Israel-Gaza war live: killing of Unrwa staff in Israeli strike ‘appalling’, says UK foreign minister

Turkey has opened an investigation into the death of a Turkish-American activist shot and killed by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank and will request international arrest warrants, Ankara said on Thursday.

Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old volunteer with the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement, died in hospital on Friday after being shot in the head during a protest in Beita, near Nablus. Witnesses said she was shot at by Israeli soldiers positioned in a nearby field.

Reuters reports her body will arrive for burial in Turkey on Friday. It reports Turkey’s foreign ministry said she “was deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians. We will make every effort to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished,” it said.

Israel has said it was highly likely its troops had fired the shot that killed her but claimed her death was unintentional. Turkey’s justice minister Yılmaz Tunç said the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office is investigating “those responsible for the martyrdom and murder of our sister”, and told reporters that Turkey had evidence regarding the killing and would make international arrest requests.

In the wake of Eygi’s death US secretary of state Antony Blinken called on Israel to “make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement. Now we have the second American citizen killed at the hands of Israeli security forces. It’s not acceptable.”

Eygi’s family have been critical of the way the US administration responded to her death, saying that several days after she was killed, neither the White House nor Joe Biden had called to offer condolences. A vigil in Eygi’s memory was held last night in Seattle, where she had lived.

The UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, has described the reported deaths of six Unrwa workers in an Israeli strike on a UN-run school in Gaza as “appalling”.

In a message posted on social media, the recently installed foreign secretary said:

Reports of six Unrwa staff members being killed in an Israeli strike are appalling. My thoughts are with their families and all those who continue to carry out lifesaving work. Aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely. We need a ceasefire and hostage release deal now.

Since coming to power in July, the new UK Labour government has restarted British funding for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, with Lammy stating in parliament in London that “Humanitarian aid is a moral necessity in the face of such a catastrophe [in Gaza]. Unrwa is absolutely central to these efforts. No other agency can get aid into Gaza at the scale needed.”

The UK and many other western nations suspended funding to Unrwa after Israel alleged that several members of its staff participated in the surprise 7 October Hamas attack inside southern Israel.

At the time UK funding was restored to Unrwa, Lammy said “I was appalled by the allegations that Unrwa staff were involved in the 7 October attacks. We are reassured that after Catherine Colonna’s independent review, Unrwa is ensuring they meet the highest standards of neutrality and strengthening its procedures, including on vetting.”

The Labour government has also imposed a limited export ban on some arms sales to Israel, a move which was described as “shameful” by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s military has claimed that the strike yesterday on the UN-run school, which was sheltering displaced Palestinians, was aimed at what the IDF described as “a Hamas command and control centre”. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilian buildings and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. [See 9.34 BST]

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has said that Israeli attacks have killed at least 34 people and injured 96 over the past 24 hours in the territory.

It puts the total death toll since 7 October 2023 at 41,118 people killed, with 95,125 injured. The figures, which have not been independently verified, do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, and include women and children.

The ministry reported that there are more people trapped under rubble and in areas inaccessible to emergency services.

Gaza’s civil defence service earlier said it had recovered four bodies after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah. Other fatalities have been reported this morning in Jabalia camp and the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City.

There is limited media access to Gaza, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has recorded the deaths of at least 116 journalists and media workers during the course of the war, making it “the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.”

Israel’s Arabic language military spokesperson Avichay Adraee has posted to social media a message he says is regarding “the allegations and lies” he claimed have been spread about the Israeli attack on the Jaouni school in Nuseirat.

He claimed, without providing evidence in the post, that it was “formerly used” as a school but was “a Hamas command and control complex”. He claimed that “many of the names [of victims] published on social media and news channels belong to Hamas terrorists who were involved in terrorist activities against Israeli citizens and IDF forces.”

He claimed that the IDF had repeatedly sought more information from Unrwa on the six staff killed in the attack, but said “it did not respond to these requests, which were repeatedly conveyed to it”. The claims have not been independently verified.

Unrwa has said that six of its staff were killed in the attack, with the agency posting to social media to say “Among those killed was the manager of the Unrwa shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people. Schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target.”

Gaza’s civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said that it was the fifth time Israel has targeted the school since 7 October. He initially put the death toll of Unrwa workers killed at two, and said 18 people had been killed in total, and more than 18 others injured, including women and children.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of Unrwa, has said that the staff who died in Wednesday’s attack had been providing support to families who had sought refuge in the school, and that at least 220 of his agency’s staff had been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.

In a statement Lazzarini lamented the “endless and senseless killing, day after day” in Gaza, adding “Humanitarian staff, premises and operations have been blatantly and unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war.”

Reporting for Al Jazeera from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza where the dead were being received at a hospital for burial, Hani Mahmoud said the scenes were “heartbreaking” and “chaotic”. He reported for the network:

This is not the first time we’ve seen UN-run evacuation centres attacked. These facilities are marked, their coordinates shared with the Israeli military. They are known to have turned into shelters for displaced families. But the UN’s blue and white colours on the shelters is not protecting the people inside.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel, and Israel’s military has not permitted foreign media to operate inside Gaza. None of the claims have been independently verified by journalists.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.

UN chief António Guterres has condemned an Israeli airstrike on a central Gaza school being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians that killed 18 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s civil defence agency.

“What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable,” he wrote on social media, adding that six Unrwa workers were among the dead. “These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”

Israel’s military claimed its air force had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command-and-control centre” on the school grounds.

An IDF spokesperson claimed that prior to the attack “a series of measures were taken to reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties, including the use of precision weapons, the use of aerial imagery, and additional intelligence.”

Here is a summary of the day’s other main news.

• Philippe Lazzarini, the head of Unrwa, has said that the staff who died in Wednesday’s attack had been providing support to families who had sought refuge in the school, and that at least 220 of his agency’s staff had been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.

• Elsewhere on Wednesday, a strike hit a home near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing 11 people, including six brothers and sisters ranging from 21 months to 21 years old, according to the European hospital, which received the casualties.

• Hamas said on Wednesday that its negotiators had reiterated their readiness to implement an “immediate” ceasefire with Israel in Gaza based on a previous US proposal without new conditions from any party. The group said in a statement that their negotiation team, led by senior official Khalil al-Hayya, had met mediators in Doha to discuss the latest developments in Gaza.

• CIA director William Burns, who is also the chief US negotiator on Gaza, said on Saturday that a more detailed ceasefire proposal would be made in the next several days. The previous proposal put forward by president Joe Biden in June laid out a three-phase ceasefire in return for the release of Israeli hostages. However lingering issues, including control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow stretch of land on Gaza’s border with Egypt, remain.

• Joe Biden has described the Israel Defense Force’s fatal shooting of the Turkish American protester Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi as “totally unacceptable” in his first extensive comments on her death. In a statement on Wednesday, Biden said that Israel had “acknowledged responsibility” for Eygi’s death, but he stopped short of backing the demands put out by Eygi’s family and other human rights advocates for an independent inquiry into the fatal shooting of the American activist at a protest in the West Bank town of Beita last week.