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UN chief says US-backed Gaza aid operation is 'unsafe' and is 'killing people'
United Nations secretary general António Guterres said on Friday that a US-backed aid operation in Gaza is “inherently unsafe,” giving a blunt assessment: “It is killing people.”
He also said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel - as the occupying power - is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout Palestine, Reuters reports.
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.
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Trump insists Iran 'wants to meet' for talks - reports
Donald Trump reiterated on Friday that Tehran wants to meet following US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, but gave no further details, Reuters reports.
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, also said that he would want the International Atomic Energy Agency or another trusted entity to have full rights to conduct inspections in Iran.
UK says last Israel evacuation flight to leave on Sunday
The UK said on Friday it would end evacuation flights out of Israel for UK nationals after a sixth and final flight scheduled for Sunday, as demand decreases in light of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, Reuters reports.
“The government has organised multiple flights evacuating British nationals and their dependants from Tel Aviv, prioritising the most vulnerable,” a spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign Office said, adding the number of commercial options for travel was growing.
“These flights will end if there is not sufficient demand. We will keep the situation under review.”
Iran's Araghchi says UN nuclear watchdog head's insistence to visit Iran sites is 'meaningless, even malign'
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi indicated on Friday that Tehran may reject any request by the head of the UN nuclear watchdog for visits to Iranian nuclear sites, Reuters reports.
In a post on X he said the UN nuclear watchdog head’s insistence to visit Iran sites is “meaningless, even malign”.
50th Palestine Red Crescent medic killed in Gaza since the start of the war
The 50th Palestine Red Crescent medic has been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PCRS) said in a statement.
Haitham Bassam Abu Issa, a nurse at the PRCS clinic in Deir al-Balah in the centre of the Gaza strip, was killed while off duty on Thursday, the PRCS says.
“This brings the total number of PRCS staff and volunteers killed during the conflict to 50 – a deeply shocking figure,” it said.
It added that “30 colleagues were killed while on PRCS duty wearing what should have been protective emblems. Those colleagues killed off duty should have been protected like all civilians should be.”
UN chief says US-backed Gaza aid operation is 'unsafe' and is 'killing people'
United Nations secretary general António Guterres said on Friday that a US-backed aid operation in Gaza is “inherently unsafe,” giving a blunt assessment: “It is killing people.”
He also said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel - as the occupying power - is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout Palestine, Reuters reports.
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.
Iran will hold what it described as “historic” funeral proceedings in Tehran on Saturday for 60 killed in its 12-day war with Israel, including top military commanders and nuclear scientists, AFP reports.
The commemorations will begin at 0800 local time (0430 GMT) at Enghelab (Revolution) Square in central Tehran, followed by a funeral procession to Azadi (Freedom) Square, about 11 kilometres (7 miles) away.
“A brief ceremony will be held there, then the processions of the martyrs will go toward Azadi Square,” said Mohsen Mahmoudi, head of Tehran’s Islamic Development Coordination Council, in a televised interview Friday.
“Tomorrow will be a historic day for Islamic Iran and the revolution,” he added.
Among the dead is Gen Mohammad Bagheri, a major general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the second-in-command of the armed forces after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He will be buried alongside his wife and daughter, a journalist for a local media outlet, all killed in an Israeli attack.
Nuclear scientist Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, also killed in the attacks, will be buried with his wife.
Four women and four children are among those to be honoured at the funeral ceremony.
Gaza rescuers say 62 killed by Israeli forces including 10 waiting for aid
Gaza’s civil defence agency said that Israeli forces killed at least 62 people on Friday, including 10 who were waiting for aid in the Palestinian territory.
The reported killing of people seeking aid marks the latest in a string of deadly incidents near aid sites in Gaza, where a US- and Israeli-backed foundation has largely replaced established humanitarian organisations.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 62 Palestinians had been killed on Friday by Israeli strikes or gunfire in the Gaza Strip.
When asked by AFP for comment, the Israeli military said it was looking into the incidents, and denied its troops fired in one of the locations in central Gaza where rescuers said one aid seeker was killed.
Bassal told AFP that six people were killed in southern Gaza near one of the distribution sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and one more in a separate incident in the centre of the territory, where the army denied shooting “at all”.
Another three people were killed by a strike while waiting for aid southwest of Gaza City, Bassal said.
Lebanon says 1 killed, 21 wounded in strikes as Israel blames death on Hezbollah arms
Lebanon’s health ministry said a woman was killed and 21 other people wounded in Israeli strikes Friday in the country’s south, while the Israeli military blamed Hezbollah munitions for the death (see earlier post).
An “Israel enemy strike on an apartment in Nabatieh led to a preliminary toll of one woman killed” and 14 other people wounded, the ministry said in an updated statement carried by the official National News Agency (NNA).
The NNA said an Israeli drone targeted the apartment.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on social media that the army “did not target any civilian building”.
The NNA earlier reported “a wave of successive heavy strikes” in several other areas in the Nabatieh region that the health ministry said wounded seven people.
An Israeli military statement said fighter jets struck a site that Hezbollah used “to manage its fire and defence array in the area of the Beaufort Ridge”, near Nabatieh and the Israeli border.
It said the site was “part of a significant underground project that was completely taken out of use” by the raids.
Adraee said the civilian building “was hit by a rocket that was inside the (fire and defence array) site and launched and exploded as a result of the strike”.
Israeli defence minister says he instructed military to prepare 'enforcement plan' against Iran
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz has instructed the military to prepare an enforcement plan against Iran following their 12-day air war, Katz said on Friday in a statement, Reuters reports.
The plan “includes maintaining Israel’s air superiority, preventing nuclear advancement and missile production, and responses to Iran for supporting terrorist activities against Israel”, Katz added.
Desperate relatives of two French detainees in Iran demanded “proof of life” on Friday after Israel struck their Tehran prison, with a lawyer denouncing their “forced disappearance”, AFP reports.
French national Cecile Kohler, 40, and her 72-year-old partner Jacques Paris have been held in Iran since May 2022 on espionage charges their families reject.
Their fate has been unknown since Israel targeted Tehran’s Evin prison in an air strike on Monday, before a US-proposed ceasefire between the Middle East foes came into force.
Iran’s prison authority transferred inmates out of the prison after it was hit, the judiciary said on Tuesday, but it is not clear how many inmates were moved or who they were.
“We don’t know if they are still alive, we don’t know where they are,” Cecile’s sister, Noemie Kohler, said at a press conference in Paris.
“We await proof of life immediately.”
Anne-Laure Paris said she also had no idea where her father, Jacques, was.
“I’m scared for my father’s life,” she said.
Chirinne Ardakani, the lawyer of the relatives, said: “Cecile and Jacques, state hostages arbitrarily detained in a cruel and inhuman manner in Iran, are missing.”
“In law, this is a forced disappearance,” she added.
Summary of the day so far...
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Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said that “the Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid” as it called on the Israeli authorities to end its siege on the territory.
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At least 56,331 Palestinian people have been killed and 132,632 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. At least 72 Palestinian people were killed and 174 others injured in the last 24 hours, it added.
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Israel’s air force carried out intense airstrikes on mountains overlooking the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on Friday, in an attack that the Israeli military claimed targeted underground Hezbollah assets.
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The Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, denounced the Israeli attacks saying they break the terms of the ceasefire signed between Israel and Hezbollah in November.
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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to postpone his upcoming testimony in his criminal trial by two weeks has been rejected.
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Netanyahu is keen to meet US president Donald Trump at the White House in the coming weeks to celebrate the joint US-Israeli bombing campaign of Iran’s nuclear program, according to reports.
A doctor working at the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis has described the horror of regularly receiving bodies of Palestinian people killed while trying to get aid.
Dr Mohammed Saqer said the “world has lost its heart” and possibly its “humanity forever”, as relentless Israeli attacks continue to devastate the territory and its civilian population, with an often muted reaction from the global press and international community.
“At Nasser hospital we receive dozens daily, either dead or wounded. What happened to this world?” he told the Guardian.
Dr Saqer added:
Because of the horrifying numbers of children and women being killed in Gaza, I find myself thinking crazy thoughts… Why don’t we build shelters for them? Trick the warplanes, hide them from death?
We strive to gather whatever food we can find, and give them priority. I know the idea is crazy, but what is the alternative?
Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza reaches 56,331, says health ministry
At least 56,331 Palestinian people have been killed and 132,632 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
At least 72 Palestinian people were killed and 174 others injured in the last 24 hours, the ministry said.
It added in its post on Telegram:
A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulances and civil defense crews cannot reach them.
Aitor Zabalgogeaskoa, the Gaza emergency coordinator at Médecins Sans Frontières, said:
The four distribution sites, all located in areas under the full control of Israeli forces after people had been forcibly displaced from there, are the size of football fields surrounded by watch points, mounds of earth and barbed wire.
The fenced entrance gives only one access point in or out. GHF workers drop the pallets and the boxes of food and open the fences, allowing thousands in all at once to fight down to the last grain of rice.
If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time, but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot. If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’, they get shot.
