Closing summary
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has said that Israel killed Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh using a “short-range projectile” launched from outside of his accommodation in Tehran. It added that Israel was “supported by the United States” in the attack.
Two Israeli airstrikes in the northern West Bank killed nine Palestinian militants on Saturday, Israel’s army said, as violence flared again in the Israeli-occupied territory with tensions high over the war in Gaza. The Israeli army said its forces first struck a vehicle in a rural area northwest of the city of Tulkarem in early morning, killing the five occupants. The army said they were on their way to carry out an attack.
Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters are marching through central London, UK. Protesters waved banners reading “stop arming Israel”, “ceasefire now” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. The crowd waved countless Palestine flags as they marched and a long piece of bright red cloth measuring many metres and resembling a river was carried down the middle of the march.
An American-Israeli man deployed in Gaza with a combat engineering unit of Israel’s armed forces posted videos online that show indiscriminate fire at a destroyed building and the detonation of homes and a mosque. One video posted by the man, Bram Settenbrino, and filmed from the shooter’s viewpoint, shows dozens of rounds being fired into the ruins of a building. Another video shows what appears to be an armored vehicle’s fire-control system trained on a mosque before it is razed to the ground. Others depict the detonation of several homes as soldiers cheer.
At least 39,550 Palestinians have been killed and 91,128 injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
An Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in the occupied West Bank killed a commander in the Palestinian armed group Hamas on Saturday, Hamas media reported, while Palestinian news agency WAFA said four other men were also killed. The identities of the others were not clear, according to the WAFA report, which cited health officials. The Israeli military said it had carried out an airstrike against a militant cell around the West Bank city of Tulkarm.
The US military has announced that it will deploy additional fighter jets and navy warships to the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Friday, as Washington braces for Iran and its regional allies to make good on a promise to respond to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. After the back-to-back assassinations of Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday and top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut the evening before, international diplomats have scrambled to head off a fully-fledged regional war.
France has urged its citizens to leave Iran and Cyprus said it had expanded plans to support a large-scale evacuation from the region if the war expands. The island nation helped tens of thousands of people leave during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
That’s all from the Middle East crisis live blog. Thanks for following along.
Israeli strike kills at least 10 Palestinians in Gaza school sheltering displaced, Hamas says
At least 10 Palestinians were killed on Saturday in an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced persons in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, the Hamas run-government media office said.
