Thousands rally across Israel in new wave of protest
Huge numbers of Israelis again poured into the streets to protest against the government’s failure to secure the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, the Associated Press reports.
The new protest came a week after one of the largest demonstrations of the war after the discovery of another six dead hostages in Gaza, and after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against pressure for a ceasefire deal and declared that “no one will preach to me”.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from the US and other allies to reach a ceasefire deal, but Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.
Key events
Hezbollah says rockets fired at Israeli town after attack kills Lebanon rescuers
Hezbollah announced retaliatory rocket fire targeting a town in northern Israel early Sunday, hours after Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli attack killed three civil defence personnel in the country’s south, AFP reports.
Hezbollah said it had bombarded “Kiryat Shmona with a volley of Falaq rockets” early Sunday “in response to the enemy attacks … and particularly the attack” that killed the emergency workers in the Lebanese village of Froun.
On Saturday, Lebanon’s health ministry said three emergency personnel were killed and two wounded in an Israeli attack on a civil defence team that had been fighting fires in the country’s south.
“Israeli enemy targeting of a Lebanese civil defence team that was putting out fires sparked by the recent Israeli strikes in the village of Froun led to the martyrdom of three emergency responders,” the health ministry said in a statement.
Two others were wounded, one of them critically, the ministry added.
Lebanon’s civil defence said in a statement that three of its employees were killed in “an Israeli strike that targeted a firefighting vehicle after they had finished a firefighting mission”.
More than a dozen people killed in air raids on Gaza
Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip have killed more than a dozen people, the Associated Press reports.
In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda hospital said it received the bodies of nine people killed in two air raids. One hit a residential building, killing four people and wounding at least 10, while five people were killed in a strike on a house in western Nuseirat.
Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital, said a woman and her two children were killed in a strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij.
In northern Gaza, an airstrike on a school turned shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government.
Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas command post embedded in a former school compound.
Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank. A days-long military operation in Jenin left dozens of dead.
Thousands rally across Israel in new wave of protest
Huge numbers of Israelis again poured into the streets to protest against the government’s failure to secure the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, the Associated Press reports.
The new protest came a week after one of the largest demonstrations of the war after the discovery of another six dead hostages in Gaza, and after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against pressure for a ceasefire deal and declared that “no one will preach to me”.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from the US and other allies to reach a ceasefire deal, but Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.
Opening summary
Welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider crisis in the Middle East.
Huge numbers of demonstrators rallied on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities to protest against the government’s failure to secure the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, the Associated Press reports.
In Gaza, hospital and local authorities said Israeli air raids in the territory killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday.
More details on those stories shortly, in other key developments:
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Israeli military strikes across the Palestinian Gaza Strip killed at least 61 people in the space of 48 hours, local medics said on Saturday, as Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in the territory. Eleven months into the war, numerous rounds of diplomacy have so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal to end the conflict and bring the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed in Israel.
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British and American spy chiefs have said they are together “working ceaselessly” for a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza, in a rare public statement. MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore and CIA director Bill Burns said the two agencies have “exploited our intelligence channels to push hard for restraint and de-escalation” in the Middle East, PA Media reported.
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US secretary of state Antony Blinken said it was incumbent on both Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to make concessions to reach a deal. On Saturday, senior Hamas official Hossam Badran said the group had made no new demands and remained committed to a 2 July proposal put forward by the United States, accusing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attaching new conditions that would not end the war. Netanyahu says it was Hamas that introduced unacceptable conditions.
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The UK decision to suspend some arms exports to Israel has bolstered the case for Congress to follow the example of its ally, US campaigners for a ban have said. The campaigners are pressing the US Senate and the house to pass a joint resolution of disapproval blocking authorisation for an unprecedented $20bn (£15.2bn) weapons sale. The massive transfer was notified to Congress last month when it was in recess.
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Residents of Khan Younis and displaced families from Rafah continued to crowd medical facilities, bringing their children to be vaccinated against polio. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said at least 160,000 children received the drops on Thursday in southern areas of Gaza, where medical staffers began the second stage in the huge immunisation campaign.
