Live: UK halts trade deal talks with Israel, summons ambassador over Gaza

In just the past 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza received 109 bodies and treated 216 wounded, the health ministry said. Civil defense crews say many victims remain trapped in the streets and beneath collapsed buildings, unreachable due to continued bombardment and access restrictions.

Since Israel broke the ceasefire in mid-March, its attacks have killed 2,985 people and injured 8,173.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza has killed at least 53,119 people and wounded more than 120,214, according to the latest figures from Gaza’s health authorities.

In the latest episode of the TV game show, "The White House on Uber: How to pre-purchase a US President", it appeared, fleetingly, as if the host was reading from the right script.

US President Donald Trump said in Saudi Arabia that liberal interventionism was a disaster. That’s true. He said you can’t break and remake nations. Post-Soviet Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen are each testimony to that. 

He stopped bombing Yemen and reversed decades of sanctions on Syria, blocking in the process two of Israel’s key routes to regional dominance: dividing Syria and starting a war with Iran.

I say fleetingly because - as Iran has been through this script many times before in negotiations over its nuclear programme - what a US president promises and what he delivers are two different things.

Not least of those to be blindsided by Trump’s announcement halting Syria sanctions were his own officials in the US Treasury. It turns out that the cessation of the multi-layered sanctions piled on Syria since the US first put the country on its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1979 is not so easy, nor will it be rapid or comprehensive.

Read more: Israel has already lost the Gaza war. It just doesn't know it yet

Three foreign activists were physically assaulted on Friday by Israeli settlers in the area of Massar Yatta, south of Hebron, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Palestinian activist Osama Makhamreh told Wafa that settlers beat the activists as “they were documenting attacks on shepherds and farmers in the Susiya area of Massar Yatta".

Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have been reported daily, with continuous attacks on the property of shepherds and other residents in and around Massar Yatta.

Israel launched a new ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday under the cover of heavy bombardment, killing and wounding scores of Palestinians. 

According to the director of al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, at least 100 people were killed and many more wounded, including women and children, during a “bloody night” of relentless attacks.

Aerial and artillery bombardment, along with naval shelling, targeted various areas in the northwest of the Gaza Strip. 

Several inhabited homes in Beit Lahia and Jabalia were flattened, with dozens of bodies recovered, while dozens more remain trapped under the rubble. 

The northern Gaza Strip has been heavily battered in previous Israeli air and ground attacks throughout the 19-month war. 

Read more: Israel re-invades northern Gaza in 'bloody night' of bombardment 

Gaza’s emergency services said on Friday that Palestinians have been unsuccessfully trying to evacuate areas of Israeli incursions in northern Gaza under fire.

Earlier, it was reported that Palestinians started fleeing the areas of Beit Lahiya and Jabalia heading towards the Strip's main road.

According to Gaza’s civil defence spokesman, the service is understaffed and is unable to reach locations where gunfire is reported.

“The emergency staffers are unable to rescue those trapped under the rubble despite hearing their screams,” the spokesman said.

Jordanian King Abdullah II has renewed his call on Friday for the urgent restoration of the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, during a phone call with US Vice President JD Vance.

According to Jordan’s Petra news agency, King Abdullah reiterated the need to immediately reinstate the ceasefire in Gaza, resume the flow of humanitarian aid, and stop the escalations in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

The king has also emphasised the importance of creating a political horizon to achieve just and comprehensive peace on the basis of the two-state solution.

Who could have imagined 19 months ago that it would take more than a year and a half of Israel slaughtering and starving Gaza’s children for the first cracks to appear in what has been a rock-solid wall of support for Israel from western establishments. 

Finally, something looks like it may be about to give.

The British establishment’s financial daily, the Financial Times, was first to break ranks last week to condemn "the West’s shameful silence" in the face of Israel’s murderous assault on the tiny enclave.

In an editorial – effectively the paper’s voice – the FT accused the United States and Europe of being increasingly "complicit" as Israel made Gaza “uninhabitable”, an allusion to genocide, and noted that the goal was to "drive Palestinians from their land", an allusion to ethnic cleansing.

Of course, both of these grave crimes by Israel have been evidently true not only since Hamas’ violent, single-day breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023, but for decades. 

Read more: 'Why the wall of silence on the Gaza genocide is finally starting to crack'

 Israeli settlers have carried out attacks on Palestinian-owned vehicles in several areas in the occupied West Bank.

According to reports, the violence occurred in the towns of Bruqin, west of Salfit, and the Ramin Plain area, east of Tulkarm.

The Quds News Network now reports that Israeli settler militias have attacked the Masoudiya water well, north west of Nablus, and burned the guard’s vehicle.

Israeli forces surrounded a school housing displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Al Araby new outlet.

According to reports, the Israeli army has also carried out continuous shelling in Jabalya and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

Head of the UN Children’s Fund Catherine Russell condemned on Friday the Israeli killing of children in Gaza, saying the world should be shocked by the death of 45 children in Israeli air strikes in just two days.

The killing of children in Gaza is “largely met with indifference”.

“More than 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation. They are deprived of food, water and medicine,” Russell wrote in a post on X.

“Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza,” she said.

Here are some of the latest updates on Gaza and across the region:

• At least two people have been killed by Israeli shelling that targeted housing areas for displaced Palestinians in Beit Lahiya, according to Al Jazeera Arabic
• The Israeli army said it killed five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Thursday after an Israeli settler was killed in a shooting there
• Medical sources in Gaza say at least 21 people are now confirmed killed by Israeli attacks in the five hours since midnight local time in Gaza
• Israeli settlers have raided town of Bruqin, west of Salfit, in the occupied West Bank and set fire to a Palestinian flag and Palestinian-owned vehicles
• In the west of Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, at least two people have been killed and more injured after the Israeli military bombed a home in al-Fakhoura
• We have been reporting on the Israeli military’s aerial assault on the Beit Lahiya area of northern Gaza over recent hours.
• Hundreds of Beit Lahiya residents have fled the area to escape Israel’s bombardment.

The known death toll in Gaza, based on recovered and identified bodies, has now surpassed 53,000 after health officials counted 127 killed on Thursday alone. 

Our live blog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

- Gaza health officials have said that 127 people have been killed since dawn on Thursday, making it the deadliest day since Israel resumed its war on Gaza on 18 March. The death toll has now surpassed 53,000. 

- Officials also said that the European Hospital in Khan Younis is now entirely out of service after heavy Israeli bombardment earlier in the week. That facility was the only one providing follow-up care for cancer patients in Gaza. 

- Israel's United Nations ambassador, Danny Danon, said that his country will not fund the US-formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but will facilitate and enable it. The effort bypasses the United Nations infrastructure for aid deliveries in Gaza.

- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's latest offer to Hamas only demanded that the group hand over 10 Israeli captives from Gaza, Hamas representative Taher al-Nono said in a statement. 

- A separate statement by Hamas representative Basem Naim praised US President Donald Trump's vision for peace in the region, and urged him to use his influence to stop Israel's renewed war. 

- Yemen's Houthi armed forces declared the hypersonic ballistic missile fired at - and intercepted by - Israel a success, given Israelis had to "flee to shelters and [halt] airport operations for an hour".

Thursday has proved to be the deadliest day yet for Palestinians in Gaza since Israel resumed its war on the Strip on 18 March.

Health officials have said that 127 people have been killed since dawn on Thursday.

Local reports indicate there is ongoing heavy bombardment in Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Khan Younis in the very early hours of Friday. 

A group of US citizens, many of whom were directly impacted by Israel's 19-month-long war on Gaza, have filed a legal complaint in Washington, DC in the hopes of eventually seeing the US referred to the International Criminal Court. 

The group, Taxpayers Against Genocide, was joined by the National Lawyers Guild International Committee in filing the 133-page complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

They charge the Trump and Biden administrations with "complicity in genocide in Gaza," a statement released by the group on Wednesday said. 

"The lawsuit includes notarised affidavits by Palestinian-American plaintiffs who have lost loved ones to the US-funded genocide. One plaintiff, Monadel Herzallah, has lost 43 family members," it added. 

The US "has constructed legal shields at home that deny victims even the chance to seek redress," and it "cannot continue to finance, arm, and politically cover for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide abroad while remaining immune from international scrutiny," lead attorney Huwaida Arraf said in the statement.

"This petition is a call for accountability where none has yet been possible."