Dozens killed near Gaza aid point as UN to vote on ceasefire resolution

We are now closing this live coverage. You can follow for more updates on the Gaza war tomorrow from 9am. 

Lebanon's health ministry said an Israeli strike on south Lebanon killed one person on Thursday, the latest attack despite a ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

In a statement, the ministry said that an "Israeli enemy drone strike" on a motorcycle in Nabatiyeh al-Fawqa, south Lebanon, killed one person.

Israel did not immediately comment on the incident.

Israel has repeatedly bombed Lebanon despite a November ceasefire that sought to end over a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, including two months of full-blown war.

According to the agreement, Hezbollah must withdraw its fighters to the north of the Litani river, roughly 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border with Israel, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the area.

Last week, Israel said it would continue to strike Lebanon until Hezbollah was disarmed.

The ceasefire requires Israel to fully withdraw its troops from Lebanon, but it has kept them in five positions it deems "strategic".

The United Nations said on Thursday that there was a full internet blackout in the Gaza Strip, likely due to Israeli attacks damaging the last cable into the enclave, which has paralysed aid operations.

"Lifelines to emergency services, humanitarian coordination, and critical information for civilians have all been cut. There is a full internet blackout, and mobile networks are barely functioning,” deputy U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters.

"In a context already limited by physical access restrictions and widespread damage, emergency services are cut off, and civilians cannot access life-saving support," Haq said.

(Reuters)

Italy has no indication there will be an Israeli attack on Iran in the near future, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday.

"I don't know if there will be an Israeli attack on Iran, we have no signs, apart from what the Americans have done, that there will be an attack in the immediate future", Tajani told reporters.

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that US personnel were being moved out of the Middle East because it could become a dangerous place, adding that the United States would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

(Reuters) 

Spyware from a US-backed Israeli company was used to target the phones of at least three prominent journalists in Europe, two of whom are editors at an investigative news site in Italy, according to digital researchers at Citizen Lab, citing new forensic evidence of the attacks.

The findings come amid growing questions about the role the Italian government, under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, may have played in spying on journalists and civil society activists critical of her leadership, and raise new concerns about the potential for abuse of commercial spyware, even in democratic countries.

“Any attempts to illegally access data of citizens, including journalists and political opponents, is unacceptable, if confirmed,” the European Commission said in a statement Wednesday in response to questions from members of parliament. “The Commission will use all the tools at its disposal to ensure the effective application of EU law.”

At least 55,207 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry revealed, adding that 127,821 have been wounded. The figure does not include the thousands missing and trapped under the rubble, presumed dead.

Over 103 have been killed and at least 427 have been injured in the past 24 hours.

President Javier Milei of Argentina received the $1 million Genesis prize in Jerusalem on Thursday in recognition of his support for Israel as it faces a mounting international isolation over the war in Gaza.

A statement from the Genesis Prize said Milei will donate the award to launch an initiative aimed at improving diplomatic relations between Israel and Latin American countries and fighting antisemitism in the region.

It said the goal is to replicate the Abraham Accords — a US-brokered set of agreements aimed at winning broader recognition of Israel in the Arab world — with Latin American states.

Breaking decades of policy precedent, Milei has gone further in his support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government than perhaps any other world leader, as Israel faces growing isolation over its bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which has killed over 55,000 Palestinians.

Milei also has pledged to move Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem, joining a handful of countries, including the US, to recognise the contested city as Israel’s capital.

Syria's interior ministry condemned an overnight Israeli incursion in southern Syria, saying Israeli forces killed one person and abducted seven others, calling it a "blatant violation" of the country's sovereignty.

"We affirm that these repeated provocations constitute a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic," the ministry said in a statement, adding that "these practises cannot lead the region to stability and will only result in further tension and turmoil".

Iran's retaliation to any Israeli aggression will be "more forceful and destructive" than in past offensives, Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami told state media on Thursday, after Tehran said it had been alerted of a potential attack.

Israel and Iran exchanged fire twice last year, the first such direct attacks between the region's most entrenched enemies.

(Reuters)

Egypt blocked activists planning to take part in a march to Gaza, halting their attempt to reach the border and challenge Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory before it could begin.

To draw attention to the humanitarian crisis afflicting people in Gaza, marchers have for months planned to trek 30 miles (48 kilometers) across the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt's border with the enclave on Sunday to “create international moral and media pressure” to open the crossing at Rafah and lift a blockade that has prevented aid from entering.

Authorities have deported more than three dozen activists, mostly carrying European passports, upon their arrival at the Cairo International Airport in the past two days, an Egyptian official said Thursday.

The Israeli military on Thursday called for residents to forcibly evacuate some areas of Gaza City, as it presses an intensified violent campaign in the battered Palestinian territory.

Israeli forces are "operating in the area in which you are located to eliminate terrorist infrastructure and enemy presence", the military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X.

The military "will continue to respond to every launch. Immediately evacuate to known shelters in Gaza City for your own safety," he added.

Israel is deporting six more activists who were detained when it seized an aid boat bound for the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, according to the rights group representing them.

The six include Rima Hassan, a French member of the European parliament who Israel had previously barred from entering Israel and the Palestinian territories, citing her support for boycotts of the country.

They were among 12 passengers, including climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, aboard the Madleen, a boat that sought to break Israel's blockade of Gaza and deliver a symbolic amount of aid. Israel seized the vessel early Monday and deported Thunberg and three others the following day.

The last two activists are expected to be deported on Friday, according to Adalah, a local human rights group representing them.

It said the activists were subjected to "mistreatment, punitive measures, and aggressive treatment, and two volunteers were held for some period of time in solitary confinement."

Israeli authorities declined to comment on their treatment.

The US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said Thursday that at least eight people had been killed in an attack on its workers in the Palestinian territory, raising the earlier given toll of five.

"As of now, we can confirm at least eight fatalities, multiple injuries, and we fear that some of our team members have been taken [captive]," GHF interim executive director John Acree said in a statement. The foundation blamed the attack late Wednesday on Hamas.

An Israeli NGO representing activists detained aboard a boat attempting to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza said Thursday that six were en route to the airport for deportation.

"After more than 72 hours in Israeli custody following the unlawful interception of the Madleen Freedom Flotilla in international waters... six volunteers are now being transferred to Ben Gurion Airport for deportation," the Adalah rights group said in a statement.

It added that the six, including two French citizens and nationals of Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey, were expected to be deported later on Thursday or early Friday.

Egyptian authorities have detained more than 200 pro-Palestinian activists in Cairo ahead of a planned international march with the stated aim of breaking Israel's blockade on Gaza, the organisers said Thursday.

"Over 200 participants were detained at Cairo airport or questioned at hotels across Cairo," the march's spokesperson Saif Abukeshek told AFP, adding that those detained included nationals from the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Morocco and Algeria.

The activists had planned to travel to Egypt's Rafah border crossing with Gaza, to demand the entry of humanitarian aid and an end to Israel's blockade on the besieged enclave.

Abukeshek said that plainclothes police entered hotels in Cairo on Wednesday with lists of names, questioned activists and in some cases confiscated mobile phones and searched personal belongings.

"After interrogations, some were arrested and others were released," he added.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed 22 people across the Palestinian territory on Thursday, including 16 who were waiting to collect aid.

The distribution of food and basic supplies in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip has become increasingly fraught and perilous, exacerbating the territory's deep hunger crisis.

Civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told AFP that the Al-Awda Hospital received 10 dead and around 200 wounded, including women and children, "after Israeli drones dropped multiple bombs on gatherings of civilians near an aid distribution point around the Netzarim checkpoint in central Gaza".

He said that Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital received six dead following Israeli attacks on aid queues near Netzarim and in the Al-Sudaniya area in northwestern Gaza.

The Israeli army said it was looking into the reports when asked for comment by AFP.

Israeli troops entered southwestern Syria in the early hours of Thursday and arrested several people who the Israeli military said were members of the Palestinian group Hamas, but which Syria's interior ministry said were civilians.

The arrests in the town of Beit Jinn, about 50 kilometres (31 miles) southwest of the capital Damascus, are part of a resurgence in Israeli military operations in southern Syria after weeks of relative quiet.

The Israeli military said its nighttime operation in Beit Jinn was "based on intelligence gathered in recent weeks" and led to the arrest of "several Hamas terrorists" planning "multiple terror plots" against Israeli civilians and Israeli troops in Syria.

The military's statement said it had confiscated firearms and ammunition and transferred the detainees to Israel for further interrogation.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas. A spokesperson for Syria's interior ministry told Reuters seven people were arrested in the Beit Jinn raid, but denied they were from Hamas, saying they were civilians from the area. The spokesperson said one person was killed by Israeli fire.

Asked whether anyone was killed in its raid, the Israeli military told Reuters that when one of the suspected members attempted to flee, shots were fired and "a hit was identified".

(Reuters) 

Israel's refusal to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and its targeting of aid distribution points is causing civilians to starve which constitutes a war crime, Sweden's foreign minister said Thursday.

In early June, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said deadly attacks on civilians around aid distribution sites in the Gaza Strip constituted "a war crime", while several rights groups including Amnesty International have accused Israel of genocide.

Israel has vehemently rejected that term.

"To use starvation of civilians as a method of war is a war crime. Life-saving humanitarian help must never be politicised or militarised," Maria Malmer Stenergard said at a press conference.

"There are strong indications right now that Israel is not living up to its commitments under international humanitarian law," she said.

"It is crucial that food, water and medicine swiftly reach the civilian population, many of whom are women and children living under wholly inhumane conditions," she said.

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday said internet and fixed-line communication services were down in Gaza following an attack on the territory's last fibre optic cable, accusing Israel of being behind it.

"All internet and fixed-line communication services in the Gaza Strip have been cut off following the targeting of the last remaining main fibre optic line in Gaza," the PA's telecommunications ministry said in a statement, accusing Israel of attempting to cut off Gaza from the world.

A bill put forward by Israel's opposition to dissolve parliament failed to garner enough votes early this morning after a last-minute understanding was reached with ultra-Orthodox parties. 

A standoff between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners over the failure to pass legislation exempting religious students from military draft had prompted opposition parties to bring forward a vote to dissolve parliament. 

However, Yuli Edelstein, chairman of the Knesset's (parliament) Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, managed to reach an agreement on principles for a new conscription law. 

Israeli media reported that 61 MPs voted against the bill while 53 MPs voted in favour of it, preventing the most serious threat to Netanyahu's rule thus far. 

According to parliamentary rules, another dissolution bill cannot be introduced for another six months. 

The UN General Assembly is expected to vote Thursday on a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages held by Hamas, and the opening of all Israeli border crossings for deliveries of desperately needed food and other aid.

The resolution, drafted by Spain and obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press​​​​​​, “strongly condemns any use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says at least five aid workers were killed after one of its buses was attacked, blaming Hamas.

The US and Israeli-backed charity said a bus carrying its staff to a distribution site near Khan Younis in the south was "brutally attacked by Hamas" around 10pm (1900 GMT).

"We are still gathering facts, but what we know is devastating: there are at least five fatalities, multiple injuries, and fear that some of our team members may have been taken [captive]," GHF said in a statement.

In an email to AFP, the group added that all five of the people killed were Palestinian aid workers for GHF.

"These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons and friends, who were risking their lives every day to help others," the group said in its statement condemning the attack.