Gaza Live: Israeli air strike takes out 25 members of same family

Israeli attacks across Lebanon on Tuesday killed 78 people and wounded 266, a day before a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect.

The latest figures brought the toll in Lebanon to 3,961 people killed and 16,520 wounded in more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the majority since the end of September.

Around 15,000 pregnant women in Gaza are likely to be on the verge of famine, the UN Population Fund said.

There are 50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip, with 4,000 Palestinian babies expected to be delivered this month, according to UNFPA data.

Families in the Gaza Strip are being forced to rely on detrimental and unsustainable coping strategies, such as cutting back on food, drinking contaminated water, selling personal belongings, and managing menstrual needs in ways that jeopardize women's health, according to a joint report by different UN agencies.

The Israeli military on Thursday said it struck a facility used by Hezbollah to store mid-range rockets in southern Lebanon, the first such attack since a ceasefire took effect on Wednesday morning.

"The (Israeli army) remains in southern Lebanon and acting to enforce violations of the ceasefire agreement," the military said in a statement.

The Israeli military announced a nighttime curfew in south Lebanon, a day after a ceasefire Hezbollah began.

"It is strictly forbidden to move or travel south of the Litani River starting from 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) until 7:00 am tomorrow (Friday). Those south of the Litani River must remain where they are," Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.

New research suggests that crude oil shipments from Turkey to Israel have continued despite Ankara’s imposition of a trade embargo in May over its Israeli actions in Gaza.

Shipping data and satellite imagery compiled by researchers from the Stop Fuelling Genocide campaign, supported by Progressive International, indicates that a tanker shipped crude oil directly from Turkey’s Ceyhan port to a pipeline near Ashkelon in Israel.

The port is the last stop on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which transports crude oil from Azerbaijan. The oil is then shipped from the Heydar Aliyev Terminal at Ceyhan to Israel, accounting for almost 30 percent of its crude oil imports.

On 10 November, amid global protests against Turkey’s role in facilitating the shipments, the country’s energy minister denied that any oil tankers bound for Israel had left Ceyhan port since Ankara began its trade embargo.

But the new research suggests that a crude oil tanker onboarded Azeri crude at Ceyhan in late October and then turned off its tracking signal, only reappearing several days later in Sicily. Using satellite imagery, the researchers were able to track the boat docking at an oil terminal near Ashkelon, Israel.

Read more: New evidence reveals oil shipments from Turkey to Israel continue despite embargo

The chair of the UK's International Development Committee has warned the foreign secretary that Israel’s ban on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) risks violating multiple international laws and asked how he will respond.

“Israel’s effective legislative ban on Unrwa must not be allowed to be implemented,” the chair and Labour MP Sarah Champion wrote in a letter to David Lammy sent on Wednesday. 

“A ban would not only risk contravening numerous laws and obligations but would lead to an immediate, potentially irreparable, degradation in the living conditions of Palestinians.”

Last month, the Israeli Knesset passed two laws effectively banning Unrwa from being able to operate inside Israel, Gaza, the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

The laws, scheduled to take effect on 28 January, likely breach the Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law obligations of occupying powers, Champion said.

“They also appear to violate provisional rulings of the International Court of Justice on preventing genocide in Gaza, and may deepen violations listed in the ICJ advisory opinion of 19 July on the illegality of the ongoing occupation,” she wrote.

She asked Lammy to tell the committee by 6 December what contingencies are in place if the laws are implemented and what representations he has made to his Israeli counterparts on their impact.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Thursday that the ICC had "no justification" for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, in a joint press conference with Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky.

Saar told Reuters Israel has appealed the decision and that it sets a dangerous precedent.

The foreign minister also said Israel would finish the war in Gaza when it "achieves its objectives" of returning captives being held by Hamas in Gaza and ensuring the Palestinian movement no longer controls the strip.

Saar said Israel does not intend to control civilian life in Gaza and that he believes peace is "inevitable" but can't be based on "illusions".

Reporting by Reuters

Hezbollah member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah said on Thursday that Israel had violated a ceasefire deal by firing on civilians returning home to their villages along Lebanon's southern border with Israel.

"The Israeli enemy is attacking those returning to the border villages," Fadlallah told reporters after a parliament session, adding, "there are violations today by Israel, even in this form".

Reporting by Reuters

Medical sources said Israeli air strikes have killed 22 people in the central and southern Gaza Strip since this Thursday morning, according to Al Jazeera.

Outgoing European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on all EU member states on Thursday to respect decisions by the International Criminal Court, including the arrest warrant for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"We cannot undermine the International Criminal Court. It is the only way of having global justice," Borrell, whose term as the EU's top diplomat ends this month, told reporters in Brussels.

"They're not political. It's a legal body formed by respected people who are the best among the profession of judges."

Though all EU member states are signatories to the ICC's founding treaty, France said on Wednesday it believed Netanyahu had immunity to actions by the ICC, given that Israel has not signed up to the court statutes.

Italy has said it is not feasible to arrest Netanyahu as long as he remains head of Israel's government.

ICC judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former minister of defence, were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a "widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza".

Reporting by Reuters

Israeli tank fire hit three towns along Lebanon's southeast boundary with Israel on Thursday, Lebanese security sources and state media said, a day after a ceasefire barring "offensive military operations" came into force.

Tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, all of which lie within two kilometres of the Blue Line demarcating the boundary between Lebanon and Israel. One of the security sources said two people were wounded in Markaba.

There was no immediate comment on the tank rounds from Hezbollah or Israel.

Under the ceasefire terms, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military not to allow residents back to villages near the border.

Lebanon's speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, had said on Wednesday that residents could return home.

Reporting by Reuters

An Israeli drone strike targeted a car in the border town of Markaba, southern Lebanon, injuring three people on Thursday, Al Jazeera reported. 

Israeli military strikes killed at least 17 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, medics said, as forces stepped up bombardments on central areas and pushed tanks deeper in the north and south of the enclave.

Six people were killed in two separate air strikes on a house and near the hospital of Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, while four others were killed when an Israeli strike hit a motorcycle in Khan Younis in the south.

In Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, Israeli planes carried out several air strikes destroying a multi-floor building and hitting roads outside mosques. At least seven people were killed in some of those strikes, health officials said.

Medics said at least two people, a woman and a child, were killed in tank shelling that hit western areas of Nuseirat, while an air strike killed five others in a house nearby.

In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, tanks pushed deeper into the north-western area of the city, residents said.

There has been no Israeli comment on the fighting in Gaza overnight and early Thursday.

Reporting by Reuters

Israeli forces have effectively blocked all attempts to deliver aid to northern Gaza since they launched a large-scale offensive there on 5 October, UN figures have shown.

The besiegement has left an estimated 65,000 to 75,000 Palestinians trapped in northern Gaza while being cut off from humanitarian aid and facing "diminishing conditions for survival", the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said on Thursday. 

The UN made 91 attempts to deliver life-saving aid to Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Sahour between 6 October and 25 November.  

However, 82 of those attempts were outright denied and the rest were impeded, according to Unrwa. 

"The situation is beyond miserable," the agency said.

Here are the latest updates from the Israeli war on Gaza, now in its 419th day:

• Israeli jets heavily bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip overnight, according to local media. At least six Palestinians have been killed, including a child, in attacks in Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Gaza City, Wafa news agency reported. 

• In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces stormed the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem and the Qabatiya town near Jenin. 

• Meanwhile, Israeli artillery shelling targeted the southern Lebanese village of Yaroun, in violation of the ceasefire agreement, according to local reports. There were no immediate comments from the Israeli military.