Live: Six more Palestinians die of famine as Israel blocks Gaza aid

Israeili forces have killed at least 17 Palestinians in air strikes on homes in Gaza City since dawn today, Al Jazeera Arabic has reported, quoting hospital sources. 

Israeli warplanes hit a residential building in southwestern Gaza City, killing 10 people, Gaza's civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said in a statement to AFP. 

Bassal said Israeli helicopters also struck an apartment in the west of the city, killing three and wounding several others. 

More than 63,557 Palestinians have been killed, and 160,660 others wounded in Israel's genocide in Gaza since October 2023. The respected medical journal, The Lancet, estimates the figure to be significantly higher. 

Belgium will recognise the State of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in September, Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot has announced, news agency AFP reported.

"Palestine will be recognised by Belgium at the UN session! And firm sanctions are being imposed against the Israeli government," Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot wrote on X on Tuesday. 

Prevot said the decision came "in view of the humanitarian tragedy" unfolding in Gaza, where Israeli offensives have displaced most of the population at least once, and the UN has declared a famine.

In July, French President Emmanuel Macron had said France would recognise a Palestinian state at the UN meeting, which is going to be held from 9 September in New York.

More than a dozen other Western countries have since called on others to do the same. 

Israeli strikes on an apartment and a residential building have killed 13 Palestinians overnight, Gaza's civil defence agency has said on Tuesday.

Israeli warplanes hit a residential building in southwestern Gaza City, killing 10 people, spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said in a statement to AFP. Bassal said Israeli helicopters also struck an apartment in the west of the city, killing three and wounding several others.

Israeli forces have been preparing for an offensive to seize Gaza City, the largest urban centre in the Palestinian territory, intensifying bombardments in the area in recent days. 

More than 63,557 Palestinians have been killed, and 160,660 others wounded in Israel's genocide in Gaza since October 2023. The respected medical journal, The Lancet, estimates the figure to be significantly higher. 

Israeli-imposed blockade on Gaza has caused at least 348 deaths due to starvation. Famine has been officially declared in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the UN-backed global hunger monitor. 

Global Sumud Flotilla of dozens of boats has set sail for Gaza, departing Barcelona port on Monday evening after stormy weather forced the group to return to port, Reuters has reported. 

Activists chanted 'Free Palestine' slogans and blew horns as they left the port. 

The flotilla of several dozen boats aims to deliver food and humanitarian supplies to the enclave. 

Israeli-imposed blockade on Gaza has caused at least 348 deaths due to starvation. Famine has been officially declared in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the UN-backed global hunger monitor. 

Pro-Palestinian activists, including climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham, are on the Sumud flotilla. Sumud is the Arabic term for "resilience". 

Good morning Middle East Eye readers,

Here are the latest updates on Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza and developments in the occupied West Bank:

• Sumud aid flotilla, which aims to break the Israeli siege of Gaza, has set sail again after overcoming stormy weather. 

• Gaza's civil defence agency has said that Israeli strikes on an apartment and a residential building killed 13 people overnight.

• Israeli forces have stormed the town of Yamoun, and the city of Qalqilya in the West Bank.

• Israeli media have reported that the proposed prisoner exchange deal has the support of the Chief of Staff, Mossad, and Shin Bet, which the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected. 

• More than 250 media outlets from around 50 countries are taking part in an initiative denouncing the killing of journalists by Israel in Gaza.

• The world's leading genocide scholars' association has said Israel has met the legal criteria for genocide in Gaza.

• Government Authorities in Gaza have said that only 534 aid trucks out of the estimated 3,000 have entered over the past five days.

• Israeli soldiers raided the town of Tamun in the West Bank and attacked and injured around 10 Palestinians, including 3 children. 

Israeli soldiers destroyed a residential building and killed a civilian in the West Bank on Monday in order to find a man they accused of carrying out a shooting at a checkpoint, Al Jazeera reported.

Israeli soldiers raided the the town of Aqaba, hunting for a Palestinian man called Ahmad Walid, who they accuse of carrying out an attack near a checkpoint in the Jordan Valley last month.

Witnesses saw soldiers beat one of Walid's brothers in front of his wife and chikdren before arresting him along with another brother and his father.

The Israeli soldiers fired grenades, live ammunition, teargas and soundbombs at a residential building where his family lived with other families, destroying two floors, and an adjacent wedding hall.

Fighting then broke out between the soldiers and local Palestinians, and a 36-year-old Palestinian farmer - Abdul Rahim Fayez Ghannam -  was caught in the crossfire and fatally shot in the head.

Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded, and shot at one ambulance with live ammunition.

Israeli soldiers raided the town of Tamun and attacked and injured around 10 Palestinians on Monday evening.

The soldiers shot at a car, comprising of a man, woman, and their three children in the town, south of Tubas in the West Bank. The Ministry of Health said the family were rushed to Tubas Governmental Hospital, where the father was treated for a serious head injury, the mother for moderate injuries, while the three children were treated for minor injuries. 

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams treated several peoople for injuries, including a 55-year-old man who was shot in the knee inside his home. He was later transferred to a hospital.

Wafa news agency reported that Israeli soldiers also shot and detained a young man whose identity and medical condition are currently unknown.

Plans  to develop a “Gaza Riviera,” circulating in the White House, have been dismissed as an “insane” attempt to provide cover for the large-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the strip, The Guardian reported on Monday. 

Referencing the leaked proposals for a high-tech hub and resorts in Gaza published in The Washington Post on Sunday, the plans are said to have been developed by the Boston Consulting Group and the same Israelis who created and developed the highly-criticised US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and would lead to the "temporary relocation" of two million Palestinians.

Philip Grant, executive director of human rights group Trial International told The Guardian, “This is a blueprint for mass deportation, marketed as development".

"The outcome? A textbook case of international crimes on an unimaginable scale: forcible population transfer, demographic engineering, and collective punishment,” he added.

GHF has failed to deliver adequate food to Palestinians in Gaza. More than 1,40o people were killed at the hands of Israeli soldiers and US mercenaries, and thousands of others were wounded while trying to get aid. 

At least ten Palestinians were killed and an unknown number of others were left wounded on Monday evening local time after two Israeli air strikes on Gaza City. 

The strikes targeted the neighbourhoods of al-Zeitoun and Sabra in the southern part of the city.

The Israeli military has been attempting a military takeover of Gaza City and the expulsion of inhabitants. They have bulldozed at least 1,500 homes in the al-Zeitoun neighbourhood and an unquantified number of homes in the Sabra neighbourhood using drones and explosive-laden robots. Some reports say no homes are left standing in Al-Zeitoun. 

Thousands gathered at Yemen’s largest mosque in the city of Sanaa on Monday for the funeral of the prime minister of Houthi-run Yemen and several senior Houthi leaders killed by an Israeli air strike.

The Houthis announced on Saturday that Israel had targeted and killed their prime minister, Ahmed al-Rahawi, and several other officials in attacks on Thursday in violation of international law, as killing a foreign leader is illegal.

Rahawi had served as prime minister of the Houthi-led government in Sanaa since August 2024.

The Houthis said in a statement on Saturday that Rahawi and the ministers were targeted during a routine government workshop assessing their performance.

Despite the attack, the presidency insisted that the government would continue to function without disruption. 

"We remain steadfast in supporting Gaza," the statement added.

The Houthis and Israel have exchanged attacks since the Yemeni movement began firing missiles and drones at Israel for what they say is solidarity with Palestinians living under Israel's war on Gaza, which has been called a genocide by international rights bodies and scholars worldwide. 

Israeli and US strikes have killed almost 300 Yemeni civilians and wounded almost 900 others. Meanwhile, Houthi strikes have led to the deaths of two Israelis, and injured almost 200 others.  

The family of a Palestine Action activist being held in an English prison say they are concerned for her health after she marked the 22nd day of her hunger strike over her deteriorating detention conditions. 

The 29-year-old prisoner, named “T Hoxha”, is one of the "Filton 24" - activists from the now-proscribed direct action group Palestine Action who were arrested on terrorism charges.

Those charges were in connection with an action in August 2024, when six activists drove a modified van into the research and development hub of UK-based Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems, in Filton, Bristol.

Hoxha has been on remand since November 2024, awaiting her trial which will start in April 2026.

You can read more here.

On Monday, 2.58 million Israeli students returned to their classrooms to begin the new school year. Of these, 180,600 are starting first grade, while 149,000 are entering twelfth grade, their final year of school. 

In Gaza, meanwhile, the education system has been largely levelled by two years of Israeli bombardment.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) warned that over 660,000 children in Gaza are being deprived of schooling for a third consecutive year amid Israel’s genocide in the territory.

Analysis of satellite images by the United Nations Satellite Centre in April revealed that 97 percent of schools “sustained some level of damage to their buildings”, with 432 school buildings, 76.6 percent of the total school buildings in Gaza, suffering a “direct hit” since 7 October 2023.

According to the Palestinian education ministry, the schooling of around 700,000 students has been suspended, with over 70,000 barred from taking secondary school exams in the past two years.

You can read more here. 

Israeli settlers carried out an arson attack on farmland in the town of Sa’ir, northeast of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, burning acres of grapevines, almond trees and olive trees on Monday. 

Dozens of settlers from a nearby illegal settlement stormed land belonging to local Palestinian families and burned dozens of acres of grapevines, almonds, and olives, according to a report by Wafa news agency.

Families whose land was impacted included the Shalaldeh and Tarwa families, among others.

An Israeli settler ran over a 14-year-old female Palestinian child south of Hebron earlier in the day.

 A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was left injured on Monday after being run over by an Israeli settler in the town of Sammou, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reported. 

Dalal al-Hawamdeh sustained bruises and injuries to various parts of her body and was transferred to a local hospital for treatment. Details of the incident remain unspecified at the time of reporting.

Israeli settlers have stepped up attacks on Palestinians in the Hebron governorate since the war on Gaza started in October 2023, including physical assaults, vandalism, arson, property theft, land seizure, and intimidation. 

The Israeli military killed at least eight Palestinians, including a pregnant woman, her unborn child, and three other children, across Gaza on Monday, Wafa news agency reported. 

Medical officials at al-Shifa hospital told Wafa the pregnant woman and her unborn child, along with another child, were killed when their home near al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, was targeted by Israeli air strikes.

An air strike on a tent on al-Nasr Street, west of Gaza City, resulted in the deaths of two boys.

In southern Gaza, one civilian was killed and several others were seriously injured and admitted to al-Ahli Baptist hospital after the Israeli military targeted a group of civilians in the neighbourhood of al-Sabra.

In central Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah confirmed that at least one man was killed and several others injured following an Israeli strike on a group of civilians inside al-Mazraa School, east of the city.

More than 63,557 Palestinians have been killed, and 160,660 others injured in Israel's genocide in Gaza since October 2023. The respected medical journal, The Lancet, estimates the figure to be significantly higher.