Relief agencies criticise Israel's Gaza aid plans as scores killed in new strikes

The live blog has now ended. Thank you for following. We will be back tomorrow with more updates.

Several Palestinians were injured in Jabalia al-Balad after Israeli forces shelled an apartment - Wafa reports.

Three children were arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank - Al Jazeera reports. 

The children were arrested while the forces were raising the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilya.

In Gaza, the civil defence agency said on Saturday that an overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Younis refugee camp killed at least 11 people, including three infants aged one or less.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal say they were killed in the "bombardment of the Al-Bayram family home in Khan Yunis camp" at around 3:00 am.

Bassal told AFP that eight of the dead had been identified and were all from the same extended family, including a boy and a girl, both one year old, and a month-old baby.

An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed the strike, claiming it targeted a "Hamas member", without providing any evidence.

An Israeli drone strike killed several Palestinians in Rafah and targeted a group of civilians in the city.

Medical sources told Wafa the strike targeted civilians in the Al-Mawasi area.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday said Gaza mediator Qatar needed to "stop playing both sides" over negotiations for a truce in the Palestinian territory with Hamas.

"The time has come for Qatar to stop playing both sides with its double talk and decide if it's on the side of civilization or if it's on the side of Hamas barbarism," Netanyahu wrote on X, adding: "Israel will win this just war with just means."

Two Palestinian sisters were killed after Israeli airstrikes targeted a home in Khan Younis.

Local sources confirmed to Wafa that the strike destroyed the house completely.

The Israeli military was issuing call-up notices to thousands of reservists on Saturday to support an expansion of its offensive in Gaza, Israeli media reported, after the prime minister announced that his upcoming visit to Azerbaijan was postponed.

The reservists will be deployed to Israel's border with Lebanon and in the occupied West Bank, replacing regular soldiers who will lead a new offensive in Gaza, the news site Ynet reported.

The military had no immediate comment.

(Reuters) 

An Egyptian court has sentenced two Israelis to five years in jail for assaulting hotel workers in the Red Sea town of Taba near the border with Israel last year, an Egyptian security source said on Saturday.

In August, three tourists and two Egyptian hotel workers were injured when a fight broke out at a hotel after one of the tourists insulted one of the employees, security sources said at the time. 

(Reuters)

At least three Palestinians were killed after Israeli strikes targeted a residential building in Gaza City, Wafa reports.

The agency says the strikes also caused a lot of civilian injuries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has postponed next week's visit to Azerbaijan, his office announced on Saturday, in part due to recent developments in Gaza and Syria.

The prime minister's office also cited "the intense diplomatic and security schedule" and said the visit would be rescheduled, without announcing a new date.

Netanyahu was to visit Azerbaijan from 7-11 May and was expected to meet with President Ilham Aliyev. Israel and Azerbaijan maintain close security and energy ties.

(Reuters) 

Two Palestinian journalists and an activist were detained by armed Israeli settlers in Ramallah while reporting Israeli attacks in the area, Wafa reports.

A local activist, Rabee Abu Naeem, told the agency that the settlers got out of their vehicle and took him and Mohammad Turkman, Karim Khmayseh, and Ahmad Al-Khatib.

Naeem also said the settlers tried to take their car keys and prevent them from leaving the area, tried to take their filming equipment and threatened them with death.

The Gaza Health Ministry revealed that over 52,495 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October 2023, while at least 118,366 have been injured. The toll does not include the 11,000 missing presumed dead.

The Ministry has received 77 bodies over the past 24 hours and 275 injuries.

The Israel prime minister's office has denied reporting earlier today by The Washington Post which claimed that Israeli officials were working with the ousted US national security chief Mike Waltz to press Trump into backing an attack on Iran.

"Contrary to the Washington Post report, PM Netanyahu did not have intensive contact with Mike Waltz on Iran," Netanyahu's office wrote on X.

According to the Post, Trump's decision to fire Waltz this week was in part motivated by his "intense coordination" with Israel over an attack on Tehran's nuclear sites.

Hamas has released a video of a prisoner held in Gaza who Israeli media says is Israeli-Russian national Maxim Herkin.

In the footage, Herkin appears injured and claims to have survived an Israeli airstrike after the collapse of the recent ceasefire.

Herkin - who was among the civilians taken hostage from the Nova Music festival on 7 October 2023 - criticises Netanyahu for failing to secure the remaining captives' release, and calls on Israelis to protest against the government.

Though the video is undated, he makes reference to Israel's Independence Day that took place earlier this week, indicating that it was filmed recently.

The Israeli air force has flown unspecified equipment and humanitarian aid to Druze territory in southern Syria, according to Israel Army Radio.

Israeli sources say the equipment was sent to a location in Suweida 70 kilometres from Israel's borders.

Officials from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) said Syrian authorities on Saturday detained the head of the faction, which was close to ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad's government.

An official from the Damascus-based faction, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive, told AFP that "secretary-general Talal Naji was arrested" in the capital. A second official confirmed the arrest, while a third source from the faction said "Naji was asked... to report to one of the security branches and has not returned. Most likely he was arrested."

(AFP)

Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, the prime minister of Yemen's internationally recognized government, said on Saturday he had submitted his resignation.

In a statement, Mubarak said he had faced "lots of difficulties", including being unable to reshuffle the government.

(Reuters)

The Israeli military has evacuated five injured people from Syria's Druze community for treatment in Israel, it said in a statement on Saturday.

The people were treated at a medical centre in the northern Israeli city of Safed.

The army is "deployed in the southern Syrian region and are prepared to prevent hostile forces from entering the region and Druze villages", it said.

The Israeli military has launched dozens of airstrikes against Syria in recent days claiming to defend Syria's Druze community following clashes between government forces and Druze gunmen.

The Foreign Press Association has condemned Israel's refusal to allow foreign journalists into Gaza.

In a statement marking World Press Freedom Day, the association described the restrictions as a "mark of shame" on the country and called on the government to lift its "unprecedented" ban.

Foreign Press Association statement for World Press Freedom Day- access into Gaza for journalists pic.twitter.com/upPGA20tGG

— Foreign Press Assoc. (@FPAIsPal) May 3, 2025

This week, US president Donald Trump ousted his national security chief Mike Waltz, a decision that according to The Washington Post was in part motivated by his discussions with Israeli leaders about attacking Iran.

Sources say that Waltz had been in intense discussions with the Israelis about the US backing a military strike against Tehran's nuclear sites, a position opposed by the US president who favours a diplomatic solution.

The former natsec chief had come out in support of Netanyah when the Israeli leader presented attack plans at the White House last month.

Waltz “wanted to take US policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the US hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution,” according to one of the Post's sources.

“It got back to Trump and the president wasn’t happy with it,” that person said.

Members of the administration reportedly felt that Waltz was working with the Israelis to push the US into a war against Trump's wishes.

A UN envoy has condemned Israel's escalating attacks on Syria and urged it to stop the aggression "at once".

"I strongly condemn Israel's continued and escalating violations of Syria's sovereignty, including multiple air strikes in Damascus and other cities," the UN's Syria envoy Geir Pedersen wrote in a post on X.

"I call for these attacks to cease at once and for Israel to stop endangering Syrian civilians and to respect international law and Syria's sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity and independence."

Pedersen's statement came hours after Israel launched another barrage of airstrikes against Syrian military targets.

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 77 people over the past 48 hours, the local health ministry said this morning.

Some 275 others have been wounded.

Almost 52,500 people have been killed during Israel's 19-month war on Gaza, according to the ministry's latest tally.

The number of people who have died from starvation in Gaza has risen to 57, local authorities said today, as Israel's blockade approaches its ninth week.

The "vast majority" of the victims were children, the Gaza Government Media Office said, adding the number is expected to increase as Israel continues to block food from entering the strip.

Relief agencies have criticised Israeli plans to allow aid into Gaza, which they say do not meet humanitarian standards and could facilitate further displacement.

Under a proposal being discussed by the Netanyahu government, Israel would vet who is allowed to receive food and cut out some of the largest organisations involved in aid distribution, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Israel has imposed a nine-week blockade on Gaza that the UN and other agencies say amounts to the deliberate starvation of the territory's 2.2 million residents.

"What we’re seeing is an attempt to . . . essentially instrumentalise the delivery of aid to pursue military objectives," the newspaper quotes the Norwegian Refugee Council's Gavin Kelleher as saying.

"The suggestion that a party to the conflict can vet the employees or civilians of another party to the conflict . . . is just not something that lines up at all with a principled humanitarian response."

Under the plans, food distribution would be restricted to specific 'humanitarian zones', which Kelleher said could facilitate further forced displacement.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Saturday that an overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp killed at least 11 people including three babies up to a year old.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal reported 11 killed "after the bombardment of the Al-Bayram family home in the Khan Yunis camp" in southern Gaza at around 3:00 am (0000 GMT).

Bassal told AFP that eight of the dead had been identified and were all from the same extended family, including a boy and girl, both one-year-olds, and a month-old baby.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.

(AFP)

The US launched a new round of airstrikes in Yemen against the Houthis overnight, media affiliated with the rebel group reported.

The strikes reportedly took place in the Amran province in the north of the country. No further details have been reported.

This came as the Israeli military said it had intercepted another missile launched from Yemen.

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 28 Palestinians since dawn today, Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting, citing medical sources on the ground.

Israel could soon start allowing humanitarian aid to enter Gaza under an agreement with the US, easing starvation conditions in the strip which has been under blockade for almost nine weeks.

Axios reported yesterday that US and Israeli officials have agreed to establish a new organisation that will distribute aid in the war-torn territory.

The UN and aid agencies on the ground have warned that food will run out in the coming days, and have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.

The Israeli government has until now rejected calls to lift the siege, saying that it will only relent when Hamas releases the remaining Israeli prisoners.

The report comes days after US President Donald Trump said he told the Israeli prime minister to "be good to Gaza" and allow food and aid to enter the strip.