Live: At least 75 killed in Israeli strikes on second day of Eid al-Adha

At least 66 Palestinians have died as a result of Israeli air attacks in the Gaza Strip today, Al Jazeera reported on Friday.

 The UK condemned Israeli settler arson attacks on the town of Bruqin, in the occupied West Bank, where 150 masked settlers set Palestinian homes and cars ablaze on Thursday evening. Palestinians were injured during the attacks.

“UK condemns the latest appalling settler attacks in Bruqin,” the British Consulate General in Jerusalem said on X.

“Israel has an obligation to protect the civilian Palestinian population in the West Bank. Those responsible for extremist settler violence must be held to account.”

The Consulate General said that the UK has applied further sanctions on individual settlers, illegal settlements and organisations supporting violence against Palestinian communities.

“The UK will continue to act against those who are carrying out heinous abuses of human rights,” the social media post said.

The fires led to large-scale blazes across parts of the town. The Israeli military did not stop the attacks, according to Wafa news.

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported at least eight burn cases as residents sustained burns trying to put out the fires.

UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported at least 28 settler attacks that resulted in casualties, property damage or both, between 13 and 19 May.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has agreed on a framework to disarm Palestinian factions within Lebanon during his three-day trip to the country.

After meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Wednesday, a joint statement released on the Lebanese presidency's X account said there was a commitment by "both sides to the principle that all weapons in the country must controlled by state authorities".

"They declare their belief that the era of weapons outside the authority of the Lebanese state is over," the statement read.

Earlier this month, Palestinian and Lebanese sources told Middle East Eye that Abbas' visit was intimately tied to disarming Palestinian factions in Lebanon.

You can read more here.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the dire situation in Gaza as the "cruellest phase of this cruel conflict", warning that "families are being starved and denied the very basics, all with the world watching in real time".

Speaking from UN headquarters in New York, Guterres underscored Israel’s legal obligation to ensure humanitarian aid reaches civilians. While nearly 400 aid trucks were recently cleared through the Kerem Shalom crossing, he noted that "supplies from only 115 trucks have been able to be collected and nothing has reached the besieged north".

He stressed that current aid flows "amount to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required", blaming "strict quotas" and "unnecessary delay procedures" for the bottleneck.

Guterres said the Israeli offensive continues "with atrocious levels of death and destruction", leaving 80 percent of Gaza’s territory inaccessible. 

"The big picture is that without rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access, more people will die and the long-term consequences on the entire population will be profound," he added.

Israeli strikes killed six Palestinian guards protecting aid trucks on Friday, as they were being attacked by looters, in what appears to be the latest coordination between the army and local gangs.

According to Anadolu Agency, the six were killed and others wounded in Deir al-Balah while attempting to "secure the arrival of aid trucks to international organisation warehouses in the city".

Armed individuals began attacking the aid trucks to loot the supplies, local media reported. As security forces tried to repel the assailants and safeguard the aid, Israeli warplanes launched strikes in the area.

Civilians were also targeted during the intense bombardment. Ambulance crews responding to rescue the wounded and retrieve the bodies of the dead reportedly came under fire as well.

The Government Media Office in Gaza strongly condemned the Israeli attack, describing it as “part of a plan to engineer starvation and disrupt humanitarian relief”.

Read more: Israel bombs Gaza aid guards as they are attacked by looters

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot dismissed as "absurd and slanderous" Israel’s claim that European countries are fuelling antisemitism by criticising its actions in Gaza.

"Accusing of encouraging anti-Semitism or [supporting] Hamas whoever defends the two-state solution is absurd and slanderous", Barrot wrote on X, reaffirming that France remains "indefectibly attached to the security of Israel".

He also emphasised that France supports Hamas being "disarmed and permanently excluded from the political future of Gaza".

The backlash follows remarks by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who accused European governments of inciting anti-Semitic violence in the wake of two Israeli embassy staffers being killed on Wednesday in Washington.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has killed nearly 54,000 Palestinians, along with various plans to expel the remaining survivors, has one primary goal: to safeguard the Jewish settler-colony of Israel by restoring the lost Jewish demographic majority, which had been achieved through mass killings and expulsions since 1948.

Zionists understood early on that the only chance their settler-colonial project had of survival was through the establishment of a Jewish majority by expelling the Palestinians.

Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, outlined early plans for this in the 1890s, which the Zionist Organisation pursued from the 1920s. Expulsion, however, only became possible after the Zionist military conquest of Palestine.

On the eve of the 1948 war, Palestine had a Jewish population of 608,000 (constituting 30 percent), most of whom had arrived in the country over the previous two decades, alongside 1,364,000 Palestinians.

During the 1948 conquest, Zionist forces killed upwards of 13,000 Palestinians - one percent of the Palestinian population - and expelled around 760,000 Palestinians, or more than 80 percent of those who lived in the area that Israel would later declare a Jewish state. 

Read more: Israel's genocide in Gaza is a war on demographics

Hamas condemned an Israeli attack on a medicine depot at al-Awda hospital in Jabalia, northern Gaza, calling it a continued effort to dismantle Gaza’s collapsing health system.

“[Israel] continues its horrific violation of international laws and humanitarian norms by directly targeting hospitals and inhabited homes, relying on American political and military cover and a shameful state of international impotence,” Hamas said in a statement on Telegram.

It urged the UN and international community to take “immediate action… to ensure an end to the horrific massacre in the Gaza Strip”.

On Thursday, the strike ignited a fire at the hospital’s medical storage facility.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 60 people have been killed and 185 wounded over the past 24 hours.

The ministry said these casualties bring the total death toll in Gaza since the outbreak of Israel's war on Gaza on 7 October 2023, to 53,822, with 122,382 others wounded.

Since Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March, at least 3,673 people have been killed and 10,341 wounded, the ministry added.

Eight people, including seven children, were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a house in Qizan al-Najjar, located south of Khan Younis, according to Gaza’s civil defence. Several others sustained injuries in the attack.

Four other people were killed in northern Gaza.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said 15 of its aid trucks were looted late on Thursday night in southern Gaza while delivering vital food supplies to WFP-supported bakeries.

"These trucks were transporting critical food supplies for hungry populations waiting anxiously for assistance," WFP said in a statement on Friday.

The agency urged Israeli authorities to allow "far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster, more consistently, and transported along safer routes, as was done during the ceasefire".

WFP said current restrictions limiting food access points and operational bakeries are severely hampering its ability to distribute aid. 

The organisation reiterated that two million people in Gaza face extreme hunger and potential famine without immediate, large-scale humanitarian support.

The Palestinian group Hamas on Friday welcomed a joint statement by 80 countries that described the situation in Gaza as the worst humanitarian crisis since the outbreak of Israeli military operations in October 2023. The statement, issued earlier this week, called for the protection of Palestinian civilians under international humanitarian law.

In a statement, Hamas said the global response reflects widening international rejection of “genocide and ethnic cleansing” by Israel in Gaza. The group urged the international community to take concrete steps to stop the “crime of starvation” and to lift the blockade on Gaza.

Hamas also called for sanctions on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demanded accountability for crimes against humanity.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the leaders of the UK, France, and Canada of "emboldening Hamas" after they condemned Israel’s military operations in Gaza and called for an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid.

In a video message posted on X on Thursday, Netanyahu referenced the fatal shooting on Wednesday of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington, describing the incident as "the terrible price of antisemitism" and blaming it on "rampant incitement against the State of Israel".

His remarks were in response to a joint statement issued earlier in the week by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

The three leaders described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as "egregious" and warned of "concrete actions" if the offensive continued unchecked.

Read more: Netanyahu accuses UK, France, and Canada of ‘emboldening' Hamas after Gaza criticism

Yair Golan, a former Israeli general and the leader of the country's left-wing opposition party, has been barred from wearing an Israeli military uniform, entering a military base or serving as a reservist, Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Friday.

Before retiring, Golan had served as the army's deputy chief of staff. Katz cited Golan's remarks on Tuesday criticising the government's policies in Gaza.

“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country,” Golan told Israeli public radio in an interview.

"A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations," Golan said.

Over 900 film industry figures have signed an open letter denouncing the "genocide" in Gaza and the movie industry's failure to speak up about it.

Schindler's List star Ralph Fiennes was among the signatories of the petition, which began circulating during the buildup to the Cannes Film Festival.

Signatories also include Juliette Binoche, who is chairing the jury at Cannes, Rooney Mara, Jonathan Glazer, US indie director Jim Jarmusch, Lupin star Omar Sy, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Pedro Almodovar and Mark Ruffalo. 

The initiative, called "Artists for Fatem", was sparked by the killing of Palestinian photojournalist Fatima ("Fatem") Hassouna, who was the subject of a documentary that premiered at Cannes.

Hassouna, 25, was killed in an Israeli air strike along with 10 relatives in her family home in northern Gaza last month, the day after the documentary was announced as part of the ACID Cannes selection.

"As artists and cultural players, we cannot remain silent while genocide is taking place in Gaza and this unspeakable news is hitting our communities hard," the open letter says.