Israel war on Gaza updates: Deadly attack on Palestinians awaiting aid

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Palestinian medics and rights advocates have denounced the killing of a top medical official in Gaza by the Israeli military. Read more here.

And to follow all of our coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, go here.

We’ll be closing this live page soon. Here are the latest developments:

• An Israeli air strike near the Bani Suheila traffic circle in southern Gaza killed at least eight people, including security guards, as Palestinians waited for aid trucks.
• Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a speech to parliament, says Israel remains committed to a proposed Gaza ceasefire-and-captives deal after suggesting the opposite the previous day.
• Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi says a Hamas brigade in the southern Gaza city of Rafah is nearly “dismantled”.
• As many as 21,000 children are unaccounted for since Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, according to Save the Children.
• The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is being sued by dozens of Israelis in the US who accuse it of aiding and abetting the October 7 Hamas attack.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Israel to avoid further escalation in Lebanon during a meeting with Israel’s Defense Minister Gallant as they discussed efforts to reach a deal to free captives in Gaza.

Blinken “underscored the importance of avoiding further escalation of the conflict and reaching a diplomatic resolution that allows both Israeli and Lebanese families to return to their homes”, department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Tensions have been rising with growing exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Prime Minister Netanyahu says Israeli forces are winding up the most “intense fighting” of the Gaza war and will redeploy troops to the northern border, although he cast the move as defensive.

Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric physician from Canada who worked in Gaza, says she’s not shocked by the Save the Children report that said 21,000 kids are unaccounted for since Israel’s war began.

She said one time, while she was at work, an extended family of 40 was killed in an Israeli bombing.

“In 24 hours when I was there, we’d have entire families wiped off the civil registry. You’re talking about multiple-storey buildings levelled flat. Many children die instantly – burned beyond recognition, dismembered, all the horrific things we’ve been seeing,” she told Al Jazeera.

“What has shocked me about this report, however, is children being found in mass graves, with many showing signs of torture and summary executions. As well as ‘potential instances of people buried alive’. I don’t have the words to describe the disgust.”

The two sides are stepping up rhetoric and cross-border attacks.

Israel says plans for an offensive in southern Lebanon have been approved. But what would a war look like this time round? And does diplomacy stand a chance?

The US ambassador to Israel called for a reformed Palestinian Authority to play a role in post-war Gaza at a summit in the coastal Israeli city of Herzliya.

Speaking of the “day after” the war in Gaza, US Ambassador Jacob Lew highlighted the need for “civil order, civil administration” and of the US government’s belief that “the Palestinian Authority has to be part of that”.

The US diplomat reiterated his government’s support for a two-state solution that would see the creation of a Palestinian state. “A future that provides for security and dignity for the people of Gaza and the West Bank, that is a safer future”, he said.

“To call that a victory for Hamas, it has it backwards.”

French President Emmanuel Macron and King Abdullah II of Jordan called on Israel to lift all land-based “restrictions” on the delivery of aid to war-torn Gaza.

Over lunch at the Elysee Palace, Macron and Abdullah reiterated the need for an “immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza” and called for the release of all captives held in the territory – including two French nationals.

UN agencies have repeatedly warned of severe shortages of vital supplies in Gaza, exacerbated by restrictions on access by land and the closure of the key Rafah crossing with Egypt since Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side in early May.

The leaders also “expressed their deep concern about the situation in the occupied West Bank and strongly condemned the violence committed by settlers”, the Elysee Palace said in a statement.

They agreed to continue to work together on a “lasting and credible solution” to the war based on the “two-state solution” and welcomed reforms undertaken by the Palestinian government, calling for them to be continued.

Referring to the intensification of tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border, Macron and Abdullah II warned against a “conflagration that would be catastrophic for the region” and reiterated calls to all parties for “responsibility and restraint”.

We understand a number of issues were discussed between the [US] secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The State Department was briefed, we’re told, on Israel’s transition to what it calls “phase three” of the war on Gaza. This is a reduction in the level of conflict and a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Another matter discussed is the question of governance in Gaza after the conflict ends. The US has been attempting to get a clear statement on what form the governance of post-war Gaza would take, and trying to get an agreement from the Israelis on what this actually would mean.

However, we understand there’s still no agreement.

Israel’s top court ordered the government to provide information about the conditions inside a shadowy military facility where Palestinians from Gaza are detained.

Whistleblowers who worked at the facility and Palestinians who believe they were held there have reported that detainees are handcuffed and blindfolded at all times, fed only meagre snacks, held inside pens under harsh floodlights and not allowed outdoors.

The desert facility, called Sde Teiman, is the major detention centre where Israel has held thousands of Palestinians pulled from Gaza during large-scale raids. A coalition of rights groups is petitioning the high court to shut the facility down, alleging that it doesn’t meet Israel’s own standards for how detention facilities should operate during wartime.

Israel has barred the International Committee of the Red Cross from accessing all military detention facilities since the start of its war on Gaza.

Rafah city centre in Gaza lies deserted after most residents fled weeks of fighting between the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups.

Haitham Abu Taha, 30, spoke of the “danger of quadcopter drones that mercilessly target anyone walking” in the streets.

“We’re afraid to move because we fear being killed. There is no more water or food. We are totally trapped, ” said Abu Taha.

Israel has intensified its use of the small drones, or quadcopters, to drop bombs on groups of people or houses and to “shoot to kill” Palestinians with mounted machine guns, said the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in a recent report.

“Many people were killed [by the quadcopters],” said Ismail Abu Shaar, 22. “The artillery, the shooting and the clashes [never stop].”

The Israeli military said on Monday that it’s “continuing intelligence-based targeted operations” in and around Rafah, adding it found “large amounts of weapons”.

Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, responded to the statement by Israel’s prime minister suggesting “a partial” truce to get some captives back:

• “Netanyahu’s true stance is to avoid reaching an agreement, to stall for time, and to continue the war of genocide.”
• “It’s become clear to the world that Netanyahu is the one who rejects and obstructs what was outlined in Biden’s speech and the recent UN Security Council resolution, not Hamas.”
• “Netanyahu’s talk of concluding a partial agreement and continuing the aggression confirms he’s lying to the families of the prisoners and does not care about their lives.”
• “The ball is now in the court of the war criminal Netanyahu, and the US administration must lift its cover of silence and bias and put pressure on Netanyahu and his government to stop the aggression and genocidal war.”
• “We reiterate the positive stance of Hamas in dealing with the efforts of the mediators in Qatar and Egypt to reach an agreement that ensures a permanent cessation of the aggression, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a prisoner exchange deal.”

Larry Hebert is trying to be declared a “conscientious objector” and discharged from the US military over its continuing support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Watch the video below:

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says misinformation about him continues to be disseminated during the more than eight-month war on the Gaza Strip.

“I’ve heard the same source many times saying that I never ‘attacked’ Hamas, that I never condemned Hamas, that I am a supporter of Hamas,” Guterres told a news conference, without naming Israel.

“I have condemned Hamas 102 times, 51 of them in formal speeches, the others in different social platforms,” he said. “The truth in the end, always wins.”

In a report published on Monday, Save the Children says the thousands of missing Palestinian children are believed trapped beneath rubble, buried in unmarked graves, harmed beyond recognition by explosives, detained by Israeli forces, or lost in the chaos of conflict.

“At least 17,000 children are believed to be unaccompanied and separated and approximately 4,000 children are likely missing under the rubble with an unknown number also in mass graves,” the aid group said.

Read the full story here.

The US Department of State condemned video of a wounded Palestinian prisoner strapped to the front of a military jeep by Israeli forces, urging a swift investigation to hold accountable those responsible.

“We saw that video, it was shocking. The practice was absolutely unacceptable. Humans should never be used as human shields. The [Israeli military] should swiftly investigate what happened, hold people accountable,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a news briefing.

On Saturday, Israeli soldiers tied the Palestinian man to the hood of the vehicle during a raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The Israeli army later said troops violated protocol.

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic report the Israeli army has struck a house in the Maghazi camp in central Gaza, killing and injuring several people.

Israeli forces blew up a residential square south of the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood in northern Gaza City.

A Texas woman was charged with attempted murder on Sunday after she tried to drown a little girl in a swimming pool.

In a post on X, the US president said: “I am deeply disturbed by the reports of an attempted drowning of a 3-year old Palestinian-American at a neighbourhood pool. No child should ever be subjected to a violent attack, and my heart goes out to the family.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations’s Texas chapter called on police to open a hate-crime probe as reports increase of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian incidents across the United States.

Police said in a statement the girl’s mother said the suspect – a 42-year-old white American woman – “made statements about her not being an American and other racial statements” and she tried to grab both of her children at an apartment complex’s pool in Euless, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth, last month.

“The mother began helping her son when Wolf grabbed her 3-year-old daughter and forced her underwater,” police said.

In a statement released by CAIR, the mother said, “We are American citizens, originally from Palestine, and I don’t know where to go to feel safe with my kids,” adding with Israel’s war on Gaza she and her family are “facing that hate here”.

The Biden administration says it doesn’t understand repeated accusations from Prime Minister Netanyahu that weapons deliveries from the US to Israel have significantly dropped.

President Biden has delayed only one shipment of heavy bombs over concerns of heavy civilian casualties in Rafah, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

“There are other weapons that we continue to provide Israel as we have done going back years and years, because we are committed to Israel’s security. There has been no change in that.”

Israel is making “intense requests” and “we continue to fulfil those requests”, he added.

Netanyahu on Sunday again repeated his claim that a “dramatic drop” in arms shipments from the US has hindered the war effort. When he first made the accusation last week, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the US is “perplexed” by the claims and called them incorrect.