The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said it will open two supply distribution centres intended to provide aid on Thursday, Reuters is reporting. The group closed its facilities after the Israeli army warned that roads leading to distribution centres were “considered combat zones” and was due to reopen them this morning, but pushed the time back for what it said were maintenance and repair work. It did not say when distribution of supplies would resume later today. The group has been fiercely criticised by humanitarian organisations, including the United Nations. The UN has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave. Three journalists have been killed and a fourth critically wounded a fourth in an Israeli attack on Al-Ahli Hospital, also known as the Baptist Hospital, in Gaza City, Al Jazeera has reported. “The attack was aimed directly at the hospital and resulted in multiple casualties,” the hospital director said. “This is the eighth attack of its kind targeting the facility since the start of the war, and this is a heavy burden on the residents since many hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been ceased their operation.” UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, has highlighted the lack of hygiene supplies for women and girls menstruating in the Gaza Strip. In a post on X on Thursday, the UN agency wtote: ‘Every time my period comes, I wish I weren’t a girl,’ says an adolescent in Gaza. There are around 700,000 women and girls of menstruating age from the Gaza Strip. Since the State of Israel imposed a siege on Gaza on 2 March, there has been a complete depletion of hygiene supplies, including sanitary pads. Almost 90% of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza has been either destroyed or partially damaged, the United Nations Population Fund reported. A joint statement from the Israeli army and the Shin Bet internal security agency said the bodies of Israeli-American hostages, Judih Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai (see 8.33am BST), were recovered from the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip in an overnight operation. “The rescue operation was conducted by … troops in coordination with the intelligence directorate and special forces,” it added, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). An Israeli military official said the couple were killed on the morning of 7 October by fighters of the Mujahideen Brigades, an armed group close to Hamas ally Islamic Jihad. Coverage of the war in Gaza is constrained by Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists and a bar on international reporters entering the Gaza Strip to report independently on the war. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza since 7 October 2023, unless they are under Israeli military escort. Reporters who join these trips have no control over where they go, and other restrictions include a bar on speaking to Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinian journalists and media workers inside Gaza have paid a heavy price for their work reporting on the war, with over 160 killed since the conflict began. The committee to protect journalists has determined that at least 19 of them “were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders”. Foreign reporters based in Israel filed a legal petition seeking access to Gaza, but it was rejected by the supreme court on security grounds. Private lobbying by diplomats and public appeals by prominent journalists and media outlets have been ignored by the Israeli government. To ensure accurate reporting from Gaza given these restrictions, the Guardian works with trusted journalists on the ground; our visual teams verify photo and videos from third parties; and we use clearly sourced data from organisations that have a track record of providing accurate information in Gaza during past conflicts, or during other conflicts or humanitarian crises. Israeli president Isaac Herzog has described the return of the bodies of two Israeli-Americans, Judih Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai (see 8.33am BST), as “a moment of deep pain, but also one of solace and the resolution of uncertainty”. “We will continue to do everything in our power to bring our sisters and brothers back from hell,” he said in a post on X. Ms Rachel, the children’s entertainer and educator whose YouTube videos have been watched by millions of families around the world, said she is willing to risk her career to keep advocating for suffering children in Gaza. In an interview with WBUR, a Boston-based public radio station, Ms Rachel, whose full name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, said she had received pushback for speaking out to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza, where more than 54,000 people have been killed in Israel’s ongoing military assault. But Accurso said she would continue to advocate for children’s safety. “I wouldn’t be Ms Rachel if I didn’t deeply care about all kids. And I would risk everything, and I will risk my career over and over to stand up for them. It’s all about the kids for me,” Accurso told WBUR. The UN has described Gaza as “the hungriest place on Earth”, and warned that the Palestinian territory’s entire population is at risk of famine. Accurso said she had recently met with Palestinian women whose children were suffering in Gaza. “When you sit with a mother who’s FaceTiming her boys in Gaza who don’t have food, and you see that anguish and you are there with her, it really moves you – I’m sorry to get emotional – to do everything you can for her,” she said. “And of course, you say: ‘I need to do more. What can I do to help?’ I do have a big platform, and I look at it as a responsibility.” In April, a pro-Israel group urged the US attorney general to investigate Accurso over her messaging about children suffering in Gaza, and Accurso has been criticised by rightwing media and commentators. Asked about the criticism, Accurso said: It’s really painful. And I have to remind myself that people don’t know my heart, and people try to tell you who you are, but you know who you are. And I know how deeply and equally I care for all children, and I do lean on my faith in that situation. Russian president Vladimir Putin is ready to “help resolve” the standoff between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme, the Kremlin said on Thursday. “We have a close partnership with Tehran. And President Putin said that he was ready to use this partnership to help resolve the Iranian nuclear issue,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). After a call between the leaders on Wednesday, US president Donald Trump said Putin had offered to “participate” in talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme, as Trump accused Iran of “slow-walking” its response to Washington’s offer of a deal. Washington and Tehran have held five rounds of talks since April to thrash out a new accord to replace the nuclear deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018. Trump said on Monday that his administration would not allow “any” enrichment of uranium, despite Tehran’s insistence that it has the right under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier on Wednesday that Washington’s proposal was against Tehran’s national interest. Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires: Keir Starmer has called Israel’s recent actions in Gaza “appalling, counterproductive and intolerable”, as the UK government comes under mounting pressure to take stronger action after the killings of dozens of civilians at food points in recent days. The prime minister told MPs on Wednesday the UK was considering imposing sanctions on members of the Israeli government, but is so far resisting growing calls for a complete ban on arms sales and immediate recognition of Palestine. Starmer was speaking after several attacks at food distribution hubs in recent days left dozens of people dead and hundreds more injured. The attacks prompted British aid charities to step up calls for urgent humanitarian and political action, and the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) described conditions in Gaza as “worse than hell on earth”. With protests taking place outside the Commons and growing unease from MPs inside it, Starmer said: Israel’s recent action is appalling and, in my view, counterproductive and intolerable. He added: We will keep looking at further action, along with our allies, including sanctions, but let me be absolutely clear: we need to get back to a ceasefire, we need the hostages, who have been held for a very long time, to be released, and we desperately need more aid, at speed and at volume, into Gaza, because it is an appalling and intolerable situation. The ICRC president, Mirjana Spoljaric, said what was happening in Gaza surpassed “any acceptable legal, moral and humane standard” that “humanity was failing” and that the Palestinian people had been “stripped of human dignity”. Visiting EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Šuica said on Thursday that a €175m package for Syria was a “clear message” of support for its reconstruction, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Šuica announced the package in Damascus on Wednesday, saying it would focus on sectors including energy, education, health and agriculture, helping rebuild Syria’s economy, support its institutions and promote human rights. “I came here … with a clear message that we are here to assist and help Syria on its recovery,” Šuica told AFP in an interview on Thursday. “We want that reconstruction and recovery will be Syria-owned and Syria-led,” she said, on the first visit by an EU commissioner since a transitional government was announced in late March. “We want to see Syria to be a regular, normal, democratic country in the future,” she added. The EU announced last month it would lift economic sanctions on Syria to help its recovery. “This is a pivotal moment – a new chapter in EU-Syria relations,” Šuica said on X, calling her meeting with interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa “constructive”. Like Syria’s neighbours, western governments are keen to steer it on to the road to stability after the war triggered an exodus of millions of refugees. Refugee returns should be “safe, voluntary and dignified”, Šuica told AFP. The EU has not designated Syria as a safe country for returns “because we don’t want to push people to come here and then they don’t have a home”, she said. “We cannot pronounce one part of Syria safe and another not,” Šuica said, noting that designating Syria a safe country needs “unanimity among 27 European member states”. She said Syrian foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani would attend a ministerial meeting involving almost a dozen Mediterranean countries in Brussels on 23 June. According to AFP, a statement released on Wednesday said that the European Commission was “actively pursuing the integration of Syria into several key initiatives with its Mediterranean partner countries”. “We want to see Syria united” and inclusive, Šuica told AFP. “This is a process. It will happen step by step.” The United States has vetoed a United Nations security council resolution calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza while the 14 remaining countries on the council voted in favour. The vetoed resolution also called the situation in Gaza “catastrophic”, and demanded the “immediate and unconditional lifting of all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and its safe and unhindered distribution at scale, including by the UN and humanitarian partners”. It was the fifth time that the US has vetoed a security council draft ceasefire resolution in order to protect Israel. Washington vetoed a similar resolution in November, under the Biden administration, on the grounds that the ceasefire demand was not directly linked to the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas. The text was co-sponsored by Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Somalia. Russia, China, France and the UK also voted in favour. “The Council was prevented from shouldering its responsibility, despite the fact that most of us seem to be converging on one view,” said France’s ambassador to the UN Jérôme Bonnafont. “Today, the United States sent a strong message by vetoing a counterproductive UN security council resolution on Gaza targeting Israel,” US secretary of state Marco Rubio said in a statement after the vote. He said Washington would not support any text that “draws a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, or disregards Israel’s right to defend itself. The United States will continue to stand with Israel at the UN”. Israel also welcomed the US veto. Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 10 people in the battered Palestinian territory on Thursday as the military keeps up an intensified offensive. “Ten martyrs so far resulting from Israeli strikes since dawn,” agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP), adding that they had targeted an area where displaced civilians were sheltering in the southern city of Khan Younis and houses in Gaza City and the central town of Deir el-Balah. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. Donald Trump has signed a sweeping order banning travel from 12 countries and restricting travel from seven others, reviving and expanding the travel bans from his first term. The nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen will be “fully” restricted from entering the US, according to the proclamation. Meanwhile, the entry of nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will be partially restricted. The US president said that he “considered foreign policy, national security, and counter-terrorism goals” in deciding the scope of the ban. Trump had cued up the ban in an executive order signed on 20 January, his first day back in the White House, instructing his administration to submit a list of candidates for a ban by 21 March. Trump has cited a range of justifications for the bans, including national security and concerns that visitors from those countries are overstaying their visas. But advocates and experts have said that blanket travel bans discriminate against groups of people based on ethnicity alone. They will likely result – as the travels bans did during Trump’s first term – in the separation of families. The bans on travel from Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela could be especially impactful in US communities with huge immigrant populations from those countries. A US- and Israeli-backed group operating aid sites in Gaza pushed back the reopening of its facilites set for Thursday, as the Israeli army warned that roads leading to distribution centres were “considered combat zones”, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) closed its aid distribution centres after a string of deadly incidents near sites it operates that drew sharp condemnation from the United Nations. Israeli bombardment on Wednesday killed at least 48 people across the Gaza Strip, including 14 in a single strike on a tent sheltering displaced people, the civil defence agency said. A day earlier, the civil defence and the International Committee of the Red Cross said 27 people were killed when Israeli troops opened fire near a GHF site in southern Gaza. The military said the incident was under investigation. The UK called for an “immediate and independent investigation”, echoing a demand from UN secretary general António Guterres. UK Middle East minister Hamish Falconer said the deaths of Palestinians as they sought food were “deeply disturbing”, calling Israel’s new measures for aid delivery “inhumane”. Israel recently eased its blockade of Gaza, but the United Nations says the territory’s entire population remains at risk of famine. The Associated Press (AP) has some more background on the couple: Judih Weinstein Haggai, 72, taught English to children with special needs at Nir Oz kibbutz, a small community near the Gaza border. The kibbutz said she also taught meditation techniques to children and teenagers with anxiety as a result of rocket fire from Gaza. Gad Haggai, 73, was a retired chef and jazz musician. The couple, who were US citizens while Judih Weinstein Haggai was originally from Canada, were survived by two sons and two daughters and seven grandchildren, the kibbutz said. Also, my colleague, Caroline Davies, spoke to the British nephew of Judih Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai in 2023, when the family did not know if couple were alive, kidnapped or dead after attack on Nir Oz kibbutz. You can read the interview here: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday the bodies of two Israeli-Americans killed in Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack and held in Gaza had been returned to Israel. Netanyahu said the remains of Judih Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai were recovered and returned to Israel in a special operation by the army and the Shin Bet internal security agency. According to the Associated Press (AP). He said in a statement: Together with all the citizens of Israel, my wife and I extend our heartfelt condolences to the dear families. Our hearts ache for the most terrible loss. May their memory be blessed. Nir Oz kibbutz announced the deaths of Weinstein, 70, and Haggai, 72, in December 2023. The military said they were killed in the 7 October 2023 attack and that their bodies were recently recovered from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. The Israeli-American couple were taking an early morning walk near their home in Nir Oz kibbutz on the morning of 7 October 2023 when Hamas militants stormed across the border and rampaged through several army bases and farming communities. In the early hours of the morning, Weinstein was able to call emergency services and let them know that she and her husband had been shot and send a message to her family. In other developments: A US- and Israeli-backed group operating aid sites in Gaza pushed back the reopening of its facilites set for Thursday, as the Israeli army warned that roads leading to distribution centres were “considered combat zones”. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) closed its aid distribution centres after a string of deadly incidents near sites it operates that drew sharp condemnation from the United Nations. Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 10 people in the battered Palestinian territory on Thursday as the military keeps up an intensified offensive. “Ten martyrs so far resulting from Israeli strikes since dawn,” agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP, adding that they had targeted an area where displaced civilians were sheltering in the southern city of Khan Younis and houses in Gaza City and the central town of Deir el-Balah. UN security council members criticised the US on Wednesday after it vetoed a resolution calling for a ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access in Gaza, which Washington said undermined ongoing diplomacy. “Today, the United States sent a strong message by vetoing a counterproductive UN security council resolution on Gaza targeting Israel,” secretary of state Marco Rubio said in a statement after Wednesday’s 14 to 1 vote. Israeli bombardment on Wednesday killed at least 48 people across the Gaza Strip, including 14 in a single strike on a tent sheltering displaced people, the civil defence agency said. A day earlier, the civil defence and the International Committee of the Red Cross said 27 people were killed when Israeli troops opened fire near a GHF site in southern Gaza. The military said the incident was under investigation.
Author: Tom Bryant (now) and Amy Sedghi (earlier)