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Léonie Chao-Fong (now); Nadeem Badshah, Daniel Lavelle, Yohannes Lowe and Helen Livingstone (earlier)

Middle East crisis: Biden, Starmer and Macron say ‘immediate necessity’ to end Gaza war – as it happened

Yahya Sinwar Gaza United States Iran Hamas United Nations Israel Kamala Harris Saddam Hussein Hezbollah
Yemeni soldiers in front of a billboard showing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Yemeni soldiers in front of a billboard showing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Photograph: Osamah Abdulrahman/AP

We’re closing down our blog now – thanks very much for reading. You can read our latest story here:

Summary of the day so far

It’s 2am in Gaza, Beirut and Tel Aviv. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

  • At least 72 Palestinians were killed on Friday as Israel launched new airstrikes and sent more troops into Gaza, dashing brief hopes among many residents of the territory that the killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, could bring an end to the devastating conflict. The most intense recent clashes have come in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historical refugee camps and the site of fierce fighting in recent weeks between Israeli forces and Hamas militants who have regrouped there. At least 33 people were killed and 85 wounded in Israeli strikes that hit several houses at a square on Friday in Jabalia, according to medics. Among the dead are at least 20 women and children, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Other Israeli strikes killed at least 39 Palestinians across Gaza on Friday, 20 of them in Jabalia, the Gaza health ministry said.

  • More than 42,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began, according to the Palestinian health ministry on Friday. Most are civilians. Almost 100,000 have been injured. Six medical humanitarian groups were informed this week that their medical missions will now be denied entry into Gaza. The notice was delivered to organisations whose emergency medical missions in Gaza have collectively treated over 15,000 patients since October 2023.

  • Israeli military officials said Israel was sending reinforcements to bolster its operation in Jabalia, raising fears of an escalation of violence there. Israel has issued evacuation orders for inhabitants in almost all of northern Gaza, but many cannot or do not want to comply. Tens of thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped in Jabalia, where conditions are deteriorating. Health officials have appealed for fuel, medical supplies and food to be sent immediately to three northern Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by the number of patients injured in Israeli attacks.

  • Hamas confirmed the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, in a defiant message that vowed the group would be undeterred by his killing. Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said Sinwar’s death “will only increase the strength and solidity of our movement”, adding that the group will not release the hostages it is holding captive in Gaza until Israel ends the war. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam brigades, vowed to keep fighting Israel until the “liberation of Palestine” as it mourned Sinwar’s death. A senior Hamas official told the BBC that the group will meet soon to choose a new leader. Experts have told Reuters that Hamas will likely replace Sinwar with a new political leader based outside Gaza, with Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed Sinwar, expected to assume a bigger role directing the war against Israel in Gaza.

  • Sinwar, 62, was killed on Thursday by tank fire directed at a building in Rafah in the far south of Gaza after exchanging fire with an Israeli patrol. An Israeli autopsy on his body found that he was killed by a gunshot to the head, according to an Israeli pathologist who led the autopsy. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also said it killed the bodyguard of Sinwar, Mahmoud Hamdan, approximately 200 metres from where Sinwar was killed in southern Gaza on Friday.

  • Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, reportedly plans to convene a special meeting with government ministers to discuss hostage negotiations in the light of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s killing. It is unclear when the meeting will be held or what exactly is on the agenda. Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting, telling Israelis that the killing provided an opportunity to “stop the axis of evil.”

  • The leaders of France, Germany, the UK and the US released a joint statement on Friday where they stressed the “immediate necessity” for ending the war in Gaza. The leaders discussed events in the Middle East, particularly the “implications” of Sinwar’s death, as well as the need to “bring the hostages home to their families, for ending the war in Gaza, and ensure humanitarian aid reaches civilians”.

  • Joe Biden, the US president, said the killing of Sinwar raises “the prospect of a ceasefire” and “represents a moment of justice”. Biden on Friday said Sinwar’s death hopefully opens “the concrete prospect of a ceasefire in Gaza, of an agreement to release the hostages held by Hamas”. He also said there was an opportunity to “deal with Israel and Iran in a way that potentially ends the conflict for a while” in the Middle East. He added that he has an understanding of how and when Israel will retaliate against missile attacks by Iran but declined to elaborate.

  • Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages following the killing of Sinwar. “Sinwar’s death also provides an extraordinary opportunity to achieve a lasting ceasefire, to end this awful war, and to rush humanitarian aid into Gaza,” Austin told a press conference at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Friday. White House spokesperson John Kirby said Sinwar was the main obstacle to securing a ceasefire in Gaza and his killing creates an “inflection point” that could accelerate talks.

  • The Palestine Liberation Organization, seen internationally as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, called for unity among all Palestinian factions after Sinwar’s death. A statement by the PLO on Friday expressed its condolences on the “martyrdom” of Sinwar. In a separate statement, Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, said Israel’s policy of “killing and terrorism will not succeed in breaking the will of our people to achieve their legitimate national rights to freedom and independence”.

  • World leaders continued to respond to news of Sinwar’s death. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he hoped it would open the door to a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the Hamas leader fought and died “like a hero” but that “the martyrdom of commanders, leaders and heroes will not make a dent in the Islamic people’s fight against oppression and occupation.” Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, said “no one should mourn the death” of the Hamas leader who has “the blood of innocent Israelis” on his hands. Speaking on Friday, Starmer said the UK continues to support Israel’s right to self-defence and that allies will continue to work to de-escalate violence in the Middle East. “The answer is diplomacy and now we must make the most of this moment,” he said.

  • Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are facing an increase in Israeli settler attacks and Israeli army violence at the start of the important olive harvest season, the UN has said. The international body’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) accused Israel on Friday of using “war-like” tactics in the West Bank amid a rise in killings and settler attacks since the olive harvest got under way last week. Nine people were killed by Israeli forces between 8-14 October, OCHA said.

  • The Israeli army urged residents of 23 villages in southern Lebanon on Friday to evacuate northward as it intensifies its attacks in the region. In a post on X, the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that residents are “prohibited from going south” and that doing so “could be dangerous to your life”. Lebanon’s health ministry said 45 people were killed and 179 injured in Israeli attacks across the country on Thursday alone.

  • Israeli airstrikes killed several Lebanese citizens and injured others across Lebanon on Friday morning, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported on Friday, without specifying the number of casualties. A number of civilians were reportedly killed in the town of Ansar, a village in southern Lebanon, as a result of the Israeli attacks. Wafa reported the strikes also targeted various towns including al-Duwayr, Baraachit, Dabbal, Haneen, Khiam and Ramiyah.

  • Herzi Halevi, Israel’s military chief, said Hezbollah “continues to shrink and shrink” after the group said the war with Israel was entering a new phase. Halevi said Israeli forces have killed about 1,500 Hezbollah operatives since the conflict escalated. The Israeli air force says it “attacked” Muhammad Hossein Ramal, a Hezbollah commander, in Taybeh, southern Lebanon, in an airstrike. Numerous outlets reported Ramal as being killed in the attack. In a statement, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a “barrage of rockets” fired at northern Haifa, and said it dedicated one of the salvoes to the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike last month.

  • Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, said she planned to hold talks with Netanyahu after her current visit to Lebanon and Jordan. Meloni, typically one of Israel’s most vocal western European supporters, has spoken out against recent Israeli attacks on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

  • Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, accused the UN secretary general, António Guterres, of “leading an extreme anti-Israel and anti-Jewish agenda”. Earlier this month, Katz said he was barring Guterres from entering the country because he had not “unequivocally” condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel.

  • Al Jazeera journalist Fadi Al-Wahidi has fallen into a coma more than a week after being shot in the neck by an Israeli sniper in northern Gaza, the broadcaster reported on Friday, adding that Israel has not responded to requests to allow his evacuation for medical treatment.

We reported earlier than at least 30 people were killed in Israeli strikes that hit several houses at a square on Friday in Jabalia in north Gaza.

That figure has since risen to at least 33 people and 85 others wounded, according to Reuters.

At least 69 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, says health ministry

At least 30 people were killed and dozens wounded in Israeli strikes that hit several houses at a square on Friday in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, according to medics.

Among the dead are at least 20 women and children, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Medics said at least 50 other people were wounded, Reuters reported.

Before the latest strikes, Gaza’s health ministry said at least 39 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli military strikes across Gaza on Friday, 20 of them in Jabalia.

Biden and European leaders call for immediate end to Gaza war

The leaders of France, Germany, the UK and the US released a joint statement after meeting in Berlin on Friday where they stressed the “immediate necessity” for ending the war in Gaza.

Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Keir Starmer and Joe Biden discussed events in the Middle East, particularly the “implications” of the death of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who they said was responsible for the “bloodshed of the October 7th terrorist attack”.

The leaders also discussed “the immediate necessity to bring the hostages home to their families, for ending the war in Gaza, and ensure humanitarian aid reaches civilians”, according to the statement.

The leaders also “reiterated their condemnation of Iran’s escalatory attack on Israel and coordinated on efforts to hold Iran accountable and prevent further escalation”, it said, adding:

They discussed the situation in Lebanon and agreed on the need to work towards full implementation of UNSCR 1701 and a diplomatic resolution that allows civilians on both sides of the Blue Line to return safely home.

Updated

Here are some of the latest images sent from the newswires from Lebanon, where authorities said at least six people were killed and 69 others wounded on Friday.

The latest figures raise the total toll over the past year of conflict in Lebanon to 2,418 people killed and 11,336 wounded, according to the country’s health ministry.

Updated

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), seen internationally as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, has called for unity among all Palestinian factions following news of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death.

In a statement, the PLO committee expressed its “condolences” to the Palestinian people on the “martyrdom of the great national leader”.

Updated

Sinwar killed by gunshot to the head – reports

An Israeli autopsy on the body of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar found that he was killed by a gunshot to the head.

Dr Chen Kugel, the chief pathologist at Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, told multiple outlets that he was confident that Sinwar died from a gunshot wound to the head.

Kugel, who signed Sinwar’s death certificate, told CNN on Friday:

The cause of death is (a) gunshot wound in the head. He has a bullet in his head and there’s a severe traumatic brain injury.

He told the New York Times that Sinwar was first wounded in the arm by shrapnel, maybe from a missile or tank shell.

Sinwar then tied an electric cable around his arm in an apparent makeshift tourniquet, but Kugel said: “It wasn’t strong enough, and his forearm was smashed.”

Asked about his approximate time of death, Kugel told CNN that it was likely late afternoon on Wednesday.

Updated

The Israeli military said it had intercepted a suspicious “aerial target” approaching from Syria on Friday.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the drone was launched by the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq group.

In a statement reported by AFP, the war monitor said:

Israeli air defences in the occupied Syrian Golan targeted two drones launched by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, coming from Iraq through Syrian territory.

Here’s more on the airstrikes launched by Israel on Gaza in the wake of the death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Several airstrikes were reported overnight on Thursday and on Friday morning. At least 62 deaths have been recorded since Thursday, according to Palestinian health authorities in Gaza.

The most intense recent clashes have come in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historical refugee camps and the site of fierce fighting in recent weeks between Israeli forces and Hamas militants who have regrouped there. Tens of thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped in Jabalia, where conditions are deteriorating.

You can read Jason Burke and Malak Tantesh’s latest report here:

Updated

The body of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could be used as a “bargaining chip” in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, CNN is reporting, citing Israeli sources.

Sinwar’s remains are currently being held in a secret location in Israel after he was killed by Israeli forces in southern Gaza, according to local media reports.

An Israeli diplomatic source told the outlet:

If Hamas wants to swap his remains for Israelis, dead or alive, then fine.

The source said returning Sinwar’s remains to Gaza risks rallying Hamas supporters, adding that a swap for hostages would likely be the only way that Sinwar’s remains return to the Palestinian territory.

Updated

Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister, met with Muhammad Ismail Darwish, chair of the Hamas shura council, which represents all members of the group across the occupied Palestinian territories and in the diaspora, and is tasked with appointing the organisation a new leader.

A statement posted on X by Turkey’s foreign ministry said that Fidan, Darwish and members of the Hamas political bureau discussed the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza, ceasefire negotiations and the reconciliation of differing Palestinian factions.

The statement also mentioned that Fidan expressed his condolences for the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Updated

Donald Trump, the Republican US presidential candidate, has applauded the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and said it would make prospects for peace easier in Gaza.

Asked about the potential for peace in Gaza after Sinwar’s death, Trump replied on Friday:

I think it makes it easier. I’m glad that Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister] decided to do what he had to do.

Trump claimed that Joe Biden, the US president, has been “trying to hold [Netanyahu] back and he probably should be doing the opposite, actually”.

From Reuters’ Hümeyra Pamuk:

Updated

We reported earlier that a Palestinian woman was killed this week when she was shot in the chest by Israeli forces while picking olives with her family on their land near the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

The UN’s humanitarian office has accused Israel of using “war-like” tactics against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, citing killings by soldiers and attacks on Palestinian olive groves by Israeli settlers.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had received reports of attacks on 32 Palestinians, including farmers, and their property by Israeli settlers.

OCHA spokesperson Jens Lærke noted that the olive harvest is an “economic lifeline” for tens of thousands of Palestinian families in the West Bank, adding:

It is, frankly, very concerning that it’s not only attacks on people, but it’s attacks on their olive groves as well.

A report by the OCHA said about 600 mainly olive trees have been burnt, vandalised or stolen by settlers since the start of the harvest.

Updated

A senior Hamas official has told the BBC that the group will meet soon to choose a new leader, after the killing of Yahya Sinwar by Israeli forces.

The Hamas official told the outlet that a new leader will be chosen according to the standards and regulations required by its institutions.

He added that Hamas’s conditions for ending the war and concluding a prisoner exchange deal – which include withdrawing from all land in Gaza, stopping the war, allowing in aid and rebuilding – have not changed with Sinwar’s death.

Experts have told Reuters that Hamas will likely replace Sinwar with a new political leader based outside Gaza.

Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed Sinwar, is expected to assume a bigger role directing the war against Israel in Gaza, the news agency reports.

Updated

IDF says it killed Yahya Sinwar's bodyguard, Mahmoud Hamdan

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it killed the bodyguard of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in southern Gaza on Friday.

In a statement, the IDF said Israeli forces killed Mahmoud Hamdan approximately 200 metres from where Sinwar was killed.

It said Hamdan was responsible for guarding Sinwar and was also the commander of Hamas’s Tal al-Sultan Battalion.

Updated

Summary of the day so far

It’s nearly 10pm in Tel Aviv, Beirut and Gaza. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

  • At least 62 Palestinians were killed since Thursday as Israel launched new airstrikes and sent more troops into Gaza, dashing brief hopes among many residents of the territory that the killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, could bring an end to the devastating conflict. Several airstrikes were reported overnight and on Friday morning. Among the civilians killed in overnight strikes on Gaza were children, according to reports. The most intense recent clashes have come in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historical refugee camps and the site of fierce fighting in recent weeks between Israeli forces and Hamas militants who have regrouped there.

  • Israeli military officials said Israel was sending reinforcements to bolster its operation in Jabalia, raising fears of an escalation of violence there. Israel has issued evacuation orders for inhabitants in almost all of northern Gaza, but many cannot or do not want to comply. Tens of thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped in Jabalia, where conditions are deteriorating. Health officials have appealed for fuel, medical supplies and food to be sent immediately to three northern Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by the number of patients injured in Israeli attacks.

  • More than 42,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began, according to the Palestinian health ministry on Friday. Most are civilians. Almost 100,000 have been injured. Six medical humanitarian groups were informed this week that their medical missions will now be denied entry into Gaza. The notice was delivered to organisations whose emergency medical missions in Gaza have collectively treated over 15,000 patients since October 2023.

  • Hamas confirmed the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, in a defiant message that vowed the group would be undeterred by his killing. Sinwar, 62, was killed on Thursday by tank fire directed at a building in Rafah in the far south of Gaza after exchanging fire with an Israeli patrol. Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said Sinwar’s death “will only increase the strength and solidity of our movement”, adding that the group will not release the hostages it is holding captive in Gaza until Israel ends the war. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam brigades, vowed to keep fighting Israel until the “liberation of Palestine” as it mourned Sinwar’s death.

  • Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, reportedly plans to convene a special meeting with government ministers to discuss hostage negotiations in the light of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s killing. It is unclear when the meeting will be held or what exactly is on the agenda. Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting, telling Israelis that the killing provided an opportunity to “stop the axis of evil.”

  • Joe Biden, the US president, said the killing of Sinwar raises “the prospect of a ceasefire” and “represents a moment of justice”. Biden on Friday said Sinwar’s death hopefully opens “the concrete prospect of a ceasefire in Gaza, of an agreement to release the hostages held by Hamas”. He also said there was an opportunity to “deal with Israel and Iran in a way that potentially ends the conflict for a while” in the Middle East. He added that he has an understanding of how and when Israel will retaliate against missile attacks by Iran but declined to elaborate.

  • Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages following the killing of Sinwar. “Sinwar’s death also provides an extraordinary opportunity to achieve a lasting ceasefire, to end this awful war, and to rush humanitarian aid into Gaza,” Austin told a press conference at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Friday. White House spokesperson John Kirby said Sinwar was the main obstacle to securing a ceasefire in Gaza and his killing creates an “inflection point” that could accelerate talks.

  • The Palestine Liberation Organization, seen internationally as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, called for unity among all Palestinian factions after Sinwar’s death. A statement by the PLO on Friday expressed its condolences on the “martyrdom” of Sinwar. In a separate statement, Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, said Israel’s policy of “killing and terrorism will not succeed in breaking the will of our people to achieve their legitimate national rights to freedom and independence”.

  • World leaders continued to respond to news of Sinwar’s death. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he hoped it would open the door to a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the Hamas leader fought and died “like a hero” but that “the martyrdom of commanders, leaders and heroes will not make a dent in the Islamic people’s fight against oppression and occupation.” Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, said “no one should mourn the death” of the Hamas leader who has “the blood of innocent Israelis” on his hands. Speaking on Friday, Starmer said the UK continues to support Israel’s right to self-defence and that allies will continue to work to de-escalate violence in the Middle East. “The answer is diplomacy and now we must make the most of this moment,” he said.

  • The Israeli army urged residents of 23 villages in southern Lebanon on Friday to evacuate northward as it intensifies its attacks in the region. In a post on X, the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that residents are “prohibited from going south” and that doing so “could be dangerous to your life”. Lebanon’s health ministry said 45 people were killed and 179 injured in Israeli attacks across the country on Thursday alone.

  • Israeli airstrikes killed several Lebanese citizens and injured others across Lebanon on Friday morning, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported on Friday, without specifying the number of casualties. A number of civilians were reportedly killed in the town of Ansar, a village in southern Lebanon, as a result of the Israeli attacks. Wafa reported the strikes also targeted various towns including al-Duwayr, Baraachit, Dabbal, Haneen, Khiam and Ramiyah.

  • Herzi Halevi, Israel’s military chief, said Hezbollah “continues to shrink and shrink” after the group said the war with Israel was entering a new phase. Halevi said Israeli forces have killed about 1,500 Hezbollah operatives since the conflict escalated. The Israeli air force says it “attacked” Muhammad Hossein Ramal, a Hezbollah commander, in Taybeh, southern Lebanon, in an airstrike. Numerous outlets reported Ramal as being killed in the attack. In a statement, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a “barrage of rockets” fired at northern Haifa, and said it dedicated one of the salvoes to the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike last month.

  • Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, said she planned to hold talks with Netanyahu after her current visit to Lebanon and Jordan. Meloni, typically one of Israel’s most vocal western European supporters, has spoken out against recent Israeli attacks on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

  • Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, accused the UN secretary general, António Guterres, of “leading an extreme anti-Israel and anti-Jewish agenda”. Earlier this month, Katz said he was barring Guterres from entering the country because he had not “unequivocally” condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel.

  • Al Jazeera journalist Fadi Al-Wahidi has fallen into a coma more than a week after being shot in the neck by an Israeli sniper in northern Gaza, the broadcaster reported on Friday, adding that Israel has not responded to requests to allow his evacuation for medical treatment.

Besides Iran and Israel, governments across the Middle East have been curiously muted about Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s killing.

Israel and Iran have respectively celebrated and mourned Sinwar’s death.

The Taliban however has released a statement also mourning – with “profound sorrow” – the killing of the former Hamas leader.

In a statement, government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said:

May Allah Almighty accept the martyrdom of Yahya Sinwar and bestow patience and immense reward upon his family, companions, and all those connected to him.

Hezbollah said it targeted the northern Israeli city of Haifa and areas to its north with rockets on Friday.

In a statement, the Iran-backed group said Hezbollah fighters launched “a salvo of rockets … that targeted the city of Haifa”.

It dedicated one of the salvos to the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike last month.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in an update on Friday that 75 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israel by Hezbollah today.

It said it intercepted three rockets that were fired at the Haifa bay area.

Updated

Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to convene a special meeting with Israeli government ministers to discuss hostage negotiations in the light of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s killing.

It is unclear when the meeting will be held or what exactly is on the agenda, AP reports.

After news of Sinwar’s death broke on Thursday, hundreds gathered in Tel Aviv to call on the government to use his killing as a way to restart talks to bring home the hostages still held in Gaza.

Biden suggests there is an opportunity for Israel-Iran deal that 'ends the conflict for a while'

Joe Biden, the US president, said on Friday there was an opportunity to deal with Israel and Iran in a way that potentially ends their conflict in the Middle East for a while.

Speaking to reporters at the end of a visit to Berlin, Biden also said he has an understanding of how and when Israel was going to retaliate against missile attacks by Iran but declined to elaborate.

“There’s an opportunity in my view and my colleagues agree that we can probably deal with Israel and Iran in a way that ends the conflict for a while. That ends the conflict, in other words, that stops the back and forth,” he said.

Updated

Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni said she planned to hold talks with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu after her current visit to Lebanon and Jordan.

“I think that at the end of my trip I will call Prime Minister Netanyahu”, she told reporters.

Key event

The UK’s prime minister Keir Starmer has spoken about the death of Yahya Sinwar after meeting the leaders of the US, France and Germany in Berlin.

He said “no one should mourn the death” of the Hamas leader who has “the blood of innocent Israelis” on his hands.

Starmer added the UK continues to support Israel’s right to self-defence and that allies will continue to work to de-escalate violence in the Middle East.

“The answer is diplomacy and now we must make the most of this moment.

“What is needed now is a ceasefire in Gaza, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, immediate access for humanitarian aid and a return to the path towards the two-state solution as the only way to deliver long term peace and security.”

Starmer also stressed the need for humanitarian aid to reach civilians in northern Gaza and said the UK would “not tolerate any more excuses”.

“Civilians in northern Gaza need food now,” he said, adding that he strongly supports the work done by the UN’s aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.”

U.S. president Joe Biden said on Friday there is a possibility of working towards a ceasefire in Lebanon but it will be harder in Gaza.

Biden, on a visit to Berlin, also told reporters he has an understanding of how and when Israel will respond to the missile attacks by Iran but declined to elaborate.

Six medical humanitarian groups, whose emergency medical missions in Gaza have collectively treated over 15,000 patients since October 2023, have been informed this week that their medical missions will now be denied entry into Gaza.

The notice was delivered to these organisations via text message from the World Health Organisation (WHO) following an order issued by the Israeli military via the country’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.

The WHO said it “calls for urgent and sustained facilitation of entry for EMTs into Gaza and access for humanitarian aid across the strip.”

Dozens of dock workers in Greece have blocked a container of bullets heading to Israel in protest against the war in Gaza.

The container, which arrived at Piraeus port in Athens on Thursday, held 21 tons of ammunition due to be transferred to Haifa, Israel.

Protesters sprayed graffiti on the container and let off smoke bombs, Sky News reported.

US reiterates calls for Gaza ceasefire following Sinwar's death

The United States has reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages following the death of Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar.

U.S. defense secretary Lloyd Austin said Sinwar’s killing by Israeli forces was a major achievement, given his role as the architect of last year’s Hamas’s cross-border assault on Israel that triggered the conflict.

His death, Austin said “removes a huge obstacle.”

“Sinwar’s death also provides an extraordinary opportunity to achieve a lasting ceasefire, to end this awful war, and to rush humanitarian aid into Gaza,” Austin told a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

His comments followed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to keep fighting, telling Israelis that the killing provided an opportunity to “stop the axis of evil.”

Asked about Netanyahu’s remarks and whether Israel was perhaps missing an opportunity, Austin said: “Of course there is (an opportunity) and we would hope we can work together to take advantage of that opportunity.”

“Clearly there are opportunities for a change in direction, and we would hope that parties would take advantage of that, both in Gaza and in Lebanon,” he said, without directly addressing Netanyahu’s remarks.

Austin said the top priority was securing the release of the hostages still being held by Hamas, including Americans.

“They have been through hell, and so have their families,” Austin said. “Those who are holding hostages should release them immediately.”

Hamas said hostages would only be released with a halt of hostilities in Gaza, an Israeli withdrawal and the release of its prisoners.

Israel’s government has rejected several attempts by the U.S. at brokering ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon.

Updated

The senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya has said that the Palestinian armed group will not release the hostages it is holding captive in Gaza until Israel ends the war. Al-Hayya made the statement a day after the death of the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar.

Russia is ready to help seek compromises between Israel and Iran, president Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

“We are in contact with Israel, we are in contact with Iran. We have quite trusting relations. And we would very much like this endless exchange of blows to be stopped at some point. And for such ways to resolve the situation to be found that would satisfy both sides,” Putin told reporters.

“The answer to this question always lies in the search for compromises. Are they possible in this situation or not? I think so. No matter how difficult it may be, but in my opinion, it is possible.”

Putin said Russia was willing to get involved if both sides wanted that.

“If this is in demand, we are ready to do everything in our power in contact with both sides to help find these compromises,” he said.

Israeli military chief says Hezbollah 'continues to shrink'

Israeli military chief says Hezbollah “continues to shrink and shrink” after the Lebanese paramilitary group said the war with Israel was entering a new phase.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi says Israeli forces have killed around 1,500 Hezbollah operatives since conflict with the Lebanese forces escalated.

“We are very determined to hit Hezbollah as hard as possible,” The Times of Israel reports.

“We have taken out their entire command layer,” he says, referring to airstrikes that killed former Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and other top leaders. “And you are taking out the local command structure.”

“Hezbollah is hiding casualties, hiding dead commanders. We estimate that we have killed some 1,500 Hezbollah operatives and our estimates are conservative, I imagine there are more that we don’t know about from dozens of strikes.”

Halevi adds that Hezbollah continue to surrender. “It says a lot about their morale and the level of fighting.”

Halevi claims that Hezbollah’s Iranian backers “also don’t understand what is happening here to Hezbollah. And they are their main arm that they have been counting on, and that is very important.”

Updated

Iranian officials comment on Sinwar’s killing after Hamas confirm his death.

President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran says that Sinwar had fought and died “like a hero” but that “the martyrdom of commanders, leaders and heroes will not make a dent in the Islamic people’s fight against oppression and occupation.”

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said: “Martyrs live forever, and the cause for the liberation of Palestine from occupation is more alive than ever.”

Sinwar was killed by a gunshot to the head, said Chen Kugel, an Israeli chief forensic said.

Mostafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, says that the Israeli prime minister “wanted an image of victory” but Sinwar, at the end of his life, “gave the world an image of Netanyahu’s failure” instead.

“All the lies [Israel] told about Sinwar were exposed – that he was hiding behind civilians taking them as human shields proved to be a lie, the lie that he was hiding behind Israeli captives was also proven to be a lie, and the claim that he was running away and hiding in tunnels was exposed,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera.

“Sinwar revealed how wrong the Israeli propaganda was not only about him, but in general of the situation,” he said.

Updated

Sinwar's killing represents an 'inflection point' for possible Gaza ceasefire - White House

Yahya Sinwar was the main obstacle to securing a ceasefire Gaza and his killing by the Israeli military creates an “inflection point” that could accelerate talks, White House spokesperson John Kirby has said.

“We believe, continue to believe, that finding an end to the war is critical, and we also believe that Mr Sinwar’s death... can provide an inflection point to getting there,” Kirby was quoted by Reuters as having said.

Kirby said ceasefire talks, which have been largely mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt, are not underway and he had no timetable for them to begin again. “I wish I could tell you today that we’re getting the teams back together in Doha, and we’re starting afresh,” Kirby said, adding: “That’s not where we are right now.”

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of blocking a ceasefire deal over his insistence on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, which separates Gaza from Egypt, and central Gaza’s Netzarim corridor. Hamas has demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Here is a video the Guardian’s video team put together of world leaders, including Kamala Harris and Emmanuel Macron, reacting to news of the death of Yahya Sinwar:

Julian Borger is the Guardian’s world affairs editor

Throughout his year in hiding, Yahya Sinwar continued to communicate with the outside world, albeit with apparent difficulty. The long, fruitless negotiations over a ceasefire in Cairo and Doha were frequently paused while messages were sent to and from the subterranean commander.

The dominant theory was that Sinwar uses couriers to remain in command, drawn from a small and shrinking coterie of aides he trusts, starting with his brother Mohammed, a senior military commander in Gaza.

The team hunting Sinwar hoped that his need for contact with couriers, to issue orders and control the hostage negotiations, would ultimately prove his undoing, just as a courier led American trackers over several years to Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

You can read more on Sinwar’s time in hiding, his role in Hamas and the IDF’s year-long hunt for him here:

Biden: Hamas leader's death represents a 'moment of justice'

The US president, Joe Biden, said the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar raises “the prospect of a ceasefire” and “represents a moment of justice”.

He said that Sinwar “had the blood of Americans and Israelis, Palestinians and Germans and so many others on his hands”. Biden made the comments as he met Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin on Friday.

Biden said: “I told the prime minister of Israel yesterday, let’s also make this moment an opportunity to seek a path to peace, a better future in Gaza without Hamas.”

Scholz said Sinwar’s death hopefully opens “the concrete prospect of a ceasefire in Gaza, of an agreement to release the hostages held by Hamas”. (see post at 12.13 for more details).

Qatar’s prime minister said on Wednesday that there had been no conversations or engagement with any parties for the last three to four weeks to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

Biden will also meet the UK’s prime minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron during his stay in Berlin, which is also focusing on responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Updated

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death that “martyrs live forever, and the cause for liberation of Palestine from occupation is more alive than ever”.

Updated

Iran’s mission to the UN has issued a statement honouring Yahya Sinwar by saying he died on the battlefield, unlike former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein, who went into hiding and was captured and executed.

“When US forces dragged a disheveled Saddam Hussein out of an underground hole, he begged them not to kill him despite being armed. Those who regarded Saddam as their model of resistance eventually collapsed,” the statement says.

“However, when Muslims look up to martyr Sinwar standing on the battlefield — in combat attire and out in the open, not in a hideout, facing the enemy — the spirit of resistance will be strengthened.”

Updated

Hostages will not be released until 'aggression' ends, says Hamas

Hamas has confirmed the death of Yahya Sinwar, saying the former leader died in combat.

Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya says Sinwar’s death will only strengthen the group.

Al-Hayya said: “Those prisoners will not return to you before the end of the aggression on Gaza and the withdrawal from Gaza.”

He added that Hamas will continue on its path to achieving the Palestinian people’s ambitions, according to BBC News.

Updated

Hamas’s armed wing vowed on Friday to keep fighting Israel until the “liberation of Palestine” as it mourned the death of the group’s chief, Yahya Sinwar, in Gaza.

“Our fight will not stop until Palestine is liberated, the last Zionist is expelled, and all our legitimate rights are regained,” the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement.

Updated

Israeli military says it is calling up additional reserve brigade in northern Israel

The Israeli military says it is calling up an additional reserve brigade for operational missions in northern Israel.

The IDF said in a post on X:

In accordance with the assessment of the situation, it was decided to recruit an additional reserve brigade for the operational tasks in the northern sector.

Its mobilization will allow the continuation of the fighting effort against the terrorist organization Hezbollah and the achievement of the goals of the war, including the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.

The entirety of northern Gaza is under Israeli evacuation orders. The Israeli military says it is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure but there have been many reports of civilians being killed in Israeli attacks.

Updated

Here are some of the latest images that have been sent to us over the newswires from Gaza:

Summary of the day so far...

  • In southern Lebanon, residents of more than 20 villages in the south have been ordered to evacuate immediately by Israeli forces.

  • Health officials appealed for fuel, medical supplies and food to be sent immediately to three northern Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by the number of patients injured in Israeli attacks.

  • Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the Palestinian militant group “cannot be eliminated” with the killing of its leaders. Yesterday, Israel said its forces had killed the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, architect of the 7 October attacks. Hamas is yet to confirm his death.

  • Joe Biden, the US president, has urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to now “move on” and make progress towards a ceasefire in Gaza.

  • Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, made a rare rebuke to Iran over reported comments by a senior Iranian official that it would be ready to help “negotiate” to implement a UN resolution on Lebanon.

Updated

Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he hopes the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar would open the door to a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages.

He was speaking in Berlin alongside his US counterpart, Joe Biden, whose visit Scholz described as a strong signal of transatlantic unity.

Biden has joined figures including his vice-president, Kamala Harris, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and Scholz in urging progress towards a ceasefire.

Biden, in the last months of his presidency, has failed to exercise US leverage – as Israel’s biggest arms supplier and diplomatic shield at the UN – over Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

US officials had described Sinwar as the main stumbling block to ceasefire talks.

However, Netanyahu has been accused of blocking a ceasefire deal over his insistence on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, which separates Gaza from Egypt, and central Gaza’s Netzarim corridor, a strategic route bisecting Gaza.

Hamas has demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Egypt has said that a heavy Israeli military presence on its border threatens the peace treaty between the countries.

Updated

Belgian authorities have launched an investigation into possible war crimes committed by a Belgian-Israeli soldier fighting for Israel in Gaza.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) has this report:

The federal prosecutor’s office said the probe focuses on a Belgian member of an elite unit of the Israeli military comprising several other dual passport holders.

“We have opened a file on possible war crimes,” a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office told AFP.

The suspect, who has not been named, is said to be a man in his 20s from Brussels’ upmarket suburb of Uccle.

The investigation, officially opened Wednesday, stems from the work of Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi.

Posting on X this month, Tirawi accused an Israeli sniper unit called “Refaim”, or “Ghosts” in Hebrew, of “brutal executions of unarmed civilians”.

Belgium’s Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt said on Thursday the Belgian probe sought to “verify the information published in the press”.

“Israel has the right to self-defence, but that does not exempt it from its obligation to respect international humanitarian law,” Van Tigchelt told parliament.

The Israeli military has denied targeting civilians in its war on Gaza.

Urgent appeal for medical supplies for hospitals in northern Gaza at risk of being overwhelmed

Health officials have appealed for fuel, medical supplies and food to be sent immediately to three northern Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by the number of patients injured in Israeli attacks.

At the Kamal Adwan hospital, medics had to replace children in intensive care with more critical cases of adults badly injured by Israeli air strikes on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia on Thursday, which killed at least 28 people (see post at 03.54).

The children were moved to another division inside the facility, where they were being well taken care of, he said.

“All those cases are critical and they need medical intervention,” Hussam Abu Safiya, Kamal Adwan’s director, was quoted by Reuters as having said.

Doctors at the Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals have refused to leave their patients despite evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military at the start of its assault on Jabalia.

Jabalia has been the focus of a devastating Israeli offensive for the last two weeks, with troops returning to areas of the north that came under heavy bombardment in the early months of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The entirety of northern Gaza is under Israeli evacuation orders. Among those who have remained in the north are disabled or elderly people and their families, who say it is too dangerous and difficult to move, my colleague Bethan McKernan writes in this story.

The Israeli army has ordered residents to flee towards the so-called “humanitarian zone” of al-Mawasi, even though it has been targeted in deadly Israeli airstrikes and is severely overcrowded.

Updated

Hamas official says militant group 'cannot be eliminated'

A senior Hamas official has told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that the group cannot be defeated with the killing of its leaders, after the Israeli military said Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in Gaza earlier this week.

“Hamas is a liberation movement led by people looking for freedom and dignity, and this cannot be eliminated,” Basem Naim, senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, said.

He continued:

It seems that Israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people.

Hamas each time became stronger and more popular, and these leaders became an icon for future generations to continue the journey towards a free Palestine.

“Yes it’s very painful and distressing to lose beloved people, especially extraordinary leaders like ours,” Nim said, adding: “but what we are sure of is that we are eventually victorious; this is the outcome for all people who fought for their liberty”.

Naim did not confirm Sinwar’s death. Sinwar’s killing comes after Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Tehran in July. Sinwar was subsequently named as Hamas’s overall leader, assuming Haniyeh’s role as well.

Updated

Israeli military orders 23 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately

The Israeli army has urged residents of 23 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate northward, past the Awali river, which flows from the western Bekaa valley into the Mediterranean, as it intensifies its attacks in the region.

The affected villages are: Qozah, Beit Lif, Yater, Jabal al-Batm, Zebqin, Marouhin, Sheheen, Umm Tuta, Bustan, al-Zalutiya, Yarin, al-Dhahiriya, Matmoura, Majdal Zun, Shamaa, Tayr Harfa, Abu Shash, al-Jabbin, Biyadh, al-Mansouri, Kafr, Alma al-Shaab and al-Naqoura.

In a post on X, the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that residents are “prohibited from going south” and that doing so “could be dangerous to your life”.

“Anyone who is near Hezbollah elements, facilities or weapons is putting his life in danger,” the post read.

The UN refugee agency’s Middle East director, Rema Jamous Imseis, has said Israeli repeated evacuation orders to scores of villages in southern Lebanon meant over a quarter of the country was now affected. About a million people lived in southern Lebanon before the conflict escalated almost a year ago.

Tens of thousands of people have fled north since Israeli airstrikes in the region intensified late last month. Lebanon’s health ministry said 45 people were killed and 179 injured in Israeli attacks across the country on Thursday alone.

Updated

The Israeli military said it killed two attackers who had crossed the border into Israel from Jordan on Friday, while a third fled the scene.

“Two terrorists who crossed from Jordan into Israeli territory, south of the Dead Sea, were eliminated by IDF (Israeli army) soldiers,” the military said in a statement.

In an update, the IDF said more fighters have been dispatched to “reinforce the area”, adding that the military are searching on the ground and in the air for the third fighter “who likely fled the scene”.

Israeli airstrikes killed several Lebanese citizens and injured others across Lebanon this morning, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported, without specifying the number of casualties.

A number of civilians were reportedly killed in the town of Ansar, a village in southern Lebanon, as a result of the Israeli attacks. Wafa reported the strikes also targeted various towns including al-Duwayr, Baraachit, Dabbal, Haneen, Khiam and Ramiyah.

Updated

Israel’s foreign minister condemns UN chief for not 'welcoming' Hamas leader's killing

Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, accused the UN secretary general, António Guterres, of “leading an extreme anti-Israel and anti-Jewish agenda”.

“Guterres did not welcome the elimination of arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar, just as he refused to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation after the October 7th massacre,” he said in a post on X. “We will continue to designate him as persona non grata and bar his entry to Israel.”

On 2 October, Katz said he was barring Guterres from entering the country because he had not “unequivocally” condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel the night before (the strikes, which Iran said were aimed at military bases, were largely thwarted by Israel’s aerial defences).

Guterres had issued a brief statement after the missile attack condemning “the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation”, but Katz said this did not go far enough.

Updated

The UN security council has called for the full implementation of its resolution 1701, which was adopted in 2006 after helping to bring an end to the month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Iran’s parliament speaker recently said his country was ready to negotiate with France on the resolution, which calls for the border area of southern Lebanon to be free of weapons or troops other than those of the Lebanese state.

The US and France have said that strengthening Lebanon’s army would be crucial to fully implementing resolution 1701.

In reference to the comments made by Iran’s parliament speaker, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said earlier today that he rejected Iranian interference in a Lebanese matter, according to Reuters.

Updated

Benjamin Netanyahu to convene security meeting

The Israel Daily Haaretz is reporting that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will meet with ministers and heads of security agencies at around midday local time (10:00 BST) at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv. Other Israeli media say the security meeting will take place around 1pm local time (11:00 BST).

Among the topics of discussion will be how the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar will affect negotiations on releasing hostages held captive in Gaza.

Sinwar was the main architect of the 7 October 2023 attack, led by Hamas, on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage. 97 hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 who Israeli officials say are dead.

Israeli officials said Sinwar was found by infantry soldiers searching an area in the Tal El Sultan area of southern Gaza on Wednesday, where they believed senior members of Hamas were located.

You can watch a video released by the Israeli army which shows Sinwar’s last moments here:

Updated

In a post on Telegram, Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, says it shelled the coastal Zvulun area, north of the Israeli city of Haifa, with a “large rocket salvo” this morning (at about 7am local time).

Health officials said yesterday that Israeli airstrikes on the Abu Hussein school in Jabalia on Thursday killed 28 people, including doctors and several children, and injured dozens more.

Sam Rose, deputy director of Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was asked about the attack this morning by the BBC. Rose said Israel must do more to protect civilians as there is “nowhere for them to go”. He called for an independent investigation into the attack, which he said was among a series targeting Unwra schools.

Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, is reporting that children are among civilians who were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza overnight and into this morning.

It said the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported recovering the bodies of children after a house was targeted by a missile strike on al-Nasr street, northwest of Gaza City.

Two people were reportedly killed after being shot by Israeli soldiers in the Wadi al-Aryes area, southeast of Gaza City. These reports have not been independently verified by the Guardian.

The Wafa report continues:

Earlier in the night, further casualties were reported after Israeli airstrikes targeted a home in the al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City.

Medical sources confirmed the arrival of several bodies, including those of children, as a result of the bombing on the al-Qudairi family home.

In a related incident, Israeli naval forces opened fire on western areas of the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli air force says it has “attacked” Muhammad Hossein Ramal, a Hezbollah commander, in Taybeh, southern Lebanon, in an airstrike. Numerous outlets have reported Ramal as being killed in the attack.

“In the territory of Lebanon, an air force aircraft directed by the 98th division attacked the terrorist Muhammad Hossein Ramal, the commander of the A-Taiba compound in the terrorist organization Hezbollah.”

Updated

As the US pushes for a fresh round of diplomacy aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza, secretary of state Antony Blinken has been speaking to Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who has played a key role in negotiations.

In a statement after the phone call, the US state department said the pair had discussed “the death of Yahya Sinwar and the need to redouble efforts to end the conflict and secure the release of hostages”.

Blinken also reaffirmed US commitment to a diplomatic resolution to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

In September, the US had backed calls for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon, but in the wake of the killing of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, appeared to greenlight Israel’s air and ground offensive.

Biden urges Netanyahu to 'move on' towards ceasefire

Joe Biden has urged Israel’s prime minister to “move on” and make progress towards a ceasefire in Gaza after the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader and mastermind of the 7 October attack, as world leaders renewed a push for an end to the conflict.

Hours after the killing on Thursday in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town, the US president congratulated Benjamin Netanyahu, saying Sinwar “has a lot of blood on his hands – American blood, Israeli blood, and others”.

Speaking as he arrived in Germany to meet European leaders, Biden said he felt “more hopeful” about the prospects of a ceasefire and would send the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to Israel in the next four or five days.

Biden joined figures including his vice-president, Kamala Harris, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in urging progress towards a ceasefire.

Blinken held separate phone calls on Thursday with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, and the Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, on ending the conflict in the Middle East, the US state department said.

The push came as Iran’s mission to the UN said the killing would strengthen the “spirit of resistance” and inspire future generations, while Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group in Lebanon, announced “the transition to a new and escalating phase in the confrontation with Israel”.

At time of writing, Hamas was yet to comment on the death of its leader.

Read our full report on the killing of Yahya Sinwar:

France’s president late on Thursday accused some of his ministers of lacking in professionalism and spreading false information, while taking a swipe at the media over how they reported comments he allegedly made on Israel during a cabinet meeting. AFP reports:

A visibly angry Emmanuel Macron berated journalists over comments they had reported that suggested he had brought into question the creation of Israel at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, and denied he had made the remarks.

“I must tell you how astonished I was to read so many comments, reactions, including from foreign or French political leaders, to remarks that I allegedly made without asking the question of what they were saying and what exactly I said,” he said at a press conference after a European Council meeting in Brussels.

“There is therefore no ambiguity. All those who would like to make it exist through this type of manipulation are not only mistaken, but are hurting some people and weakening France,” he said. “France has always stood by Israel. The existence and security of Israel are intangible for France and the French.”

The reported comments earlier this week led to a vitriolic response from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who linked them to the Vichy government that had collaborated with Nazi Germany, the latest round in diplomatic sparring between the two men over Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.

“All this is proof, in essence, of a breakdown in public debate and a lack of professionalism on the part of ministers who repeated distorted statements, of journalists who took them up, of commentators who did not dwell on the reality and veracity of such statements,” Macron said.

“If words that are reported, truncated and distorted are put in quotation marks, there is no point in holding press conferences or answering your questions.”

The assassination of Yahya Sinwar was just the latest in a series of killings of senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and other militants by Israel since the war on Gaza began last year.

My colleague Jason Burke has pulled together this list, which includes Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah:

And although Sinwar’s killing was not a targeted assassination as such, if you’re interested in Israel’s decades long history of killing its enemies, check out Jason’s piece from last month on the Israeli Mossad:

The Israeli military said it had expanded its military assault on the Jabalia area in northern Gaza overnight, claiming to have “dozens of terrorists in incidents and airstrikes” without providing any evidence.

Israel has been sealed off the area for almost two weeks now, attacking schools and hospitals and killing dozens of civilians including women and children while refusing to allow aid in.

As we reported earlier, at least 28 people including children and doctors were killed on Thursday when Israel attack a school housing displaced people, with the death toll expected to rise.

Al Jazeera reported, citing the Palestinian Wafa news agency, that Israeli fighter jets bombed a home in the Shati refugee camp in the west of Gaza City overnight, killing a “number of citizens” and injuring others. It was not immediately possible to verify the details of the attack.

A bit more from that ABC interview with Daniel Levy, the former Israeli peace negotiator. When asked whether Yahya Sinwar’s death would break the morale of Hamas, or the broader Palestinian resistance movement, he replied:

I find that very hard to imagine …. Hamas did not have popular support because Yahya Sinwar had a mesmerising, charismatic personality: resistance movements have that base of support because they are speaking to the very real suffering of a people. That’s not talking to the legitimacy or the illegitimacy of actions that are carried out …

When you live under an occupation in history, anywhere, as a people denied rights for decades and generations, living as refuges because you were expelled from your homes 76 years earlier, resistance does not end when one leader ends.

If anything this is going to guarantee … generations more of people who will be willing – if those conditions don’t change – … who will be willing to sign up for the resistance.

Levy added that “this is the exactly the ending [Sinwar] would have expected.” He said:

In the job description of leader of an armed resistance movemtent like Hamsa, in these conditions, you’re pretty much volunteering for martyrdom.

It’s not like Sinwar’s pension plan and retirement home where he was going to live out his dotage with his grandchildren have suddenly been upended.

Key event

Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, who is now the president of the US/Middle East Project, has said the killing of Yahya Sinwar will not make an end to the war in Gaza more likely, as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “slammed shut” any opportunity for a ceasefire. In an interview with Australia’s ABC broadcaster Levy said:

“He made it quite clear that the war on Gaza, on the Palestinians there, would continue and he set down a condition which everyone who hears this will immediately understand is not a negotiating, achievable thing, by saying that ‘if Hamas fighters want to come up with their hands up wave a white flag and give back the hostages then we can move forward’.

He said to the people of Gaza ‘we are freeing you’ – those are the same people all of whom essentially have been displaced, many living under conditions of starvation, 40,000 killed, everything destroyed.

What he is setting down there is a position that, if anyone thought a crack had appeared, an opening to maybe say ‘mission accomplished, let’s do the deal, let’s also bring the Israelis home’ – that was slammed shut straightaway despite American attempts to say ‘hey there’s an opportunity here’.

Unfortunately it’s been slammed shut in everyone’s face by the Israeli prime minister.

Charles Lister, an academic at the US-based Middle East Institute, suggests that Yahya Sinwar’s killing could make the situation of the remaining hostages “extremely fragile”.

In a post on X he wrote:

There will be a Hamas desire for revenge.

Hostage families are rightfully putting pressure for a ceasefire already -- but will Netanyahu listen? Unlikely.

Unrwa chief Philippe Lazzarini has refuted reports that one of the UN body’s workers was killed alongside Yahya Sinwar. In a post on X he wrote:

Earlier today, reports circulated on social & Israeli media that an UNRWA staff member was killed together with the Hamas head in Gaza. I confirm that the staff member in question is alive.

He currently lives in Egypt where he traveled with his family in April through the Rafah border. Time to put an end to disinformation campaigns.

Israel has been at odds with the UN agency for decades, and Lazzarini has accused the Israeli government of trying to drive it out of existence.

Al Jazeera journalist shot by Israeli forces falls into coma

Al Jazeera journalist Fadi Al-Wahidi has fallen into a coma more than a week after being shot in the neck by an Israeli sniper in northern Gaza, the broadcaster has reported, adding that Israel has not responded to requests to allow his evacuation for medical treatment.

Al-Wadidi was wearing a vest that clearly marked him as a member of the press when he was shot last week while covering the Israeli siege of Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Doctors at the Public Aid Hospital in Gaza City said they were unable to treat him and prevent complete paralysis, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday. The broadcaster wrote that he had suffered damage to his arteries, veins and shattered bones.

The attack on al-Wahidi came days after his Al Jazeera colleague, cameraman Ali al-Attar, was shot and severely wounded while covering the conditions of displaced Palestinians in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

Earlier this week three press freedom organisations – the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Free Press Unlimited (FPU), and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) – issued a rare joint appeal to Israel to allow the two journalists to be evacuated.

Palestinian scholar Jehad Abusalim condemned mainstream media for failing to offer solidarity to Al-Wahidi. In a post on X, he wrote:

It is a deep shame that a journalist who heroically documented one of this century’s most tragic episodes of ethnic cleansing and extermination receives no solidarity, no support, and no calls to save his life from major mainstream media outlets and institutions.

The world owes a debt to these journalists, who have risked their lives for over a year to cover one of the first wars in history where media coverage is tightly and severely restricted, with no international journalists allowed to enter or report from the Gaza Strip.

Who was Yahya Sinwar?

Within days of the 7 October attacks last year, Israeli investigators had identified Yahya Sinwar, then the military leader of Hamas in Gaza, as the mastermind. To their increasing astonishment, they learned that not only had Sinwar conceived of what he called Operation al-Aqsa Flood but he had planned and organised the assault almost alone.

Only a handful of close aides had been let in on the plans, some with only days to go before the attack, in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 abducted, and which triggered an Israeli offensive that has so far killed 42,500 people, also mostly civilians, and left swaths of Gaza in ruins.

Born in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza, to parents who had been forced to flee their homes in what became Israel in 1948, Sinwar was drawn into Islamist activism as a teenager. Across the Middle East, a religious resurgence was gathering momentum. As a science student at the Islamic University of Gaza in the early 1980s, Sinwar was drawn to Ahmed Yassin, a charismatic cleric who set up a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1987, Yassin drafted Sinwar into the newly created group Hamas and made him head of its nascent intelligence service. Duties included uncovering and punishing spies or other “collaborators” with Israel, as well as people in Gaza who infringed Hamas’s strict “morality” codes. This Sinwar accomplished with implacable determination, confessing later to multiple murders of Palestinians.

Arrested in 1988 and given four life sentences for attempted murder and sabotage, he spent 22 years in Israeli jails. In prison, Sinwar refused to talk to any guards and personally punished inmates who did, pressing the face of one into a makeshift stove, according to one Israeli former interrogator who worked at the institution where Sinwar was held. “He’s 1,000% committed and 1,000% violent, a very, very hard man,” the former interrogator said.

Read on below:

Many Palestinians reacting to the death of Yahya Sinwar have taken note of the fact that he died fighting. They have also noted that Israel has assassinated many generations of Palestinian leaders – but they have not managed to quash resistance, and new leaders have replaced the dead.

The prominent author Susan Abulhawa wrote in a post on X,

He died fighting on the front lines with his soldiers against zionist tyranny and barbarity. he was not hiding in a tunnel as they said. he certainly was not hiding in fortified buildings, comfortable in a suit and wealth. he died a martyr and hero in pursuit of freedom.

In a further post, she added:

They think the resistance dies with the martyrdom of leaders, as if the burning yearn for liberty, home and heritage in our chests can be extinguished when they break our hearts. farewell noble son.

Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American journalist and founder of the Electronic Intifada website, wrote that “history shows that martyrdom of leaders only ever strengthens the people’s determination to be free.”

In a separate post, he added:

If reports are correct, Yahya Sinwar died as he would wish, fighting honorably with and for his people, against the evils of Zionism, colonialism and genocide.

Updated

Israelis have been celebrating after news of Yahya Sinwar’s killing in Gaza:

• This post was amended on 18 October 2024. A previous version included an image of people celebrating what the photographer said was the death of Yahya Sinwar, but could also have been related to Sukkot. As such, we have removed the image.

Updated

At least 28 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school

At least 28 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school turned shelter in the Jabaliya neighbourhood of Gaza City, amid accusations Israel intends to forcibly expel the remaining population in a renewed ground campaign.

The bombing of Abu Hussein school in Jabaliya on Thursday killed 28, including doctors and several children, and injured dozens more, according to health officials, who warned the final toll was likely to be higher. Another 11 people were killed in two separate airstrikes in Gaza City, and it was unclear how many were killed in other strikes in central and southern Gaza.

The attack on the Jabaliya school also caused a fire. “There is no water to extinguish the fire. There is nothing. This is a massacre,” said medic Medhat Abbas.

“Civilians and children are being killed, burned under fire.”

The Israeli military said the strike targeted militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operating from within the school, claiming dozens of fighters were present when the strike took place. In a statement, Hamas denied any militants were using the school as a base.

Thursday’s attacks came as Israel’s latest campaign in Jabaliya, a district of Gaza City, reaches its second week. An estimated 400,000 people are trapped by the fighting, with dwindling humanitarian supplies. Israel has nominally controlled Gaza City since the beginning of the year, but has repeatedly been forced to re-engage in areas under its control as Hamas has regrouped.

Hezbollah launching 'new and escalatory phase' in war against Israel

Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah has said it is launching a new phase in its war against Israel, saying it has used precision-guided missiles against troops for the first time. AFP reports:

Hezbollah “announces a transition to a new and escalatory phase in the confrontation with the Israeli enemy, which will be reflected in the developments and events of the coming days,” the group said in a statement.

The announcement came after the Israeli military on Thursday said its forces killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, which is a Hezbollah ally.

The statement, however, made no mention of the Hamas chief.

It said “hundreds of fighters...are fully prepared to counter any Israeli ground incursion into southern Lebanese villages,” noting that attacks against Israel have increased in recent days.

It said its rocket strikes continue “to escalate day by day,” with “precision-guided ones...being deployed for the first time”.

Israel killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in a Beirut air strike on 27 September. It has has repeatedly called for Hezbollah to be pushed away from the border to ensure its citizens could return to their homes in northern Israel.

Earlier on Thursday, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said that the Israeli army was not fully in control of any village in south Lebanon.

The mother of one of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza has reacted to the news of Yahya Sinwar’s death by calling on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a deal for their release.

Einav Zangauker, mother of Matan Zangauker, was quoted in the Haaretz newspaper as saying, “You got your image of victory. Now reach a deal.” She added:

A year after the failure [on 7 October], this is the time to leverage the accomplishments and use [Sinwar’s] elimination to take a diplomatic step that will bring our loved ones back home ...

If Netanyahu does not take advantage of the momentum and does not stand up now and take a new Israeli initiative, even at the cost of ending the war, it means that he has decided to abandon my Matan and the other hostages, with the aim of prolonging the war and entrenching his rule.

Updated

Drone footage shows apparent last moments of Yahya Sinwar

The Israeli military has released drone footage it says shows Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s final moments: alone in a ruined Gaza apartment with the walls blown out from shelling, sat hunched in a chair covered by dust, with his head and face obscured by a scarf.

With his right arm appearing severely wounded, the video shows Sinwar flinging a stick over his head in the direction of the approaching drone. The Guardian has not independently verified the footage.

When the footage was taken, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Sinwar was only identified as a fighter. The military then fired an additional shell at the building, causing it to collapse and kill him, Hagari said. He said Sinwar was found with a bulletproof vest, grenades, and 40,000 shekels ($10,707).

According to the Jerusalem Post, Hagari told reporters: “Sinwar fled alone into one of the buildings. Our forces used a drone to scan the area, which you can see here in the footage I’m presenting.”

“Sinwar, who was injured in his hand by gunfire, can be seen here with his face covered, in his final moments, throwing a wooden plank at the drone,” he said.

“He tried to escape and our forces eliminated him.”.

Hamas has not commented on the killing of Sinwar.

Photos circulating online showed the body of a man resembling Sinwar with a gaping head wound, dressed in a military-style vest, half buried in the rubble of a destroyed building.

Israeli officials said Sinwar was found by infantry soldiers searching an area in the Tal El Sultan area of southern Gaza on Wednesday, where they believed senior members of Hamas were located.

The troops saw three suspected militants moving between buildings and opened fire, leading to a gunfight during which Sinwar escaped into a ruined building.

Earlier on Wednesday, a Palestinian woman was reportedly shot dead by the Israeli military while she was picking olives with her family on their land near the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

The 60-year-old woman was shot in the chest with live ammunition, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, citing the director of the Red Crescent Society in Jenin, Mahmoud al-Saadi.

A Palestinian health ministry statement said Hanan Abdel Rahman Abu Salama “was killed by (Israeli) occupation bullets” in Faqoua village.

“An Israeli in military clothing arrived at the place in a white car and fired about 10 bullets at the Abu Salama family, who were picking olives on their land,” Faqoua village councillor Munir Barakat told AFP.

“A few days ago, the council published an invitation to the village residents to go to their agricultural lands to pick olives,” said Barakat.

He added that the shooting occurred near a wall erected by Israeli authorities in the area.

The Israeli military told AFP it was “checking” the report.

Attacks by settlers and the Israeli military on Palestinians trying to harvest their olives have been particularly intense this year. UN experts this week warned that Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank were “facing the most dangerous olive season ever”. In a report, it added:

Last year, Israel also seized more Palestinian land than in any year in the past 30 years.

Wafe reported that earlier on Wednesday settlers had also “opened fire on participants in an event organized by the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission to help farmers from the village of Kafr al-Labad, east of Tulkarm, pick olives from their lands”.

In other incidents this harvest season, settlers and the military had burnt and cut down olive trees, stolen the crop and prevented farmers from reaching their land, Wafa wrote.

Israeli violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’s attack on Israel in October last year. Since then, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 738 Palestinians in the West Bank including more than 100 children, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.

During the same period, 23 Israelis, including 16 members of the Israeli military, have been killed in the West Bank.

Updated

Analysis: Sinwar killing seems down to chance, not planning

In the end, after a year-long, multi-agency manhunt involving the latest technology, Israel’s best special forces and American assistance, Yahya Sinwar appears to have been killed by regular soldiers who had stumbled into him and had no idea whom they had killed.

According to the initial reports, they were not there on an assassination operation and had no prior intelligence that they could be in the vicinity of the elusive Hamas leader, architect of the 7 October attacks, the man Israel most wanted to kill. It was only after they took a closer look at his face and found identity documents on him that the troops realised they had got Sinwar.

Along the way, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have smashed much of Gaza and are estimated to have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, driving two million from their homes, a humanitarian disaster Sinwar set in motion with the sheer brutality of the initial surprise assault a year ago, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 hostage.

Sinwar’s last reported sighting had been just a few days after the 7 October attack, when he appeared out of the subterranean gloom in a Gaza tunnel when a group of hostages were been held.

In fluent Hebrew, perfected over more than 22 years in an Israeli prison, Sinwar reassured them that they were safe and would soon be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners. One of the hostages, Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old veteran peace campaigner from the Nir Oz kibbutz, had no time for his show of concern for their welfare and challenged the Hamas leader to his face.

“I asked him how he wasn’t ashamed to do something like this to people who had supported peace all these years?” Lifshitz told the Davar newspaper after her release following 16 days in captivity. “He didn’t answer. He was quiet.”

A video recorded on Hamas security cameras at about the same time, on 10 October, and found by the Israeli military some months later, shows Sinwar following his wife and three children through a narrow tunnel and disappearing into the murk.

Read more analysis here:

Netanyahu says Sinwar's death does not mean the end of the war in Gaza

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after news of Yahya Sinwar’s death that “we will not stop the war” in Gaza. He said it would continue until the remaining hostages were brought home.

Sinwar, who was named as Hamas’ overall leader following the assassination of political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, was killed during a gun battle in southern Gaza on Wednesday by Israeli troops who were initially unaware of his identity, Israeli officials said.

Updated

Harris says Sinwar death 'an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza'

Kamala Harris has hailed the death of Yahya Sinwar as an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza and prepare for “the day after” when Hamas no longer dominates the territory.

The US vice-president and Democratic nominee said “justice has been served” with the death of the Hamas leader, adding that the US, Israel and the wider world were “better off as a result”.

Harris also pressed for an end to the year-long hostilities that have killed more than 42,000 people in Gaza and left a trail of destruction in the territory.

“Hamas is decimated and its leadership is eliminated,” she said. “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza.” The end of the conflict had to be accompanied by security for Israel, the release of the remaining hostages and an end to suffering in Gaza, she said.

She also hinted at her support for Palestinian statehood by saying it should herald Palestinians’ rights to “dignity, security, freedom and self-determination”.

Her comments chimed with those of Joe Biden, who has been criticised by progressives for unstinting support for Israel even while Benjamin Netanyahu had ignored his entreaties to avoid civilian casualties and ease humanitarian suffering in the tiny coastal territory.

“Israel has had every right to eliminate the leadership and military structure of Hamas,” Biden said in comments that appeared designed to answer criticisms of his support.

He said Sinwar had represented an “insurmountable obstacle” to a better future for Israelis and Palestinians. “That obstacle no longer exists. But much work remains before us,” he said.

Biden said he would talk to Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders about “ending this war once and for all”.

Read the full story here:

Iran says manner of Sinwar's death will strengthen 'spirit of resistance'

Iran’s mission to the UN has said the circumstances of Yahya Sinwar’s death will strengthen the “spirit of resistance”.

Sinwar was apparently killed while fighting Israeli forces in Rafah, rather than hiding in a bunker as Israel had consistently portrayed him.

The Israeli military posted drone footage of the Hamas leader, apparently having lost part of his arm, sitting in an armchair wearing battle fatigues and a keffiyeh in a ruined apartment in Rafah. As he watches the drone, he throws an object at it.

It said in a statement posted on X, the Iranian UN mission said:

When US forces dragged a disheveled Saddam Hussein out of an underground hole, he begged them not to kill him despite being armed. Those who regarded Saddam as their model of resistance eventually collapsed.

When Muslims look up to Martyr Sinwar standing on the battlefield – in combat attire and out in the open, not in a hideout, facing the enemy – the spirit of resistance will be strengthened.

He will become a model for the youth and children who will carry forward his path toward the liberation of Palestine. As long as occupation and aggression exist, resistance will endure, for the martyr remains alive and a source of inspiration.

Opening summary

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

Iran has said that the circumstances of Yahya Sinwar’s death will strengthen the “spirit of resistance”, after the Israeli military (IDF) confirmed it had killed the Hamas leader in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

A drone video released by the IDF appeared to show Sinwar, apparently severely injured, sitting in an armchair in a ruined apartment, wearing a keffiyeh and battle fatigues. He throws an object at the drone.

It said in a statement posted on X, Iran’s UN missions said:

When Muslims look up to Martyr Sinwar standing on the battlefield – in combat attire and out in the open, not in a hideout, facing the enemy – the spirit of resistance will be strengthened.

He will become a model for the youth and children who will carry forward his path toward the liberation of Palestine. As long as occupation and aggression exist, resistance will endure, for the martyr remains alive and a source of inspiration.

Meanwhile, the US signalled it would begin a new push for a ceasefire, with US vice president Kamala Harris stating that Sinwar’s killing was “an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza” and that it was “time for the day after to begin”.

She echoed similar comments from President Joe Biden, who said it was “time for this war to end and bring these hostages home” as he arrived in Germany.

He added that he was “hopeful” about the prospects of a ceasefire and would be sending secretary of state Antony Blinken to Israel in the coming four to five days to discuss securing Gaza and what the “day after” the war will look like.

In Lebanon, the militant group Hezbollah said it was launching a new and escalating phase in its war against Israel, and that it had used precision-guided missiles against troops for the first time.

Hezbollah “announces a transition to a new and escalatory phase in the confrontation with the Israeli enemy, which will be reflected in the developments and events of the coming days,” the group said in a statement.

In other developments:

  • The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sinwar had been “eliminated” in Tel Sultan, a neighbourhood of Gaza’s southernmost town, Rafah, on Wednesday. The bodies of three militants were taken to Israel for DNA and dental record testing. Sinwar’s death brings to an end to a year-long hunt for the mastermind of the 7 October attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.

  • Israel’s Kan Radio reported that the Hamas leader had been killed “by chance”, and not as a result of intelligence gathering. Photos and video from the scene, broadcast on Israeli media, showed what appeared to be Sinwar’s body lying in a pile of rubble on the floor of a destroyed building.

  • Hundreds of people gathered in Tel Aviv to call for the release of hostages held in Gaza after the news of Sinwar’s assassination broke.

  • The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, said his country “will not mourn” Sinwar’s death, as he called for the release of hostages, an immediate ceasefire and an increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said his death “is certainly weakening Hamas”. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was thinking “with emotion of the victims” of the 7 October Hamas attacks for which Sinwar was the mastermind. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, called on Hamas to “immediately release all hostages and lay down its arms, the suffering of the people of Gaza must finally end”. Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, said he hoped that that Sinwar’s killing “will lead to a ceasefire in Gaza”.

  • At least 28 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school turned shelter in the Jabaliya neighbourhood of Gaza City on Thursday. Among those killed in the bombing of Abu Hussein school included doctors and several children, according to health officials, who warned the final toll was likely to be higher. The attack on the Jabaliya school also caused a fire.

  • Another 11 people were killed in two separate airstrikes in Gaza City on Thursday, as Israel’s latest campaign in Jabaliya, a district of Gaza City, reaches its second week. Jabaliya residents said on Thursday that several streets were blown up in bombings, by tank fire and controlled detonations, and that Jabaliya, together with the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, are now under a complete siege. An estimated 400,000 people are trapped by the fighting, with dwindling humanitarian supplies.

  • The entirety of northern Gaza is under Israeli evacuation orders. Among those who have remained in the north are disabled or elderly people and their families, who say it is too dangerous and difficult to move. The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, warned Israel that any “large-scale forcible transfer” of civilians out of conflict-wracked north Gaza could constitute a war crime if not done on “imperative military grounds”.

  • Israel allowed 50 lorries carrying food, water and medical equipment to enter northern Gaza on Wednesday, following a warning from the US that Israel must allow more aid to reach Gaza or face a cut off in military support. Israel had previously not allowed any aid to enter the north since the start of the month, leading the UN World Food Programme to once again raise the alarm of imminent famine.

  • It was unclear how many Palestinians were killed in other strikes in central and southern Gaza on Thursday. At least 42,438 Palestinians have been killed and 99,246 injured since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday. The toll includes 29 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 99,246 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began.

  • Lebanon’s crisis response unit said 45 people were killed and 179 were wounded in the past 24 hours on Thursday. The latest figures raise the total death toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 2,412 killed, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. In addition, 11,285 people have been injured.

  • Al Jazeera staff evacuated their offices in downtown Beirut on Thursday afternoon after receiving messages warning them to leave the building, similar to past evacuation warnings from Israel that preceded bombings, the network reported. Two embassies, one of which is the Norwegian embassy, is also housed in the same building were also evacuated.

  • The US carried out B-2 stealth bomber strikes on Houthi underground weapons facilities in Yemen for the first time. Local television in Houthi-run areas of the country reported 15 strikes hit five sites near the capital, Sana’a, and in the northern governorate Saada, the traditional Houthi homeland, on Thursday around dawn. The move appears in part to be a warning from Washington to Houthi’s backers in Tehran. The Houthi rebels vowed to retaliate.

  • The US announced a new “temporary protected status” allowing Lebanese nationals in the US to remain in the country and apply for work permits. The designation will last 18 months “due to ongoing armed conflict and extraordinary and temporary conditions in Lebanon that prevent nationals of Lebanon from returning in safety”, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.

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