OCHA say assessment by UN team in Khan Younis found 'widespread destruction' and 'unexploded 1,000 pound bombs'
An assessment conducted by a UN team in Khan Younis after the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the area, has reported “widespread destruction”.
In an update on its website, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) wrote:
Every building they visited – and most of those they observed – had been damaged, and paved roads had been reduced to dirt tracks. They inspected a UN warehouse, four medical centres, and eight schools, and all but one had significant damage.”
An unexploded missile is found after Israeli forces' withdrawal from parts of Khan Younis in Gaza. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
It said the assessment had been carried out on Wednesday. Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN’s secretary general António Guterres, said:
Street and public spaces in Khan Younis are littered with unexploded ordnance posing a severe risk to civilians, especially for children. Our team found unexploded 1,000 pound bombs lying on the main intersection and inside schools.
Residents who returned to the area, and some who remained during the fighting, told the team about the dire shortages of food and water and the loss of critical health services due to the destruction of the al-Nasser and al-Amal hospital.”
🔺 Homes, schools & hospitals severely damaged 🔺 Roads reduced to dirt tracks 🔺 Civilians at grave risk of unexploded ordnance 🔺 Collapsed services
Yesterday, we carried out an assessment in #Gaza's Khan Younis where, with @UN partners, we saw profound destruction.
China urged the US to play “a constructive role” in the Middle East on Friday after its top diplomat Wang Yi spoke with his US counterpart Antony Blinken over the phone, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
According to the report by AFP, Blinken used the call to ask Beijing to use its influence to dissuade Iran from striking Israel, the US Department of State said.
On Friday China confirmed the call had taken place, saying Wang “expressed China’s strong condemnation of the attack” while emphasising the “inviolable” right to security of diplomatic institutions and the need to respect the sovereignty of Iran and Syria.
“China will continue to play a constructive role in the resolution of the Middle East issue … and contribute to cooling down the situation,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning added. “The US side in particular should play a constructive role.”
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated on Wednesday a promise to retaliate against Israel over the killings of Iranian generals in Syria. Israel has not acknowledged its involvement.
Speaking at a prayer ceremony, Khamenei said the airstrike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Syria earlier this month was “wrongdoing” against a diplomatic post that is considered Iranian territory. “The evil regime must be punished, and it will be punished,” he said.
The US has repeatedly made public appeals for China to do more to address the crisis, including through pressure on Iran, which supports Hamas. Beijing in turn has criticised the US as biased toward Israel.
“This round of escalation is the latest manifestation of the spillover from the Gaza conflict, and it is imperative that the Gaza conflict be put to rest as soon as possible,” Mao said on Friday, adding Beijing was calling for an immediate ceasefire.
US president Joe Biden said on Wednesday that US support for Israel’s security was “ironclad,” despite his criticism of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
Aid ‘still not reaching Gaza’, as top US official warns famine has started
A promised surge in aid into Gaza that Benjamin Netanyahu promised Joe Biden a week ago has so far failed to materialise, aid workers say, as the US aid chief confirmed that famine is beginning to take hold in parts of the besieged coastal strip.
The increase in the number of truck crossing into Gaza claimed by Israel conflicts with UN records and already appears to be faltering.
Humanitarian aid packages are dropped from a plane as Israeli attacks continue on the second day of Eid al-Fitr in Gaza City. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
“There is a lot less than meets the eye so far,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior official in the Biden administration, who is now president of the Refugees International aid advocacy organisation. “Very little has actually changed.”
One of Netanyahu’s pledges to Biden, to open the Ashdod port north of Gaza as a portal to sea-borne humanitarian aid, has led to no apparent action, according to the Israel N12 channel. N12 reported that none of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat) nor the Ashdod Port authorities have so far received instructions about opening the facility to shipments bound for Gaza.
Israeli officials had been promising their US counterparts for weeks that a crossing point would be opened into northern Gaza where the starvation is the most severe. It would either be at Erez, which was the main border point before the current war, or at a new site, they informed Washington. No decision was made, however, until Wednesday, six days after the Biden-Netanyahu call, when the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said construction had begun on a new crossing. It is not clear how long that construction work will take.
You can read the report by Julian Borger in Washington here:
Two Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces in West Bank, says Palestinian news agency
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in an early morning raid on Friday near the occupied West Bank city of Tubas, reports Agence France-Presse citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
One man was killed when Israeli soldiers opened fire on his vehicle in Tubas, the report said.
Palestinians inspect a car where one of two people were killed during an Israeli raid, in the West Bank city of Tubas, on Friday. Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA
Another Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli gunfire when troops raided al-Fara refugee camp near Tubas, the agency reported.
The Israeli military did not have an immediate comment on the raid.
The area around Tubas in the northern West Bank is a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups and the frequent target of Israeli military incursions.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence since early last year, particularly since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza on 7 October.
At least 461 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers across the West Bank since 7 October, according to official Palestinian sources, say AFP.
Hamas says it does not have 40 hostages who fit criteria for deal with Israel
The Palestinian militant group Hamas has indicated it does not have 40 captives who are still alive who meet the “humanitarian” criteria for a proposed hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire agreement with Israel.
A senior Israeli official confirmed claims made at the weekend by Hamas during talks in Cairo that it does not have 40 hostages in Gaza who meet the exchange criteria.
Ceasefire talks have focused on a US-backed proposal of a phased exchange of hostages and prisoners. In the first instance women, children, and elderly or sick people – including five female Israeli soldiers – would be exchanged for an estimated 900 Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, alongside a six-week ceasefire in Gaza.
Hamas appears reluctant to make up the numbers for an exchange with surviving male hostages. Reliable information about how many hostages remain alive, who is holding them and where has been hard to come by.
The CIA director, William Burns, has presented a new proposal to try to bridge the gaps between the two sides.
The US is pressuring Israel to agree to release 900 Palestinian prisoners in the first phase of a three-stage deal as well as allowing the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza.
Hundreds of ultra-orthodox men and boys clash with Israeli police at Jerusalem demonstration
Emma Graham-Harrison
Hundreds of ultra-orthodox men and boys clashed with Israeli police on Thursday evening at a demonstration in Jerusalem against plans to end the community’s sweeping exemption from military service.
Thousands of men had arrived, many with young sons in tow, to say prayers and hear speeches under a banner reading “don’t touch the yeshivot (religious schools)”, down the street from a conscription office.
One rabbi involved in organising the event, Abraham Manks from the hard line Peleg Yerushalmi or Jerusalem faction, described it as “a gathering, not a protest”, a show of Haredi unity. It drew the biggest crowds seen at an ultra-orthodox rally since before the Covid pandemic, said analyst Israel Cohen.
Ultra orthodox Jews demonstrated against plans to end the community’s exemption from military service, outside an army recruitment office in Jerusalem on Thursday evening. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
But although the majority were peaceful, a few hundred metres from the main stage, outside the military building, rows of angry boys pushed against police lines, taunting officers, throwing drinks and sticks, and trying to attack them with protest placards.
Some of the youngest looked as if they were under ten, and treated clashes with the police almost like a game, laughing as they tried to race past officers.
They carried signs and stickers reading “Either Haredi, or in the army”. The community says young men who go to serve, alongside secular men and women, will lose the religious outlook that is the heart of life at the conservative communities, were the sexes are strictly segregated and smartphones banned.
A young Ultra Orthodox holds a sign in Hebrew with the inscription "to Jail and not to the army. Thousands of Haredi or #UltraOrthodoxJews demonstrate in Jerusalem against the Israeli army conscription law outside an army recruitment office in Jerusalem: pic.twitter.com/rAhjISYBcb
“The message to Israeli society is that there is a large group of people who don’t want to serve in the army,” Manks said. “The fear is that we will loose our identity, and joining the army will mean loosing our identity.”
He said the meeting aimed to unite Haredis, and protest that a decision affecting over a million Israelis had been made by a court, not by the government.
The supreme court ruled at the end of March that a system exempting ultra-Orthodox students at yeshivas from military service was discriminatory. It dates back to Israel’s founding, when only about 400 men were covered; now over one in ten Israelis are Haredim.
Thousands of ultra orthodox Jews demonstrated in Jerusalem against Israeli army conscription on Thursday. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
Conscription notices have started going out, and the government said it will cut stipends that are vital for religious students. But potential recruits say they would rather go to jail.
“We are the men they are telling (to join the army),” said Moshe, 19, who declined to give his last name. “There are many men here who have an arrest warrant because of that.”
“We are gathered here to show that we are not afraid of the supreme court decision, we are not afraid of prison.” Like many ultra-Orthodox, he said prayers of yeshiva students protect Israel more than its army.
Hundreds of ultra-orthodox men and boys clashed with Israeli police on Thursday evening at a demonstration in Jerusalem. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
The issue is a major threat to embattled Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. His coalition government relies on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties who have threatened to leave over the issue, bringing him down.
But opposition figures who joined an emergency unity government, including Netanyahu’s biggest rival Benny Gantz, have threatened to leave if the prime minister tries to find a way to once again exempt large numbers of ultra-orthodox Israelis from military service.
Scotland’s migration minister has urged the government to expand the number of Palestinian people who can join their family in the UK, reports the Press Association.
In a letter to UK minister Tom Pursglove, Emma Roddick pushed for the Refugee Family Reunion scheme to include “immediate and extended family, including parents, children over 18, siblings and their children”. The current system allows only for partners and children under 18 to join family in the UK.
Roddick suggested the minister meet with families of people stuck in Gaza and hear their “harrowing experiences”.
According to the Press Association, Roddick also called for the Home Office to waive the need for biometric data to be collected for Palestinians looking to leave before they arrive in the UK, or to transfer those trying to come here to a site where they can make an application under the current system.
Roddick said:
The Scottish government and the Scottish Refugee Council fully support the aims of the Gaza Families Reunited campaign alongside more than 74,000 people who have signed a public petition as well as more than 75 migrants’ rights organisations and law firms across the UK.
The campaign calls for a scheme to be opened for relatives of all Palestinians in the UK, not just those with refugee status.
This should be open to a wider cohort of immediate and extended family, including parents, children over 18, siblings and their children.”
A spokesperson for the UK government said:
We are working around the clock to get British nationals, who want to leave, out of Gaza. We have a team on the ground in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing providing consular assistance.
We currently have no plans to establish a separate route for Palestinians to come to the UK. However, any dependants of British citizens who need a visa, can apply for one.”
A spokesperson for the Gaza Families Reunited campaign said they were “pleased” Roddick was pushing for action. “We all have a right to family unity but the UK Government’s reluctance to create a Gaza Family Scheme is endangering the lives of Palestinians in Gaza and keeping families apart,” they added.
The campaign said that while the UK government had “signposted to existing routes” in response to calls for family visa schemes for Palestinians from Gaza, these were “extremely limited and simply do not work”.
“We know that at least two people have died while waiting for the Home Office to decide whether they can reunite with their loved ones in the UK. This is unconscionable,” they said.
The campaign is calling on the British government to offer a similar scheme to that which was introduced for Ukrainian families:
The British government has previously offered sanctuary to Ukrainian families under the Ukraine Family Scheme. All we are asking is that the same option is afforded to Palestinians seeking protection from bombardment and starvation, who want to reunite with their loved ones.”
US seeking to deter Iran from strike on Israel, officials say
The US is seeking to deter Iran from carrying out a retaliatory strike against Israel with concerted declarations of commitment to Israeli security, while at the same time trying to prevent the outbreak of a major regional war, officials in Washington have said.
US officials still believe that a direct Iranian missile or drone strike is possible within the next few days, in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of an Iranian consular building in Damascus on 1 April, which killed a top Islamic Revolutionary Guards general and six other Guard officers.
The developments came as the US restricted the movements of its diplomats in Israel over security fears, the embassy said.
“Out of an abundance of caution, US government employees and their family members are restricted from personal travel” outside the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheeva areas “until further notice”, an embassy notice on Thursday said.
Israel would rely heavily on US-supplied weaponry in any response to an Iranian strike, a point that Benjamin Netanyahu made implicitly on Thursday, by standing in front of American-made F-15 fighters at the Tel Nof airbase in southern Israel to tell reporters: “Whoever harms us, we will harm them.”
Irish taoiseach and Spanish PM to discuss Palestine nation state plan
Lisa O'Carroll
The new Irish taoiseach is to meet the Spanish prime minister to discuss their joint plan to recognise Palestine as a nation state and their attempts to force the EU to assess Israel’s human rights obligations as a condition of their trade deal with the bloc.
Pedro Sánchez, who is due to arrive in Dublin on Friday, is the first foreign premier Simon Harris will meet since his promotion to the office of the taoiseach this week.
In the months since the Hamas attacks of 7 October and Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Spain and Ireland have emerged as the EU’s most pro-Palestinian member states.
On Thursday in Brussels, Harris said he had made clear Ireland’s position on the need for an immediate ceasefire, during a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. He also reiterated its formal request, made with Spain two months ago, to review the Israel-EU association agreement.
“I believe the European Union must use all of the levers at its disposal [to protect the Palestinian people],” Harris said.
His remarks came as he faced sharp criticism from Israel for not mentioning the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza during his debut speech to the Irish parliament as taoiseach.
It has gone 8am in Gaza and 9am in Tel Aviv. This is our latest Guardian live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.
Israel’s defence minister has said the country will respond directly to any attack on Israel by Iran, as concerns mount of Iranian retaliation over a deadly Israeli strike in Syria.
“A direct Iranian attack will require an appropriate Israeli response against Iran,” Yoav Gallant told the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, on Thursday, according to Gallant’s office.
Iran has vowed retaliation after Israel destroyed an Iranian consular building in Damascus on 1 April, killing seven Revolutionary Guards including two generals.
The US is seeking to deter Iran from carrying out a retaliatory strike with concerted declarations of commitment to Israeli security, while at the same time trying to prevent the outbreak of a major regional war, officials in Washington have said.
The US on Thursday restricted the movements of its diplomats in Israel over security fears, the US embassy said, with personal travel outside the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheeva areas barred “until further notice”.
People gather in Tehran, Iran, last week for the funeral of Revolutionary Guard members killed in the Syria strike. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA
In other key developments:
The US president, Joe Biden, has pledged that Washington’s commitment to defend Israel against Iran is “ironclad”, amid rising US concerns that a “significant” Iranian strike could happen within days. The UK prime minister, meanwhile, said Iran’s threats of an attack were “unacceptable”. Rishi Sunak’s office said he reaffirmed British support for Tel Aviv’s right to defend itself.
Germany’s foreign minister called her Iranian counterpart to urge “maximum restraint” to avoid further escalation. The US envoy to the Middle East reportedly called the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Iraq asking them to deliver a message to Tehran to lower tensions with Israel. The Kremlin urged all Middle East countries to show restraint and prevent the region slipping into chaos.
The top US commander for the Middle East, Gen Erik Kurilla, is in Israel for security talks with Israeli military officials, the Pentagon has said.
Iran has signalled to Washington that it will respond to the Israeli attack in a way that aims to avoid major escalation and it will not act hastily, Iranian sources told Reuters. Tehran’s message to Washington was conveyed by Iran’s foreign minister during a visit to Oman, the sources said.
A promised surge in aid into Gaza that Benjamin Netanyahu promised Joe Biden a week ago has so far failed to materialise, aid workers say, as the US’s aid chief confirmed that famine was beginning to take hold in parts of the Palestinian territory. The increase in the number of truck crossing into Gaza claimed by Israel conflicts with UN records and already appears to be faltering. Several countries including France and Jordan airdropped about 110 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the French president and military said.
A video has surfaced of a senior official at Israel’s cyber intelligence agency, Unit 8200, talking last year about the use of machine-learning “magic powder” to help identify Hamas targets in Gaza. The footage raises questions about the Israel Defense Forces’ recent statement that it “does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist”.
Israeli forces killed three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an airstrike in Gaza without consulting senior Israeli commanders or political leaders including Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli media reports. Quoting senior Israeli officials, Walla news agency said on Thursday that neither Netanyahu, the prime minister, nor Yoav Gallant had been told in advance of the strike, which was coordinated by the Israeli military and the Shin Bet intelligence service.
Haniyeh said the Israeli attack, which also killed at least two of his grandchildren, would not change Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire and return of displaced Palestinians from their homes in ongoing negotiations mediated by Qatar and the US. “All our people and all the families of Gaza have paid a heavy price in blood, and I am one of them,” the militant group’s exiled political chief said from his base in Doha, the Qatari capital. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted Haniyeh’s sons, who it described as “three Hamas operatives”. The Turkish president offered his condolences in a phone call to Haniyeh, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s office said.
At least 33,545 Palestinians have been killed and 76,094 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday. The Hamas-run ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
Smoke rises in Khan Younis after Israeli attacks as Palestinians returned to their homes in the southern Gaza city on Thursday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Hamas has indicated it does not have 40 captives who are still alive who meet the “humanitarian” criteria for a proposed hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire agreement with Israel. Ceasefire talks in Cairo have focused on a US-backed proposal of a phased exchange of hostages including women, children and elderly or sick people. An Israeli official confirmed claims made by Hamas in Cairo that it does not have 40 hostages in Gaza who meet the exchange criteria.
An Israeli minister has said that after Hamas’s 7 October attack there is no longer a “moral” justification to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from army service, breaking a longstanding taboo within his community. The interior minister, Moshe Arbel, is from the ultra-Orthodox party Shas. Israel’s ruling coalition has been scrambling to find a compromise on drafting the cohort after the country’s top court effectively struck down the decades-old exemption as of 1 April.
Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”, according to US senator Tim Kaine. The Democratic party’s leading foreign policy voice told the Guardian that the Israeli prime minister had made Israel “dramatically less safe” and hurt its longstanding relationship with the US.
Israeli jets hit military targets of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the areas of Meiss el Jabal, Yarine and Khiam, as well as a Hezbollah observation post in the area of Marwahin and another compound in Al-Dahira in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said on Thursday.
The US destroyed an anti-ship ballistic missile launched from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen as well as 11 Houthi drones, the military said on Thursday, after the Iran-backed group claimed it had targeted Israeli and US ships off the Gulf of Aden. US central command said no injuries or damage to vessels were reported.
Israel’s foreign ministry denounced Ireland’s new prime minister, Simon Harris, for not mentioning the hostages held by militants in Gaza during a speech to the Irish parliament.
