Gaza live: Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza and Yemen
Live Updates
Israeli forces have killed at least 52 Palestinians and wounded 208 more in the last 24 hours, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
This brings the Palestinian death toll since 7 October to 38,295, with more than 88,241 wounded and an estimated 10,000 missing - likely dead and buried under rubble.
Health officials report that approximately 70 percent of the victims are women and children.
The Israeli military issued new forced displacement orders for Palestinians in northern Gaza, calling on them to move south.
The orders, seen by Palestinians as an attempt to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza, come amid intensifying Israeli aerial and ground attacks in the war-ravaged area.
The population is also under a tight Israeli siege, preventing the entry of basic medicine and food items, which has led to a deadly starvation crisis.
Hundreds of thousand of Palestinians have stayed in northern Gaza after refusing to flee earlier in the war following similar displacement orders, fearing they would not be allowed to return.
Those who have fled have been blocked from returning, with some killed or arrested while taking the journey on the Israeli-designated "humanitarian corridors".
The new orders, detailed in leaflets dropped by the Israeli military on Wednesday, called on people to flee along two "safe corridors" from Gaza City to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
The Israeli army is committing massacres in Khan Younis, Deir Balah & Nuseirat in southern #Gaza. Now drop leaflets instructing civilians in northern Gaza and Gaza City to move to these areas.
— Nour Naim| نُور (@NourNaim88) July 10, 2024
Just hours ago, they carried out a massacre in southern Gaza killed dozens of civilians pic.twitter.com/3rIHddTqqm
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday draft notices would be delivered in the next few weeks to some ultra-Orthodox Jews who had previously been exempt from serving in the Israeli military.
Israel's Supreme Court ruled last month that the defence ministry must end the longstanding exemption for ultra-Orthodox Jews from mandatory military service.
Speaking in the Israeli parliament, Gallant said the plan was to send out thousands of draft notices, though not all served with such notices would end up serving.
The fractious coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relies on two ultra-Orthodox parties who oppose the end of the exemption. However, the armed forces say they need more recruits to keep Israel safe and sustain the war on Gaza.
Reporting by Reuters
As Israel violently took control of the Rafah crossing in Gaza, the only gateway between Palestine and Egypt, Abubakar* reflected on decades of strife on either side of the boundary.
The 67-year-old tribal judge, who lives in North Sinai, has lived through many violent Israeli incursions and invasions, as well as times of relative calm.
“In the past, movement was easy. The residents never felt like they were from two different countries or communities,” he told Middle East Eye.
“It wasn't until the division and the demarcation of the borders between Egypt and Gaza that two different identities emerged.”
That boundary was drawn in 1982, and meant that Rafah was one of a few cities in the world, like Nicosia and Jerusalem, that's divided across two different territories.
Both parts of the divided city face significant hardship.
In Egypt's Rafah, in the Sinai peninsula northeast of the country, authorities have razed the entire city to the ground, leaving its residents displaced and disillusioned.
On the Palestinian side, in southern Gaza, the people of Rafah - already under 17 years of Israeli-enforced blockade - have lived under daily Israeli bombs since 7 October.
Read more: The families torn apart by Rafah's split between Egypt and Gaza
Four UN schools were hit in the last four days, Unrwa's chief said on Wednesday.
In a post on X, Philippe Lazzarini said schools in Gaza have gone from places of education for children to overcrowded shelters for displaced families and finally "a place of death and misery".
"The blatant disregard of international humanitarian law cannot become the new normal," he said.
"Ceasefire now before we lose what is left of our common humanity."
#Gaza
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) July 10, 2024
4 schools hit in the last 4 days.
Since the war began, two thirds of @UNRWA schools in Gaza have been hit, some were bombed out, many severely damaged.
Schools have gone from safe places of #education & hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a…
Intense clashes were reported south of Gaza City in the Tal al-Hawa area on Wednesday, according to local media.
Al Jazeera and Israeli online news groups said Israeli helicopters departed the area amid heavy gunfire, likely transferring wounded soldiers to Israel.
Israel launched a new assault on southern Gaza City earlier this week, prompting a fresh wave of displacements for tens of thousands of civilians.
A high-ranking Israeli negotiations team is flying to Doha ahead of a four-way summit described as "decisive" for the ongoing indirect talks with Hamas, Haaretz reported.
The team is led by Mossad chief David Barnea, who is set to meet with his US and Egyptian counterparts, CIA director William Burns and head of Egyptian intelligence Abbas Kamel, and Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.
Barnea is accompanied by Shin Bet director Ronen Bar and Nitzan Alon, the military's point person on captives, according to Haaretz.
Around 70 percent of Gaza City is inaccessible to rescue teams due to Israeli fire, the Palestinian civil defence has said.
Gaza City, devastated by Israeli attacks over the past nine months, has come under renewed wide-scale assaults in recent weeks.
Israeli protesters blocked a junction near Tel Aviv calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, a prisoner swap deal and elections.
Demonstrators held signs against the "government of destruction" before police arrived at the scene, detained nine people and reopened the road, according to the Times of Israel.
כביש 4 צפונה באזור הוד השרון נחסם בידי מוחים הקוראים לעסקת חטופים pic.twitter.com/ewymRyRKk3
— גלצ (@GLZRadio) July 10, 2024
The captain of a vessel located 40 nautical miles south of Yemen's Mokha reported an explosion in close proximity to the ship, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said on Wednesday.
UKMTO said the vessel and crew are safe.
Reporting by Reuters
Israeli forces shot and wounded a teenage boy in the Beit Furik town near Nablus in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
The boy, 14, was shot in the leg during a military incursion into the town.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said on Wednesday it has received a report of an incident 40 nautical miles south of Yemen's Mokha.
UKMTO said that authorities are investigating the incident.
Reporting by Reuters
Good morning Middle East Eye readers,
Here are the latest updates from the Israeli war on Gaza, now in its 278th day:
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Israeli air strikes in Gaza City and the Nuseirat refugee camp have killed at least eight Palestinians on Wednesday morning, including six children, and wounded dozens more, according to Wafa news agency.
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The EU's foreign relations chief Josep Borrell condemned the deadly Tuesday Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis, which killed at least 25. "For how long are innocent civilians going to bear the brunt of this conflict?" he said.
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The Israeli military announced a soldier was killed by Palestinian fire in central Gaza on Tuesday.
Our live coverage from Gaza will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.
Here are some of the day's key developments:
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Gaza's health ministry said that the Palestinian death toll from Israel's war on Gaza has risen to 38,243, with 50 people killed in the past 24 hours. Additionally, 88,033 people have been wounded since the start of the war on 7 October
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A new investigation by Israeli outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call has found that Israeli soldiers have been shooting Palestinians, including civilians "virtually at will" during their operations in Gaza
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Famine has spread through the Gaza Strip, with several more children having died due to malnutrition, a group of independent human rights experts mandated by the UN have said
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Israel has lashed out at a UN report that accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” which has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza
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An ex-bodyguard to Hezbollah's leader and an Iranian commander were killed in an Israeli air strike on a vehicle in the Damascus countryside along the Syria-Lebanon border, according to L'Orient Today
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Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has approved a plan to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military
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French President Emmanuel Macron lambasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over election interference in the country during a phone call last week, reported Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, citing two sources familiar with the conversation's details
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The US military will temporarily reinstall a pier in Gaza on Wednesday to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid
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According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, over 9,600 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are presently imprisoned in Israeli jails
The Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) reports that its teams are receiving numerous emergency calls from Gaza City residents, but their ambulance vehicles and medics cannot reach them.
PRCS attributed this to the "danger in the targeted areas and the heavy bombardment," and stated that reports indicate a "very dire" situation for Gaza City residents.
The organization further mentioned that "occupation forces continue to target residential buildings and displace people from their homes and shelters.
