Israel-Gaza war live: Palestinians forced to move ‘across a landscape of destruction and death’, UN chief says | Israel-Gaza war

Bodies of about 60 Palestinians reportedly found after Israeli attack on Gaza City

Lorenzo Tondo

Emergency workers claim to have recovered the bodies of approximately 60 Palestinians from two districts of Gaza City after Israeli forces pulled back from days of battles with Hamas militants in the territory’s biggest urban area.

The civil defence agency in Hamas-run Gaza on Friday said the bodies were found in the Tal al-Hawa and Al-Sinaa districts after the week-long offensive.

“There are still missing people under the rubble of destroyed homes, which is difficult for our crews to reach,” the agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said. “There are reports that many people are missing since the first day of the incursion.”

“There are many calls for help but we just cannot reach them. We just do not have enough crews,” Bassal added. He said the Sabha medical centre, near the Gaza City district of Shujaiya, which provides care for 60,000 residents, had been destroyed in the new fighting. This was not immediately confirmed by Israel.

The Israeli military and Shin Bet intelligence agency announced on Friday that they killed Ayman Shweidah, the deputy commander of Hamas’s Shujaiya battalion. The joint statement said he was involved in planning the 7 October attacks and took part in the fighting that followed.

On Wednesday the Israeli army had dropped leaflets warning “everyone in Gaza City” – the focus of a heavy Israeli assault this week – that it would “remain a dangerous combat zone”. The leaflets urged residents to flee and set out designated escape routes from the area where the UN humanitarian office said up to 350,000 people had been sheltering.

Many civilians told the Guardian they had concluded there was no refuge in war-stricken Gaza and said they lacked confidence in the safe corridors set by Israel. Residents said they also feared that if they left they would not be able to take belongings or return.

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The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said on Friday it had enough funds to continue operating through September, after a pledging conference for the embattled body where UN chief António Guterres pleaded for help from donors.

“We have worked tirelessly with partners to restore confidence in the agency,” Unrwa chief Philippe Lazzarini said, after several nations withheld funding after Israeli allegations in January that a number of Unrwa’s employees participated in the 7 October attack by Hamas.

Lazzarini said new pledges of funds would help ensure emergency operations until September, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Guterres had pleaded with donors to fund the embattled UN agency, warning that Palestinians would lose a “critical lifeline” without Unrwa.

“Let me be clear – there is no alternative to Unrwa,” he said. “Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in Gaza – somehow, appallingly, civilians are being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell,” Guterres added.

According to Guterres, 195 Unrwa staff members have been killed in the war, the highest death toll for staff in UN history.

The US Congress has barred further funding for Unrwa. President Joe Biden’s administration has instead directed funding for Palestinian civilians to other bodies while saying that Unrwa is uniquely equipped to distribute aid.

It is coming up to 11am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) has said it has enough funds to continue operating until September, after a pledging conference for the embattled body where the UN chief, António Guterres, pleaded for help from donors.

“We have worked tirelessly with partners to restore confidence in the agency,” Unrwa head Philippe Lazzarini said on Friday, after several nations withheld funding after Israeli allegations in January that some Unrwa employees took part in the 7 October attack by Hamas.

Lazzarini said new pledges of funds would help ensure emergency operations until September, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Guterres had pleaded with donors to fund the agency, warning that Palestinians would lose a “critical lifeline” without Unrwa and accusing Israel of issuing evacuation orders that forced Palestinians “to move like human pinballs across a landscape of destruction and death”.

“Let me be clear – there is no alternative to Unrwa,” Guterres said. “Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in Gaza, somehow, appallingly, civilians are being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell,” he added.

More on that in a moment, but first here is a summary of other recent key events:

• Israeli forces pulled back from parts of Gaza City after a fierce, week-long offensive that met with Hamas resistance, leaving dozens of dead and wrecking homes and roads, rescuers said. The Gaza Civil Emergency Service said teams had collected about 60 bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces over the past week from the area of Tel Al-Hawa and the edges of the Sabra neighbourhood in Gaza City, Reuters reported. While tanks withdrew from some areas, Israeli snipers and tanks continued to control some high ground, residents and rescue teams said, warning residents against trying to return.

• “There are bodies scattered in the streets, dismembered bodies, there are bodies of entire families, there are also bodies inside a home of an entire family that was completely burned,” a Gaza Strip civil defence spokesperson, Mahmoud Basal, said on Friday in comments carried by media in Hamas-run Gaza. He said the Sabha medical centre, which provides care for 60,000 residents and is near the Gaza City district of Shujaiya, had been destroyed in the new fighting.

• Israel’s military said it had found drones and other weaponry in what it called a Hamas combat complex inside Unrwa’s former headquarters in Gaza City – the Palestinian territory’s biggest urban area – and had evacuated civilians from the area before attacking. The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had attacked Israeli forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire, killing and wounding many. There was no immediate Israeli army comment on those claims.

• Israeli strikes killed another 32 people in Gaza, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Friday. Hamas media reported “more than 70 airstrikes” in several parts of the territory, including Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre and Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, in addition to Gaza City in the north. In Khan Younis, Hamas media said four people working for the Al-Khair Foundation, a Muslim NGO based in Britain and Turkey, were killed in an airstrike at an aid distribution centre.

• The Israeli military and Shin Bet intelligence agency said they killed Ayman Shweidah, the deputy commander of Hamas’s Shujaiya battalion. The joint statement on Friday said he was involved in planning the 7 October attacks and took part in the fighting that followed.

• Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed that its negotiating team, led by the Mossad intelligence chief David Barnea, had returned to Israel after talks with mediators in Doha on Thursday. Speaking after the team’s return, the Israeli prime minister said Israel needed control of the Palestinian side of Gaza’s border with Egypt to stop weapons reaching Hamas. The condition conflicts with Hamas’s position that Israel must withdraw from all Gaza territory after a ceasefire.

• Joe Biden acknowledged “difficult, complex issues” remained between Israel and Hamas but said progress towards a ceasefire deal was being made. The US president also said he was “disappointed” with the problem-plagued effort to deliver aid to Gaza via a $230m temporary pier, which US officials say will soon permanently end.

• The US has stepped up efforts to target violent Israeli settlers, adding new individuals and organisations to a growing sanctions list and warning banks to check transactions linked to all Israeli “outposts” in the occupied West Bank. The new sanctions cover the far-right group Lehava, already listed by the UK, and two founding members of Tsav9, a campaign group that blocked aid from reaching Gaza.

• The Israeli government’s security cabinet has approved a plan to extend compulsory military service for men to 36 months from the current 32 months, Israel’s Ynet news outlet reported. The 36-month rule would stay in force for the next eight years, Ynet said on Friday. The measure was likely to be submitted to a vote in a full cabinet meeting on Sunday, it said.

• Israel’s military said on Friday that one of its soldiers was killed in combat near the border with Lebanon a day earlier, identifying the man as a 33-year-old sergeant. It did not specify how he died, but Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said he was killed in a drone strike. Israel’s military also said on Friday that a day earlier it had struck a military post in southern Syria in retaliation after a projectile was fired from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

• US forces destroyed three Houthi uncrewed aerial vehicles in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen after judging them to be an “imminent threat”, US central command said.

• Dutch judges refused an urgent request by rights groups to penalise the Netherlands for not respecting a ban on supplying F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel. “It has not been demonstrated that the state is not complying with the ban or does not intend to continue to comply with the ban,” the judges said on Friday. “Therefore, there is no penalty for a violation.”