Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Israelis leave bodies after Khan Younis exit

Thank you for joining us for updates on everything related to Israel’s war on Palestine.

To read our news story on the ongoing Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank for a third day, go here.

You can view our photo gallery on the aftermath of the Israeli offensive in Gaza’s Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah here.

And you can find all of our latest coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.

We will close this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s main events:

• The US-based aid organisation Anera reports an Israeli strike on a humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza resulted in the deaths of four Palestinians accompanying the vehicles.
• Israeli forces pull out of eastern Khan Younis following a 22-day military incursion with the withdrawal revealing widespread devastation and the civil defence agency recovering at least nine bodies so far.
• Israel’s deadly raids in the occupied West Bank continue for a third straight day. The Israeli army claimed it killed Wissam Hazem, a Hamas commander in Jenin.
• The UN agency for Palestinian refugees and its partners are preparing to launch a vaccination campaign for 640,000 children after the poliovirus was detected in Gaza.
• UNICEF estimates at least 4,000 children in Gaza are missing, 17,000 are unaccompanied or separated from their parents, and 700,000 have been forcibly displaced several times since the start of the war.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) group has received a report of a missile strike near a vessel off the coast of Yemen.

“A vessel reports two missiles exploding in close proximity to the vessel,” the group said in a social media post, stating that the incident took place off the coast east of Aden. “The Master reports all crew are safe and proceeding to next port of call.”

The incident takes place as Yemen’s Houthi rebel group continues to enforce what it says is a blockade against ships associated with Israel en route to Israeli ports.

Israeli media outlet Times of Israel is reporting that the Israeli military received reports of a Palestinian gunman opening fire in the Israeli settlement of Karmei Tzur in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military said that the gunman was “neutralised” at the scene, but that the incident is ongoing. The report says local authorities reported the explosion of a car at a nearby fuel station, but it was not clear whether the events are linked.

Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are built in violation of international law, often on land confiscated from Palestinians.

Israeli forces have conducted their largest assault in decades in the occupied West Bank, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians.

The escalation is coupled with increasing settler violence. So, what are the consequences?

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA says the 20 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank incursion include a person with disabilities and several children, without specifying how many.

Palestinian health authorities also report a Palestinian doctor and two medics tending to patients in Jenin were wounded by Israeli fire.

Officials from the UN and its partner organisations are planning to visit some affected areas in the occupied West Bank over the weekend to assess damage to homes and infrastructure.

“They stand ready to provide a response based on what people need most,” the UN humanitarian office said.

We are getting reports from the ground that an Israeli raid on a house in the Nuseirat camp has killed and wounded an unknown number of Palestinians.

This latest attack come after Israel’s military bombed a home in central Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp killing at least one person, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the US, has condemned Israel’s large-scale assault on the occupied West Bank and calling on the US State Department to end weapons transfers to Israel.

“Israeli bulldozers systematically destroy streets in the West Bank to make the area unlivable for Palestinians. Illegal Israeli settlers routinely destroy homes and property, often with the protection of the Israeli military. Residents are facing food and water shortages,” the group said in a statement.

“These war crimes are being enabled by the Biden administration’s indefensible failure to hold Israel accountable for its genocide, ethnic cleansing, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and forced starvation of an entire population.”

The news outlet Reuters reports pro-Palestine activists will step up demonstrations at campaign stops for Kamala Harris following the Democratic nominee’s continued opposition to calls for an arms embargo on Israel.

Pro-Palestine activists feel shut out by the Democratic Party, which refused to grant a Palestinian-American lawmaker a short speaking slot at the party’s recent convention. Activists will protest at campaign stops and seek to disrupt an upcoming September 10 debate between Harris and Donald Trump, the news report said.

Critics say the US is violating its own laws by continuing massive arms shipments to Israel, despite widespread reports that Israeli forces are committing war crimes and abuses such as torture in Gaza.

We earlier reported the Israeli military said it had wrapped up a monthlong operation in southern and central Gaza.

Some Palestinians returned to find massive destruction in parts of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis.

In Khan Younis, 48-year-old Amal al-Astal told AFP his house and the neighbours’ were destroyed.

“One of our neighbours’ corpses was decomposed there,” he said.

Deir el-Balah resident Mohamed Abu Thuria said he “found massive destruction everywhere” when he returned to the central Gaza city.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, says attacks on humanitarian workers must come to an end following a series of Israeli attacks on aid convoys in Gaza over the last week.

More than 250 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza over the course of the war, with Israeli forces targeting clearly marked aid convoys on numerous occasions. Critics say the US occasionally criticises Israeli actions without using leverage such as arms sales to push for real change.

“Israel must take concrete actions to ensure UN personnel are fully protected,” Thomas-Greenfield said in a social media post. “All attacks and threatening rhetoric against the UN and humanitarian NGOs need to stop.”

Jaber Abu Raih, a Palestinian resident of Jenin, walked with his wife and children out of the besieged area to escape the Israeli military onslaught.

“The Israeli army stormed into our house bringing their equipment, food, and everything they needed, turning our home into a military post,” Abu Raih said. “The army told us to ‘find alternative arrangements [to live]. This is going to be a long ordeal.’”

Describing conditions in eastern Jenin, he added, “The destruction is vast. The army is waging a real war. Residents are left without food, medicine, or water.”

Gunfire and explosions are continuing in Jenin late Friday.

Palestinian health authorities in the occupied West Bank have said that the death toll from Israel’s assault has reached 20, adding that Israeli forces targeted medical workers in Jenin.

Israel claims it is targeting militant networks, but aid groups and health authorities have said that children, an elderly man, and a man with disabilities are among those killed.

Palestinian health authorities said that a doctor and two medical workers were wounded after coming under fire by Israeli forces in Jenin, a focus of many of the Israeli raids.

Nidal Obeidi, mayor of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, has spoken to Al Jazeera about the continuing Israeli operations in the city.

Here are his translated comments:

• The occupation is escalating its operations and the pace of its crimes with international support.
• The current operation is an attempt to besiege our people and pressure them to displace them.

Palestinian university students in the occupied West Bank live under the constant threat of arrest by the Israeli military, often without trial or charges.

At Birzeit University, a centre of Palestinian intellectual life, a staff member who documents those arrests explains the challenges the best and brightest Palestinian students often face and the obstacles they create for their futures.

UNICEF has estimated that at least 4,000 children in Gaza are missing, 17,000 are unaccompanied or separated from their parents, and 700,000 have been forcibly displaced several times since the start of the war.

“It’s been a completely catastrophic humanitarian crisis for children over the last 10 months. They’ve seen and been through everything that a child should not have to go through at that age, or any age for that matter, in terms of scale of conflict, in terms of loss of their homes, of the infrastructure that is so vital for their daily lives and livelihoods,” UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires told Al Jazeera.

“It’s completely hellish circumstances for children on the ground now, and it has been for over 10 months now,” he added, noting that the UN’s figures are “very certainly an underestimate of the reality on the ground”.

Hamas’s armed wing issued a statement about recent fighting with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city. Here is a translated summary:

• Our fighters have been engaged in clashes with the occupation forces since this morning on all fronts of the incursion into the city of Jenin.
• Fighters battled a special Zionist force at the entrance to Jenin camp, killing and wounding several of its members.
• Two military vehicles in Jenin camp were targeted with high-explosive devices in a preplanned ambush.

A series of pauses in fighting are due to begin this weekend in Gaza to allow vaccination against polio, which has returned to Gaza: