Closing summary
It is 5.30pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Israel-Gaza war coverage here and on the Middle East here.
A senior Hamas official has said the group does not know how many of the Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza are still alive, as Israeli and Hamas sources set out positions that could undermine the possibility of any imminent ceasefire deal. The Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview with CNN that “no one has any idea” how many of the remaining 120 hostages captured on 7 October last year were still alive, amid Israeli estimates that at least a third had died in captivity or were killed when seized.
Hamdan also told CNN that the latest US-backed proposal did not meet Hamas’s demands, with a key concern being the duration of a ceasefire. Hamas wants written guarantees from the US for a permanent ceasefire, plus a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, in order to sign off on the truce proposal, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters earlier this week.
At the G7 summit, US president, Joe Biden, called Hamas “the biggest hang-up so far” to a deal on a Gaza truce and hostage release. “I’ve laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the UN security council, by the G7, by the Israelis, and the biggest hang-up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on even though they have submitted something similar,” he told reporters. “Whether or not that comes to fruition remains to be seen,” he said.
Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Friday as truce talks with Hamas militants failed to progress and tensions surged on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), witnesses reported the strikes in various parts of the Gaza Strip in the morning, particularly the centre.
AFP reported that at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, men gathered over the body of an 11-year-old boy who died during bombardment of nearby Bureij refugee camp. Israel’s military on Friday said troops continued operations in central Gaza, where warplanes had struck a militant cell and “military structure” in the Zeitun area. After projectiles were fired from northern Gaza into southern Israel on Thursday night, artillery and aircraft hit the launch sites, the army said.
Plumes of smoke were still billowing on Friday over the south Lebanon village of Jannata after a deadly Israeli strike that, officials said, killed two civilians. The village’s deputy mayor, Hassan Shur, told AFP that two women were killed and rescuers said at least nine people were injured in the strike, including an infant and two children.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel “will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France”, reported the Times of Israel. Gallant’s statement came after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday that France, the US and Israel would work together to ease tensions with Hezbollah on the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israeli emergency services reported dealing with a string of fires in northern Israel on Friday after dozens of missiles were fired from southern Lebanon into the area around the border town of Kiryat Shemona. The military said that warning sirens had sounded in northern Israel and emergency services said teams were searching the area where they reported there was property damage but no casualties.
More than 37,266 Palestinians have been killed and 85,102 have been injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
On Friday, the Israeli military said fighter jets and anti-aircraft systems had intercepted 11 of the 16 drones launched by Hezbollah against Israel in the past 72 hours.“The Israeli air force is continuing to operate at all times to thwart terrorist activities and protect Israel’s skies from any threat,” it said in a statement.
The UN’s relief agency for Palestinians, the largest aid organisation operating in Gaza, has said Israeli authorities are frequently preventing it from delivering aid and hampering its operations in the territory. “We are getting very few positive responses to our requests for aid delivery and permits to move around Gaza,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for Unrwa.
In the north of the Gaza Strip where Palestinians have been hit hardest by hunger, residents say they are surviving on bread alone due to acute shortages of vegetables, fruit and meat. In social media posts, Palestinians accused merchants of exploiting needs by buying goods at regular prices in Israel and the West Bank and then selling them at a huge mark-up.
Fuel shortages are pushing hospitals in Gaza to the “brink of collapse”, with people facing dehydration, disease and starvation, the charity ActionAid warned. Dr Mohammad Salha, acting director of al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza, told ActionAid that for “more than 50 days the hospital is without fuel and medical supplies and the fuel that they are bringing is only [enough] for two weeks”. Medical sources have also warned that the only oxygen station in the Gaza City area is at risk of being shut off due to a lack of fuel.
The G7 leaders warned Iran on Friday about advancing its nuclear enrichment programme and said they would be ready to enforce new measures if Tehran were to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia, according to a draft communique. “We urge Tehran to cease and reverse nuclear escalations, and stop the continuing uranium enrichment activities that have no credible civilian justifications,” the statement seen by Reuters said.
The US is to impose sanctions on an Israeli group that blocked aid convoys to Gaza, Reuters reported. The news agency attributed the information to the US news website Axios, which had cited two US officials.
The University of Sydney ordered students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza to leave an encampment which has been on the campus since April. A university spokesperson said on Friday that it had told the encampment’s leadership “we require them to vacate the encampment to allow other students to use the space”.
An Israeli court confirmed and extended for 35 days the government’s shutdown of Qatar-based television news channel Al Jazeera, the justice ministry said on Friday. Communications minister Shlomo Karhi reacted in a statement, calling Al Jazeera “a mouthpiece for terrorism in the service of Hamas”.
Updated
Plumes of smoke were still billowing on Friday over the south Lebanon village of Jannata after a deadly Israeli strike as shopkeepers swept shattered glass and vowed to stay put despite soaring cross-border violence, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Officials said two civilians were killed in an overnight strike.
“We were sitting on the balcony at night, and we felt a rocket fly over our heads. Then the world started to shake,” resident Khadija Husseini told AFP. Officials said two civilians were killed in an overnight strike.
On Friday morning, she found that her clothing store had been damaged in the strike which targeted a building about 200 metres (650 feet) away. “There was shattered glass everywhere” from the shop window, she told AFP.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said a building was hit in Jannata, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Israeli border.
The village’s deputy mayor, Hassan Shur, told AFP that two civilians, both women, were killed in a nearby building.
Rescuers said at least nine people were injured in the strike on Jannata, including an infant and two children.
An AFP photographer said a three-storey building had been completely destroyed. Residents said the targeted building was uninhabited, but housed a wood warehouse that had caught fire, with plumes of smoke still emanating from the wreckage on Friday.
