Israeli attacks continue on Gaza City as nine starved to death in last 24 hours

The live blog has now closed and will be back tomorrow at 9am BST. You can read more of The New Arab's coverage of Israel's war on Gaza here.

London's Metropolitan police said Monday it had charged another 47 people with supporting Palestine Action, bringing the number of activists accused of backing the banned "terrorist" group to 114.

The accused, aged between 18 to 81, will appear in court on October 27 and 28, and face a possible maximum sentence of six months' imprisonment if found guilty, the Met said in a statement.

The UK government proscribed Palestine Action as a terror group in July after two planes were vandalised at a Royal Air Force base, causing an estimated £7 million ($9.3 million) of damage.

Rights groups and UN experts have condemned the ban as legal overreach and a threat to free speech, and several protests have been held in London to denounce the move.

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have continued through the day, with Palestinian news agency Wafa reporting that several Palestinians were killed in multiple strikes around Gaza City, including a woman and a child who were killed in the al-Shati refugee camp.

Further attacks in southern Gaza killed one, while the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah said that one man was killed in a strike on the al-Mazraa School, according to Wafa. 

The Palestinian Authority has condemned any Israeli annexation plans or settlement activity, with Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesperson for President Mahmoud Abbas, warning that such action would be illegitimate. 

The statement comes amid media reports that Israel is planning an annexation of the occupied West Bank in response to further international recognition of Palestine by France, the UK, Canada and Australia at the UN in September.

Israel's army chief warned the Israeli government that plans to conquer Gaza City would lead to a conquest of the whole territory and the installation of a military government, according to a report from Ynet.

"You are heading to a military government," Eyal Zamir said at the meeting, according to the Times of Israel, quoting Ynet, adding, "your plan is leading us there. Understand the implications."

Your decision to conquer Gaza City - and afterwards this will lead to the conquest of the refugee camps in central Gaza - and then it will be a military government. because there will be no other body that could take responsibility for the population," he reportedly continued.

Gaza's Ministry of Health has said that in the last 24 hours, Israeli attacks have killed 98 Palestinians and wounded a further 404. 

The announcement brings the death toll to 63,557 killed and 160,660 wounded since the beginning of Israel's war on the enclave.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation said Monday its members, who include China, India, Russia and Iran, "strongly condemn acts causing civilian casualties and humanitarian disasters in Gaza", according to a statement published by Xinhua news agency.

The SCO said they also "strongly condemn" US and Israeli strikes on Iran in June, in the statement issued after a summit of the 10-member states in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.

Hamas denounced on Monday a plan reportedly being considered by US President Donald Trump for the United States to take control of the devastated Gaza Strip and for its population to be relocated.

Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim slammed the proposal on Monday, asserting "Gaza is not for sale."

"Gaza is... part of the greater Palestinian homeland," he added.

Another official from Hamas, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the group "rejects all these plans that abandon our people and keep the occupier on our land".

They said such proposals were "worthless and unjust", adding that no details of the initiative had been communicated to Hamas.

Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are facing severe water shortages that they say are being driven by increasing attacks on scarce water sources by extremist Jewish settlers.

Across the West Bank in Palestinian communities, residents are reporting shortages that have left taps in homes dry and farms without irrigation.

In Ramallah, one of the largest Palestinian cities in the West Bank and the administrative capital of the Palestinian Authority, residents facing water shortages are now relying on public taps.

"We only get water at home twice a week, so people are forced to come here," said Umm Ziad, as she filled empty plastic bottles with water alongside other Ramallah residents.

The United Nations recorded 62 incidents of Jewish settlers vandalising water wells, pipelines, irrigation networks, and other water-related infrastructure in the West Bank in the first six months of the year.

The Israeli military acknowledged it has received multiple reports of Israeli civilians intentionally causing damage to water infrastructur,e but that no suspects had been identified.

Fierce Mediterranean winds forced back to Barcelona a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists including environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg, organisers said on Monday.

"Due to unsafe weather conditions, we conducted a sea trial and then returned to port to allow the storm to pass," the Global Sumud Flotilla said in a statement of Sunday's departure, without specifying when exactly the boats returned to Barcelona.

Gaza's government media office on Monday welcomed the decision from the International Association of Genocide Scholars, which confirmed that by legal standards, Israel is committing a brutal genocide in Gaza.

"This scientific position strengthens the evidence and documented facts before international courts, and places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the occupation leaders accountable before the International Criminal Court in accordance with the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," a statement from the organisation read.

Nine more Palestinians have starved to death in the last 24 hours, due to Israel's ongoing restrictions on emergency aid, Gaza's health ministry announced on Monday.

The figure includes three children, and brings the total toll of people who have died from malnutrition to 348, including 127 children. 

More than 250 media outlets in over 70 countries staged a front page protest Monday highlighting the deaths of scores of journalists in Israel's war on Gaza, the Reporters Without Borders media freedom group said.

"At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no-one left to keep you informed," the group's general director Thibaut Bruttin said in a statement.

The protest was taken up on the website front pages of publications including Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera, British news site The Independent, French newspapers La Croix and L'Humanite and Germany's TAZ and Frankfurter Rundschau, according to Reporters Without Borders. The New Arab is also involved.

Some 220 journalists have been killed during Israel's Gaza campaign, according to RWB data.

The protest was staged one week after five journalists - some working for Al Jazeera, Associated Press and Reuters - were killed in Israeli strikes on the Nasser Hospital in Gaza's Khan Younis city. Earlier in August, six journalists were killed in another Israeli air strike outside the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

An aid flotilla of dozens of boats that had set sail for Gaza on Sunday carrying aid and pro-Palestinian activists, including climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, has returned to port in Barcelona due to stormy weather, organisers said on Monday.

"We conducted a sea trial and then returned to port to allow the storm to pass. This meant delaying our departure to avoid risking complications with the smaller boats," the Global Sumud Flotilla Mission said in a statement, adding winds had been up to around 35 mph (56 kph).

The organisers did not say when they planned to resume the journey.

Activists including Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham are on the flotilla of several dozen boats that is aiming to break Israel's naval blockade and deliver food and humanitarian supplies to the enclave, which has been devastated by nearly two years of war.

Nine Palestinians have died, including three children, from starvation in Gaza, according to the enclave's health ministry, which added that the total death toll from starvation since the war began is 348 people, including 127 children.

Yemen's Houthi rebels held a funeral on Monday for their prime minister and 11 other senior officials killed in an Israeli air strike that penetrated the Iran-backed group.

Twelve coffins draped in flags were displayed at Sanaa's Al-Shaab mosque, as masked gunmen patrolled the area and thousands of mourners flooded in.

Houthi prime minister Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi, nine ministers and two cabinet officials were killed as they attended a government meeting in the Sanaa area on Thursday.

It was the highest profile assassination to be announced in months of attacks by Israel during the Gaza war. The United States also waged an intense bombing campaign against Houthi targets from March to May this year.

Israel's military chief clashed with the Settlements and National Projects Minister over the former's support for a ceasefire for the release of Israeli captives.

Minister Orit Strock reportedly implied Eyal Zamir was a coward, according to Kan.

The United States has suspended visa approvals for nearly everyone who holds a Palestinian passport, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

The restrictions go beyond those President Donald Trump's administration had previously announced on visitors from Gaza. They would prevent Palestinians from traveling to the United States for medical treatment, attending college and business travel, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified officials.

The State Department said two weeks ago that it was halting all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza while it conducts "a full and thorough" review, a move that has been condemned by pro-Palestine groups. 

The world's leading genocide scholars' association has passed a resolution saying that the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, its president said on Monday.

Eighty-six percent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution, which declares "Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)".

Yemen's Houthis said on Monday they launched a missile towards the Liberia-flagged Israeli-owned tanker 'Scarlet Ray' ship near Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port city of Yanbu.

British maritime security firm Ambrey said on Sunday that the tanker reported an explosion nearby, southwest of Yanbu.

A vessel reported "a splash in close proximity from an unknown projectile and heard a loud bang", the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said, adding that the vessel's crew were all safe and it was continuing to its next voyage.

In a later update, Ambrey said it assessed the vessel to be "aligned with" the targets of Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis' profile given that it was publicly Israeli-owned.

UKMTO did not identify the party responsible, but said authorities were investigating.

Israel must "immediately" improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza, the German government's representative for human rights and humanitarian aid said Monday, ahead of a trip to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Until recently Israel has enjoyed broad support across the political spectrum in Germany, but Chancellor Friedrich Merz's tone towards Israel has sharpened as the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated.

Last month, the United Nations officially declared a famine in Gaza, after a UN-backed report warned that 500,000 people were facing "catastrophic" conditions in the war-ravaged territory.

"The Israeli government must improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza immediately, comprehensively, sustainably, and in accordance with humanitarian principles and international law," said envoy Lars Castellucci, a lawmaker of the Social Democrats, which govern with Merz's conservatives.

He condemned the "immeasurable" suffering of civilians, especially children, who are trapped in the conflict and "bear neither guilt nor responsibility".