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

An Israeli drone strike hit the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City in the north of the enclave, killing at least four people inside the hospital, Al Jazeera reported.

Two journalists, Ismail Badah and Sulaiman Haja, who used to work for Palestine Today, were among those killed in the attack, according to the report.

At least 15 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Thursday, including at least six people in south Gaza’s al-Mawasi, when an Israeli drone attacked tents housing displaced people, Al Jazeera said. 

At least three people were killed in a strike on the southern part of Gaza City.

The Israeli army has been launching air strikes on residential neighbourhoods in Gaza that they treat as evacuated in recent weeks, despite knowing that many of the houses bombed were filled with civilians, +972 Magazine and Local Call reported, citing two intelligence sources.

The army designates a neighbourhood as “green,” meaning clear of residents, based on a "flawed" algorithmic analysis of phone usage patterns over a wide area, the report said. According to the sources, the military does not carry out post-strike assessments to confirm whether the analysis was accurate, and determine how many civilians were actually killed.

“It’s clear there are a lot of people in those houses," said one military source who was in Gaza.

“You look at the evacuation tables, and everything is green - that means between 0 to 20 percent of the population remains. The whole area we were in, in Khan Younis, was marked green, and it clearly wasn’t,” the source added.

Sources said the army uses this method to authorise more air strikes while claiming they meet the principle of proportionality.

Israel's military recovered the bodies of two Israeli captives who had been held by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

The Israeli army identified the captives as husband and wife, Judi Weinstein-Haggai and Gad Haggai.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 10 people in the battered Palestinian territory on Thursday, as the military keeps up an intensified offensive.

"Ten martyrs so far resulting from Israeli strikes since dawn," agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP, adding that Israel had targeted an area where displaced civilians were sheltering in the southern city of Khan Younis, and houses in Gaza City and the central town of Deir el-Balah.

The Israeli military was behind a deadly shooting of civilians seeking aid near Rafah, Gaza, on Sunday, a CNN investigation found.

More than a dozen eyewitnesses, including those wounded in the attack, said Israeli troops shot at crowds in volleys of gunfire that occurred sporadically through the early hours of Sunday morning, the investigation said. Multiple videos geolocated by CNN placed the gunfire near a roundabout where hundreds of Palestinians had gathered about half a mile (800 metres) away from the militarised aid site.

The Israeli military has denied its troops had fired on civilians in or around the centre, and both it and the aid centre's administrator accused Hamas of sowing false rumours.

The Times of Israel said a separate report by Haaretz also confirmed eyewitness accounts and video pointing to Israel having carried out the shooting. The outlet quotes an unnamed military official saying that senior officers opened fire to direct the Palestinians towards the aid site.

“The intention was to direct the population via fire,” the officer is quoted as saying.

“The army treated this like a regular situation of suspects entering a combat zone, but it’s impossible to direct a population at scales this large with fire if you want them to feel safe getting to areas you have opened.”

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

Here are the latest updates from the Israeli war on Gaza, now in its 607th day: 

• A US and Israeli-backed group operating aid sites in Gaza pushed back the reopening of its facilities set for Thursday.

• Some 73% of Germans want tighter controls on arms exports to Israel, including 30% who favour a total ban, a poll showed on Wednesday, reflecting growing public unease over the government's Israel policy.

• Israeli strike on Abu Shamala family's home, west of Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip killed Palestinian child Jana Khaled Sand, according to the Palestinian Information Center. Three people were killed and some wounded in an Israeli air strike on a house in the Zeitoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City, a medical source at the Baptist Hospital said.

• The Israeli forces fired sound bombs and bullets at Palestinians as they confronted settler attacks on the town of Bruqin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Information Center reported, citing local sources.

• A federal judge in Colorado on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting the wife and five children of the suspect in a fire-bomb attack in Boulder, Colorado, saying that deporting the family without adequate process could cause "irreparable harm."

• US President Donald Trump imposed a travel ban on 12 Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen.

Our live blog is now closed until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

- As of Wednesday, the number of the identified dead from Israeli attacks in Gaza since 7 October 2023 is 54,607, local officials said. 

- Fourteen members of the 15-member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted in favour of calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but a US veto killed the resolution. 

- The United Nations' aid chief has said that recent "horrifying scenes" of Palestinians in Gaza being killed by Israeli forces while trying to access food aid were the result of "deliberate choices". 

- The UK government has called for an "immediate and independent investigation" into the deaths of Palestinians at aid distribution sites in the Gaza Strip this week.

- Israeli arms exports hit an all-time high of $14.7bn in 2024, according to the defence ministry, including a sharp rise in deals with Arab states. 

- Israel's opposition party Yesh Atid, led by former prime minister Yair Lapid, is moving to vote to topple the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week.

As of Wednesday, the number of the identified dead from Israeli attacks in Gaza since 7 October 2023 is 54,607, local officials said. 

The US Department of Education said on Wednesday it has notified a university accreditation body that Columbia University had violated federal anti-discrimination laws by its alleged failure to protect Jewish students on its campus. 

The alleged violation means that Columbia has not met the standards of accreditation set by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the department said.

While the federal government does not directly accredit US universities, it has a role in overseeing the mostly private organisations that do. Trump has often complained that accreditors approve institutions that fail to provide quality education.

Columbia has been the epicentre of a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement that has roiled US campuses over the last year and a half. 

- Reporting by Reuters

Fourteen members of the 15-member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday voted in favour of calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but a US veto killed the resolution. 

The UNSC has five permanent nations with veto power, and another ten that rotate membership. 

The US said it cannot vote for a resolution that blames Israel, rather than Hamas, for the conditions in Gaza

Human rights groups, as well as UN staff, have described those conditions as a "genocide" and a "famine" perpetrated by Israel. 

The majority of people across the world have a negative view of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a Pew poll released on Tuesday.

Views on Israel were mostly negative in 20 out of 24 countries surveyed by Pew between January and April 2025.

Most people in Arab and Muslim countries have had a negative view of Israel for decades, but the Pew poll showed widespread negative attitudes across Europe and East Asia. It also showed that positive views of Israel are decreasing in Western Europe and among young people. 

Read more: US sentiment towards Israel was also included, referencing a poll Pew published in April

After Israeli air strikes targeted southern Syria on Wednesday morning - just hours after two missiles were launched from there towards the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights - the Syrian foreign minister called Israel's actions "a provocation".

Asaad al-Shaibani said Syria does "not seek war" and "demands respect for the 1974 Disengagement Agreement" with Israel, which established a buffer zone with a United Nations peacekeeping force.

"Syria is a free and sovereign state, and any country that treats us in the previous manner is an insult to our country," he said in his remarks on Wednesday. 

"We are pursuing elements that threaten Syrian civilians and the country's security."

The missiles were reportedly fired from the town of Tasil in Syria's Daraa Governorate - an area where Israel conducted military operations in April as part of its ongoing incursions into Syrian territory.

A previously unknown group calling itself the Martyr Mohammed Deif Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. The group is named after the late commander of Hamas's armed wing.

A recent correction by the Washington Post regarding its reporting on a deadly incident at a Gaza aid distribution site has ignited a firestorm of criticism and accusations of pro-Israel bias on social media.

On 1 June, at least 32 Palestinians were killed and over 200 wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on civilians gathered at two US-Israeli food distribution points in Rafah and central Gaza, according to local officials and eyewitnesses.

The original headline of the Post article on the deaths read: "Israeli troops kill over 30 near US aid site in Gaza, health officials say". The Post shared the article on X in a post that said: "At least 31 people were killed Sunday morning in southern Gaza, according to the Strip’s Health Ministry, when Israeli troops opened fire on crowds making their way to collect aid".

On 3 June, the Post issued a notice on X, saying it had deleted the earlier X post and edited the article because it "didn't meet Post fairness standards". 

Read more: The paper suggested that if it was going to attribute deaths to Israel, it cannot cite numbers from Gaza officials

The US will veto a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the opening of crossings for aid, Axios reported on Wednesday, citing two Israeli officials. 

The vote is scheduled for the coming hours. 

Israel's opposition party Yesh Atid, led by former prime minister Yair Lapid, is moving to vote to topple the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week.

On Wednesday, a member of Israel's right-wing coalition threatened to quit the cabinet and support that vote unless an exemption was passed by lawmakers for ultra-Orthodox men not to enlist in the military. 

United Torah Judaism, which is one of two ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition, said it would withdraw from the government unless there were concessions on the matter of men from religious seminaries.