Live: 54 Palestinians killed, 831 wounded in 24 hours

Fifty-five people were arrested during a protest in London for allegedly supporting the proscribed Palestine Action group outside Britain's parliament on Saturday, the Metropolitan Police said.

The protestors in Parliament Square waved supporting the group that was banned this month under anti-terrorism legislation, the police force said in a post on X.

Demonstrators, some wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, were taken away in police vans.

British lawmakers proscribed Palestine Action earlier this month after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged planes in protest against Britain's support for Israel.

Membership of Palestine Action now carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

The group has called the decision "authoritarian", and a challenge to the ban will be heard at London's High Court on Monday.

The US ambassador to Israel on Saturday visited a Christian village in the occupied West Bank and urged accountability for an attack on an ancient church by Israeli settlers.

In early July, Israeli settlers carried out an arson attack on the village of Taybeh in the area of the ruins of the Byzantine-era Church of Saint George, which dates back to the fifth century.

Ambassador Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian and staunch advocate for Israel, said his trip to Taybeh aimed to "express solidarity with the people who just want to live their lives in peace, to be able to go to their own land, to be able to go to their place of worship".

"It doesn't matter whether it's a mosque, a church, a synagogue," he told journalists.

"It's unacceptable to commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship."

"We will certainly insist that those who carry out acts of terror and violence in Taybeh or anywhere be found, be prosecuted, not just reprimanded. That's not enough," he said.

"People need to pay a price for doing something that destroys that which belongs not just to other people, but that which belongs to God."

In the villages and communities around Taybeh, Palestinian authorities have reported that Israeli settlers killed three people and damaged or destroyed multiple water sources in the past two weeks alone.

Since October 2023, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 957 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Over the same period, at least 36 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations.

Huckabee, who has for years been an outspoken supporter of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, on Tuesday demanded an investigation and consequences after Israeli settlers beat to death a Palestinian-American in the West Bank.

It was a sign of rare public pressure against Israel by President Donald Trump's administration.

Israeli forces have killed at least 98 Palestinians and wounded 511 others in the Gaza Strip over the last 48 hours.

The Palestinian health ministry said on Saturday that the death toll in Gaza since October 2023 has risen to 58,765, with an additional 140,485 people wounded. The majority of the victims are women and children.

At least 11 Palestinians were killed and several others wounded following an Israeli drone strike targeting an apartment in the southern part of Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Wafa news agency reported that an Israeli drone bombed the apartment, resulting in the killing of 11 civilians, including two children. The wounded were transported to the nearby Al-Awda Hospital for treatment.

At least 70 Palestinians have been killed since dawn on Saturday, including over 30 people who were seeking humanitarian aid. 

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has announced a "comprehensive" ceasefire in the southern province of Sweida after nearly a week of violence that left hundreds dead.

The government said on Saturday that it was redeploying security forces in the province and called for all parties to refrain from further violence.

Fighting between Druze factions, Bedouin groups and troops loyal to Sharaa's administration has rocked the region since Sunday, exacerbated by Israeli air strikes.

In a statement on Saturday, Sharaa said the ceasefire must be respected, "ensuring stability and halting the bloodshed".

"In this context, security forces have begun deploying in a number of areas to ensure the implementation of the ceasefire, maintain public order, and ensure the protection of citizens and their property, thus enhancing calm and stability," the statement read. 

Read more: Syrian president announces 'comprehensive' ceasefire in Sweida

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli attacks killed 32 people and wounded more than 100 near two aid centres in the south of the Palestinian territory.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP that Israeli gunfire killed Palestinian aid seekers near a site southwest of Khan Younis and another centre northwest of Rafah.

An eyewitness said he headed to the Al-Tina area of Khan Younis before dawn with five of his relatives to try to get food, when Israeli soldiers started shooting.

"My relatives and I were unable to get anything," Abdul Aziz Abed, 37, told AFP. "Every day I go there and all we get is bullets and exhaustion instead of food."

The Israeli military said it was "looking into" the attacks.

The more than two million people in Gaza are facing severe shortages of food and other essentials, and doctors have reported a spike in acute malnutrition.

Deaths of people waiting for aid in huge crowds near aid distribution centres have become a regular occurrence. 

Earlier this week, the UN said it had recorded 875 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food, including 674 in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, since the the US and Israel backed organisation began operating.

At least 43 Palestinians have been killed and scores more wounded on Saturday in Israeli attacks on Gaza, including dozens of aid seekers. 

In western Rafah, 32 people were killed while waiting for humanitarian aid, according to Wafa news agency. 

Elsewhere, two Palestinian civilians were killed in Khan Younis after Israeli air strikes targeted tents sheltering displaced families west of the city.

In northern Gaza, two civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike targeting Jabalia refugee camp, while seven others were killed and 17 others wounded in an Israeli air strike targeting tents housing displaced people near the Al-Tabin School east of Gaza City.

A federal judge has blocked the enforcement of US President Donald Trump's executive order targeting those who work with the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

The ruling follows an April lawsuit by two human rights advocates challenging Trump's 6 February order authorising economic and travel sanctions on people who work on ICC investigations of US citizens or allies such as Israel.

In her ruling, US District Judge Nancy Torresen called the executive order an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

"The executive order appears to restrict substantially more speech than necessary to further that end," she wrote.

"The executive order broadly prohibits any speech-based services that benefit the prosecutor, regardless of whether those beneficial services relate to an ICC investigation of the United States, Israel, or another US ally."

The White House and the ICC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The executive order imposed sanctions on ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, who is British. The US treasury department's Office of Foreign Assets Control also place him on a registry of sanctioned individuals and entities.

US citizens who provide services for the benefit of Khan or other sanctioned individuals could face civil and criminal penalties, according to the order, which has been condemned by the ICC and dozens of countries.

Reporting by Reuters

US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that 10 hostages will be released from Gaza, during a dinner with lawmakers at the White House, Reuters reported. 

Ceasefire talks have been ongoing in Doha for almost two weeks, including proposals for a 60-day ceasefire. 

Unrwa's Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said Israel's ban on international media "fuels dis-information campaigns," with accounts from eyewitnesses and international humanitarian organisations being questioned he said in a post on X on Friday.

Israel has blocked international media from reporting on the ground in Gaza, and has consistently targeted Palestinian journalists and their families.

For example, Israel targeted Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief Wael Al- Dahdouh's family multiple times, killing his wife, two sons, daughter and grandson.

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a teenage boy in Yabad, a village in the northern West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Friday. 

Israeli soldiers gunned down 14-year-old Amro Kabah on the street, and prevented ambulances from providing him with medical treatment, Haaretz reported citing local witnesses.

Kabah's father tried to reach him, but soldiers violently assaulted and arrested him, witnesses added.

The arrest of Kabah's father meant that the Red Crescent was able to swoop in and take Kabah to the hospital, but he was pronounced dead.

The Israeli military have now sealed the main entrance to Yabad with concrete blocks.

US Senator Chris Van Hollen has labelled Israel's request for the US to help them with forcible displacement of Palestinians “truly outrageous and sickening," in post on X on Friday.

“The US should not be complicit in or use ANY governmental, American taxpayer resources to aid and abet what amounts to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians from Gaza," he said. "We cannot stand for this”.

His comments comes after Axios revealed that head of Israel's intelliegence agency Mossad is visiting the White House this week to solicit help in securing the consent of third countries to take hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

David Barnea reportedly told Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff that Israel has been speaking to Ethiopia, Indonesia and Libya about taking in Palestinians.

Both Trump and Netanyahu have previously discussed transferring Palestinians out of the Strip to create a "Riviera of the Middle East," sparking international condemnation about the proposed ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. 

Top Christian leaders in Jerusalem made a rare solidarity visit to Gaza on Friday, a day after the Israeli military struck a Catholic church in Gaza, killing three people and prompting international condemnation.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Theophilos III, were allowed to enter Gaza - which has been closed to outsiders - and met with people at the Holy Family Church and walked around the damaged building.

Few people have been allowed to enter or leave Gaza, except a trickle of aid workers or people being evacuated for medical care.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group said that the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund was set up so that an armed group to trap Palestinians while they seek aid, Al Jazeera reported on Friday.

More than 900 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at GHF sites in the six weeks they have been operating. Israel has not allowed humanitarian groups that were previously operating in Gaza to provide aid.

Almost a third of people in Gaza are unable to access a single meal for days at a time, the World Food Programme announced on X on Friday.

"Thousands of people are on the verge of catastrophic hunger," the United Nations agency said. "Food aid is the only real way for people to eat".

Israel has blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza since the beginning of March. Since the end of May, a new US- and Israel-backed agency has been providing food at several distribution points, but the food distribution is significantly less than other humanitarian agencies were providing, leading critics to say that starvation is being weaponised as a tool of war.

Dozens of children have died of malnutrition in the last few weeks.