Live: Gaza ceasefire talks deadlocked as death toll surpasses 100

The United Nations human rights office said that it has recorded the killings of at least 798 Palestinians both at aid points administered by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

It added the deaths were also reported near humanitarian convoys run by other relief groups, including the UN.

“Up until the seventh of July, we’ve recorded now 798 killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, and 183 presumably on the route of aid convoys,” OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.

Doctors Without Borders said that the Israeli operation on western Khan Younis in southern Gaza has caused the evacuation of a clinic and “seriously impacted” another.

The group said that the expansion of an Israeli military incursion into an area full of displaced Palestinians had pushed them into a smaller area next to the sea. Israeli forces have attacked without warning, they said. and tanks have advanced on crowds of people.

At least 10 Palestinians were arrested by Israeli forces as it conducted raids in several occupied West Bank governorates, according to Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, at least 15 were killed in various places in Gaza since Friday morning, including 10 aid seekers.

 Medical sources in al-Shifa Hospital has told Al Jazeera that at least eight people were killed in an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia  in northern Gaza.

The attack left many others injured.

The Israeli military said on Friday that a 21-year-old officer was killed during an operation in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

During the operation, soldiers were putting explosives in buildings in order to detonate them.

The Israeli army says the deceased officer was the team commander in the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, who died after being struck with shrapnel.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

Here are some of the latest updates from the Israeli war on Gaza and developments in the occupied West Bank:

- Many injuries were reported early Friday morning as Israeli forces bombed the tents of displaced people east of the Ghaith camp in the Mawasi area west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

- The Israeli army said on Friday morning that a soldier in the Golani Brigade was killed in in southern Gaza. It is unclear whether he was killed in the bombing of a building in Khan Younis on Thursday or not.

- Palestinian media outlets reported on Friday Israeli attacks in the eastern outskirts of the Shujaiyya neighbourhood, located east of Gaza City and the Zeitoun area, south of Gaza City.

- Israeli forces stormed the southern area of ​​the city of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank in the early hours of Friday. It also carried out raids in Nablus, and opened fire at a vehicle in the vicinity of Balata al-Balad, in the northern occupied West Bank.

- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the US’s Newsmax TV that a 60-day ceasefire agreement could be reached within a few days. He added that the agreement includes the release of half of the live captives and half of the dead.

Our live blog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

- More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza since dawn on Thursday.

- The journalists' death toll in Gaza has risen to 229 with the killing of Palestine Today's Ahmad Salama Abu Aisha, the Gaza Media Office announced. 

- A United Nations team got about 75,000 litres of fuel into Gaza on Wednesday, the first such delivery in 130 days, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday. 

- Mahmoud Khalil, the 30-year-old Columbia University student who was the first and most well-known immigration detainee in the US for his pro-Palestine views, has now sued the Trump administration for $20m in damages for the harm done to his reputation and livelihood.

- The UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, said she is undeterred by sanctions imposed on her by the US on Wednesday. “It looks like I've hit a nerve,” she told Middle East Eye’s live show. 

Al Jazeera Arabic's Gaza correspondent is reporting that since dawn on Thursday, Israel has killed more than 100 people across the strip. 

The United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, on Thursday said she is undeterred by sanctions imposed by the US on Wednesday.

“It looks like I've hit a nerve,” she told Middle East Eye’s live show. 

“My concern is there are people dying in Gaza while you and I are speaking, and the United Nations are totally unable to intervene.”

The sanctions follow Albanese's scathing report on 30 June in which she named over 60 companies, including major US technology firms like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, which she said were involved in "the transformation of Israel's economy of occupation to an economy of genocide".

Read more: Albanese is one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s war on Gaza

The number of journalists in Gaza killed by Israel has risen to 229 since 7 October 2023, the Gaza Media Office announced on Thursday.

The latest casualty is Ahmad Salama Abu Aisha, a photojournalist and editor at Palestine Today, a local news agency. 

"Abu Aisha was martyred as a result of a direct targeting by an Israeli occupation drone in front of his home in the al-Sawwarha area, west of al-Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza Strip," the statement from the media office said.

"The Government Media Office strongly condemns the deliberate, systematic targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation. We call on the International Federation of Journalists, the Arab Journalists Union, and all journalist organizations around the world to denounce these systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists and media professionals in Gaza," it added. 

"We hold the Israeli occupation, the United States administration, and all states complicit in the genocide - such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France - fully responsible for these heinous and brutal crimes," the media office said. 

An Israeli air strike hit Palestinians near a medical centre in Gaza on Thursday, killing 10 children and six adults, local health authorities said, as ceasefire talks dragged on with no immediate deal expected.

Verified video footage from the strike in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip showed the bodies of women and children lying in pools of blood, screaming amid dust. One clip showed several motionless children lying on a donkey cart.

"She didn't do anything, she was innocent, I swear. Her dream was for the war to end and that they announce it today, to go back to school," said Samah al-Nouri, sitting by the body of her daughter, who was killed in the blast.

"She was only getting treatment in a medical facility. Why did they kill them?" she said, with other bodies laid out around her at a nearby hospital.

- Reporting by Reuters

Israel has more than half a dozen retired Patriot missile batteries and hundreds of interceptors in its reserves that could be sent to Ukraine, as the US looks to beef up Kyiv’s air-defences from Russian attacks, a former senior Pentagon official wrote on X.

“Trump has made clear he wants to provide Ukraine with more air defense assets. With that in mind, I think the best place to get them from with the least amount of trade offs against US and allied readiness is from Israel's stocks of retired Patriot PAC-2 missiles/batteries,” Dan Caldwell, a former senior advisor to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, wrote.

Read more: Trump has grown frustrated with Putin as peace talks stall, saying earlier this week he was full of “bullshit”

Mahmoud Khalil, the 30-year-old Columbia University student who was the first and most well-known immigration detainee in the US for his pro-Palestine views, has now sued the Trump administration for $20m in damages for the harm done to his reputation and livelihood.

Khalil was held in detention, in a room with 70 other men, for more than three months, in what he described as very difficult conditions. He was released on bail after a federal judge ruled last month that the government had not proven its case to justify keeping him detained. 

His deportation case is ongoing. 

A United Nations team got about 75,000 litres of fuel into Gaza on Wednesday, the first such delivery in 130 days, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday. 

"The amount entered yesterday isn’t sufficient to cover even one day of energy requirements. Fuel is still running out and services will shut down if far greater volumes do not enter immediately," Dujarric told reporters.

- Reporting by Reuters

An Israeli man was shot dead in the occupied West Bank on Thursday with the military and first responders saying that two attackers were also killed.

The shooting took place in the car park of a shopping centre in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem.

"Paramedics pronounced a 22-year-old man dead at the scene with gunshot wounds," Israel's Magen David Adom said in a statement.

"The two terrorists were eliminated by IDF forces and other security personnel at the scene."