvir said that instead of agreeing to a potential ceasefire deal, Israel should block the entry of humanitarian aid and fuel to Gaza until Hamas releases all of the hostages, saying that doing so would bring the militant group to its knees.
Ben-Gvir has also repeatedly called for Israel to permanently reoccupy Gaza, rebuild Jewish settlements there and encourage the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians from the territory.
Ben-Gvir, a key member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, has threatened to bring the government down if it makes too many concessions in the ceasefire talks.
Borrell called on Israel’s government to “unequivocally distance itself from these incitements to commit war crimes,” and to engage “in good faith” with ceasefire negotiations mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt.
The overseers of the Geneva conventions, the core of international humanitarian law that seeks to protect civilians, detainees and wounded soldiers in war, have said they are being “disregarded” and have called on the world to recommit to the framework on its 75th anniversary.
The Geneva conventions, which have been adopted by nearly all the world’s countries since they were finalised on 12 August 1949, are back on their heels as armed militia groups and national forces regularly disregard the rules of war.
“International humanitarian law is under strain, disregarded, undermined to justify violence,” president Mirjana Spoljaric of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which oversees the conventions, said on Monday.
“The world must recommit to this robust protective framework for armed conflict, one that follows the premise of protecting life instead of justifying death,” she said.
The conventions, with roots dating to the 19th century, aims to set rules around the conduct of war: they ban torture and sexual violence, require humane treatment of detainees and mandate searches for missing persons.
The conventions “reflect a global consensus that all wars have limits,” Spoljaric told reporters at ICRC headquarters in Geneva. “The dehumanization of both enemy fighters and civilian populations is a path to ruin and disaster.”
The Red Cross says the conventions are needed now more than ever: It has counted more than 120 active conflicts around the world, a six-fold increase from the half-century anniversary in 1999.
These days, many countries and combatants exploit loopholes in international humanitarian law or interpret it as they see fit. Hospitals, schools and ambulances have come under fire, aid workers and civilians are killed, and countries refuse access to detainees.
Iran has the “right to an appropriate and deterrent response” against Israel to ensure regional stability, the country’s acting foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani told his Chinese counterpart on Monday, Reuters reports, citing state media.
Designated humanitarian zones in Khan Younis are shrinking, Al Jazeera reports, as Israel goes ahead with another military operation in the city.
On Saturday night, Israel expanded evacuation orders in Khan Younis, forcing tens of thousands of Palestinian residents and displaced families to leave in the dark as explosions from tank shelling reverberated around them.
Hani Mahmoud, reporting from the ground in Khan Younis for Al Jazeera, said:
Here, the ongoing mass evacuation is causing a great deal of difficult living conditions as people are pushed into a smaller area after the Israeli military cut off part of the humanitarian zone and included it in the red zone.
The Hamad residential complex, that is in the western part of Khan Younis, which used to be part of the humanitarian zones, was designated in the past months as an area for people to shelter in.
But not any more. This has shrunk the humanitarian zones in the western part of Khan Younis city and other areas, just causing further difficult living conditions in an area already overcrowded and running out of space.
People don’t have basic necessities or basic supplies to cope and sustain their lives in these unusually difficult living conditions.
Air France and its subsidiary Transavia France have again extended the suspension of their flights to Beirut, through Wednesday 15 August, because of continued tensions in the region, the Associated Press reports.
The flights have been suspended since 29 July because of the "security situation in Lebanon" and their resumption "will be subject to a new assessment of the situation on the ground", Air France said in a statement.
The airline said "the safety of its clients and crews are its absolute priority".
Clients with reservations for flights before 18 August can annul or modify their trips without cost.
Numerous international companies have ceased serving Beirut over fears of a military escalation between Israel and Hezbollah.
However, Air France said it continues to operate its flights to Tel Aviv even though some international carriers, such as Italy’s ITA, have suspended their flights until at least 15 August.
UK, France and Germany call for 'no further delay' to Gaza ceasefire
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.
The mediators have spent months trying to get the sides to agree to a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release the remaining hostages in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel and Israel would withdraw from Gaza.
“We agree that there can be no further delay. We have been working with all parties to prevent escalation and will spare no effort to reduce tensions and find a path to stability.
“The fighting must end now, and all hostages still detained by Hamas must be released. The people of Gaza need urgent and unfettered delivery and distribution of aid.,” the statement said.
It was signed by French president Emmanuel Macron, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and British prime minister Keir Starmer.
The statement also called on Iran and its allies to refrain from any retaliatory attacks that would further escalate regional tensions after the killing of two senior militants last month in Beirut and Tehran.
Updated
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to today's blog.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the deployment of a guided missile submarine to the Middle East amid escalating tensions in the region, the Pentagon said on Sunday.
Austin also ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group, equipped with F-35 fighters, to accelerate its deployment to the Middle East, the Pentagon said in a statement.
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.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant spoke on Sunday with Austin and told him Iran’s military preparations suggested Iran was getting ready for a large-scale attack on Israel, Axios reporter Barak Ravid posted on X, citing a source.
Iran’s official news agency said on Sunday that its elite Revolutionary Guards were holding a military drill in the country’s west that would continue until Tuesday. The drills, which started on Friday, were ongoing in the province of Kermanshah, close to the border with Iraq, to “enhance combat readiness and vigilance”, an armed forces official told IRNA.
In other developments:
Hamas has urged Gaza mediators to implement a ceasefire plan presented by US president Joe Biden instead of holding more talks. International mediators had invited Israel and the Palestinian militant group to resume talks towards a long-sought truce and hostage-release deal, amid the growing fears of a wider regional conflict. Israel has accepted the invitation from the US, Qatar and Egypt for a round of talks planned for Thursday. However, Hamas said on Sunday it wanted the implementation of a truce plan laid out by Biden on 31 May and later endorsed by the UN security council, “rather than going through more negotiation rounds or new proposals”.
An Israeli was killed and another wounded by Palestinian gunmen who opened fire on a main road in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, Israel’s ambulance service and military said, with the armed wing of militant faction Hamas claiming responsibility. The Israeli military said it was pursuing the suspected assailants, blocking routes and conducting searches.
Later on Sunday, Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades said its West Bank-based fighters killed an Israeli soldier at point-blank range in the Mehola settlement in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley and “returned to their bases safely”.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said an Israeli airstrike killed two of the group’s fighters in Taybeh village on Sunday, with the health ministry reporting another death from an attack days ago. The Israeli military said it struck several Hezbollah military structures throughout Sunday. Separately, the health ministry said a Lebanese man who succumbed to injuries sustained in an Israeli strike “several days ago” on the southern village of Beit Lif was a Hezbollah fighter, not a civilian as earlier reported. Hezbollah said that overnight into Monday it launched salvos of rockets “in response” to the Israeli fire, targeting troops in northern Israel.
Thousands of people have fled Khan Younis after the Israeli military warned of a new operation to flush out Hamas militants that it says have regrouped in the southern Gaza city. In al-Jala, a neighbourhood in the city’s south that the Israel military had previously designated a humanitarian zone, residents on Sunday packed their belongings, uncertain where to seek refuge. Israel said rockets had been fired from the area. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, posted on X: “The people of Gaza are trapped & have nowhere to go. Just in the past few days, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza.”
The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said “yet again far too many civilians” had been killed, after Israeli strikes on a school site in northern Gaza killed at least 80 people on Saturday. “I mean, Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas,” she said. “But as I have said many, many times, they also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties.”
The European Union’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said there was “no justification” for the attack on the Gaza City school, while the White House said it was “deeply concerned” about it. Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia condemned the attack. A spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, urged the US to “put an end to the blind support that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women and the elderly”.
The Israeli military acknowledged Saturday’s strike on the al-Tabeen school, claiming it hit a Hamas command centre within the school and that it had taken steps to reduce the risk of harming civilians. Hamas denied having a base at the school.
An airstrike on a vehicle in eastern Syria near the porous border with Iraq killed at least five fighters from pro-Iran units, two security sources in the region told Reuters. One of the sources said the strike was carried out by a drone, but could not specify which military the drone belonged to. The second source said it targeted fighters as they changed shifts at a checkpoint, Reuters reported.
