Updates: Israel kills 2 children in Gaza, West Bank healthcare under attack

To find out what’s happening with talks between Israel, the US and Hamas, go here.

To learn more about how Jewish activists are protesting at Trump Tower in support of Mahmoud Khalil, click here.

And follow along with all our coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.

We’ll be closing this live page soon. Before we go, here’s a look at what’s been happening in the last hours:

• An Israeli drone struck a tent in Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza, killing a child and wounding his mother. Earlier, another Palestinian child was killed in a drone attack on Gaza City.
• The National Campaign to Retrieve Martyrs’ Bodies, a Palestinian advocacy group, said Israel is retaining the bodies of 676 Palestinians in freezers and military burial sites, known as “cemeteries of numbers”.
• The UN’s Stephane Dujarric says the World Health Organization (WHO) has verified 54 “attacks on health centres in the West Bank, including four deaths and nine injuries” since January.
• Al Jazeera Arabic and several local news outlets reported Israeli bombardment around the village of Jennata in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border. The Israeli military has confirmed the attack, saying it targeted a Hezbollah site.

The New York-based university announces punishment against students who took over an academic building last year to demand divestment from companies with links to the Israeli military.

“Today, the Columbia University Judicial Board determined findings and issued sanctions to students ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall last spring,” the university said in a statement.

The announcement comes as immigration authorities continue to detain Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil over his involvement in protests last year.

The Trump administration announced earlier this month that it was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to Columbia over the demonstrations.

Amnesty International calls on the international community to take “urgent action” to protect Palestinians in light of the UN report that documented that Israel has systematically used sexual and reproductive violence against them.

“These damning findings are another clear illustration of the devastating impact of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its use of gender-based violence to oppress Palestinian women and girls across the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to use sexual violence to perpetuate oppression on Palestinians of all genders, especially in Israeli detention centers,” Lauren Aarons, Amnesty’s senior adviser on gender, conflict and international justice, said in a statement.

“The report exposes yet again the horrors of Israeli atrocity crimes in Gaza, and how they specifically impact women.”

US Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman has raised the alarm about the detention of Palestinian rights activist Mahmoud Khalil, underscoring that the Columbia University graduate has not been charged with a crime.

“It brings to mind the disappearing of dissidents in totalitarian regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Chile or even Nazi Germany,” Watson Coleman said in a video statement.

She stressed the need to demand Khalil’s release.

“This is how totalitarian regimes start. They begin by testing our resolve to defend the rights of vulnerable people,” she said.

The Crown star expressed concern about the “massive erosion” of speech rights in the UK and around the world when it comes to pro-Palestinian activism.

“There are immensely simple and clear, straightforward humanitarian things that are wrong about Israel’s occupation of Palestine, about apartheid, about this genocide,” Abdalla told Al Jazeera.

Watch our report below:

Using shovels and their bare hands, Palestinian families exhumed dozens of bodies from a mass grave beside al-Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City.

Many want to have a dignified burial elsewhere for their loved ones – but first, they have to find them.

“I’m here to search for my son,” Soha al-Sharif told The Associated Press news agency, breaking down in tears.

“He wasn’t unidentified. His name was written on his wrist.”

Gaza’s Civil Defence said 48 bodies were unearthed as of Thursday afternoon, including 10 unidentified people. The grave has more than 180 bodies.

Abu al-Abid, a Gaza City resident, was also present, searching for his pregnant daughter’s remains.

He told the agency she was killed on January 13 by an Israeli air strike that killed 25 of her family members, including her three children.

Al-Shifa was once the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip but after Israel’s war, it is now severely damaged, with its walls collapsed and riddled with bullet holes.

The mass grave is in a courtyard strewn with rubbish, rubble, and placards bearing the names of those buried.

Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, failed to offer any specifics about what the Palestinian activist did that merits arrest and deportation.

Khalil, a legal permanent resident, has been detained by US immigration authorities for five days over helping organise protests critical of Israel at Columbia University last year.

In a contentious interview with NPR, Edgar eluded that Khalil may have violated his visa with “pro-Palestinian activity”, but when pressed about what exactly the Columbia graduate did wrong, the US official struggled to offer details.

“I think if he would have declared he’s a terrorist, we would have never let him in,” Edgar said.

NPR’s Michel Martin asked Edgar what constitutes “terrorist” activity.

“Have you watched it on TV? It’s pretty clear,” the US official responded. Martin, however, stressed that it is actually not clear.

Edgar also failed to answer questions on whether criticising Israel is now a deportable offence in the US.

An Israeli drone has struck a tent in Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza, killing a child and injuring his mother, Al Jazeera Arabic and Wafa report.

Earlier, another Palestinian child was killed in a drone attack in Gaza City.

J Street, an advocacy group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace, slams the Israeli government for blocking humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza.

“The Netanyahu government’s decision to cut off aid and electricity to Gaza could soon plunge desperate Palestinian families back into the throes of hunger and disease,” the group said in a social media post.

“This does nothing to secure the hostages’ freedom nor disempower Hamas.”

As we’ve been reporting, Israel’s complete blockage of all aid into the Gaza Strip is now in its 12th day.

The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) says it is working to help children “missed out on many months of school” to resume learning.

“This includes work to assess whether school buildings used as shelters are suitable to host in-person learning,” OCHA said in a statement.

“However, severe shortages of education supplies continue to hamper these preparations.”

The Palestinian group’s spokesperson Hazem Qassem has dismissed media reports about new initiatives to temporarily extend the Gaza truce, saying that they aim to pre-empt the ongoing talks in Doha.

“We are committed to what has already been agreed upon and moving to the second phase of the deal,” Qassem said.

His comments come amid Israeli reports that the US is looking to extend the first stage of the agreement as part of a temporary deal that would see the release of more Israeli captives in exchange for prolonging the truce.

But Qassem said Hamas wants to see a permanent end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, stressing that Israel has not lived up to the humanitarian provisions of the ceasefire.

“We don’t want to return to war again, but if the [Israeli] occupation renews its aggression, we would have no choice but to defend our people,” he added.

In its report, the United Nations commission said, it found that Israeli authorities “have destroyed … the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare”.

It added that this amounted to “two categories of genocidal acts” during Israel’s offensive in Gaza, launched after the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023.

For its part, “Israel categorically rejects the unfounded allegations”, its mission in Geneva said in a statement.

Watch below to learn more:

Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, has doubled down on the threat to deport supporters of Palestinian rights despite the outcry over the detention of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil.

Stefanik, a staunch Israel supporter, lauded Trump for the crackdown on Palestinian rights advocates.

“Promises made, promises kept,” she wrote in a social media post. “To be in or study in the United States is a privilege; any supporter of terrorist groups must be immediately stripped of their visas and deported, and the schools that protect them defunded.”

Khalil, who helped organise protests at Columbia University, was a legal permanent resident, not a student visa holder.

Stefanik has often referred to student protesters who pushed for their universities to end financial ties with companies linked to the Israeli military as Hamas supporters. But activists say their main goal has been to end their educational institutions’ complicity in abuses against Palestinians.

Stefanik, a member of the US House of Representatives, has not been confirmed by the Senate to start her tenure at the UN.

Young men in Gaza have a meal during Ramadan on the ruins of a mosque destroyed by Israeli forces in Beit Lahiya, footage on social media shows.

The young men sat on the roof of the completely destroyed mosque, having their first meal after a day of fasting.

It is now 10pm in Palestine and Israel (20:00 GMT). Here’s a recap of the latest developments.

• An Israeli drone has killed a three-year-old child in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City.
• The Israeli military says it struck a Hezbollah infrastructure site for manufacturing and storing strategic weapons in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
• The United Nations warns of “dire” consequences to the Israeli blockade on Gaza, saying that aid groups have started to reduce food rations to people in need.
• A Syrian official says an Israeli strike on Damascus has injured three civilians, including a woman who is in critical condition.
• Jewish progressive activists have staged a sit-in at the Trump Tower in New York City to call for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student organiser who was detained by US immigration authorities over his advocacy for Palestinian rights.

Israeli forces have detained a young Palestinian man from Farkha village, southwest of the occupied West Bank city of Salfit, Wafa reports, citing local sources.

Israeli forces also ransacked several houses and stores and seized the recordings of surveillance cameras from Bruqin town, west of Salfit.

The troops have conducted multiple raids in towns and villages in the Salfit governorate in recent weeks

The National Campaign to Retrieve Martyrs’ Bodies, a Palestinian advocacy group, says Israel is retaining the bodies of 676 Palestinians in freezers and military burial sites, known as “cemeteries of numbers”.

The number rose this week after the Israeli military took the bodies of three Palestinian men it killed in Jenin in the occupied West Bank early on Tuesday.

The withheld bodies include those of 60 children and nine women, according to the group.

For decades, Israel has been taking the dead bodies of suspected Palestinian fighters to use as a bargaining chip.

Last week, Trump slammed Hamas for holding on to the bodies of Israelis after the October 7, 2023 attack. “Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted,” the US president wrote in a social media post.

The UN’s Stephane Dujarric says the World Health Organization (WHO) has verified 54 “attacks on health centres in the West Bank, including four deaths and nine injuries” since January.

Dujarric said 20 health facilities are not functioning due to the violence.

Israel has stepped up its deadly raids and attacks in the occupied West Bank this year, especially after the truce in Gaza came into effect.