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It’s just gone 11pm in the UK, 1am in Israel and Gaza.

We’re pausing our live updates for now, but we’ll be back with more soon. Before we go, here’s a summary of today’s developments.

At least 33 killed in Gaza

At least 33 people have been killed by Israeli strikes and shootings in Gaza today, medics said, including Palestinians sheltering in tents or seeking food.

According to morgue records and health officials at Nasser Hospital, Israeli strikes killed at least 17 people in the southern Gaza Strip earlier this morning.

Israeli gunfire killed at least five aid-seekers near the Zikim crossing with Israel in northern Gaza, health officials at the Sheikh Radwan field hospital said.

Eleven people were also killed in other attacks in Gaza elsewhere, according to hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Melania Trump urged to confront Netanyahu

Meanwhile, Turkey’s first lady wrote to Melania Trump, urging her to show the same concern for children in Gaza as she has for Ukrainian children affected by war.

In a letter, Emine Erdogan mentioned the past advocacy of the US president’s wife, highlighting her compassion for the 648 Ukrainian children who have lost their lives in the conflict.

Gaza famine ‘irrefutable’, UN aid chief says

It came the day after famine was declared in Gaza City, something the UN’s aid chief described as “irrefutable”.

“It is a famine that we could have prevented, if we had been allowed,” Tom Fletcher said in a statement on social media.

“Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel. It is a famine within a few hundred metres of food, in a fertile land.”

Watch: What you need to know as famine confirmed in Gaza City

Efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, centered on a proposed 60-day truce awaiting an official Israeli response, face fresh obstacles as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on conditions many describe as unworkable. Chief among them are the full disarmament of Hamas and the release of all hostages – demands that, according to analysts, risk derailing mediation efforts and further inflaming tensions.

These conditions coincide with a first-ever UN declaration of famine in Gaza and Netanyahu’s renewed signals of continuing the war.

Experts told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Israeli stance complicates the task of Egyptian and Qatari mediators, who had secured Hamas’s acceptance of the two-month proposal.

With little sign of US pressure on Israel, observers expect mounting global frustration toward Netanyahu and a higher likelihood of escalation.

On Friday, Israeli news outlet Ynet quoted Defense Minister Israel Katz warning on social media platform X that the “gates of hell” would soon open on Hamas in Gaza City if it did not agree to Israel’s terms.

The remarks followed Netanyahu’s tour of units fighting in Gaza, where he confirmed approving army plans to seize Gaza City and “defeat Hamas,” while instructing negotiators to pursue talks on hostage releases but only under Israeli conditions.

The Times of Israel reported Thursday that there were no immediate plans to send an Israeli delegation to Qatar or Egypt. Axios cited a senior Israeli official as saying that Netanyahu would only dispatch negotiators once talks were set to cover all hostages, “living and dead”, and an end to the war on Israel’s terms.

Hamas’s partial proposal, accepted earlier this week, called for releasing 10 hostages and 18 bodies in exchange for a 60-day pause, with further releases and broader negotiations to follow.

Israel has so far rejected this phased approach, insisting on the release of all hostages at once. Meanwhile, the Israeli army has approved continued operations to capture Gaza’s cities.

Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned the escalation, calling it proof of Israel’s disregard for mediation efforts and international appeals to end the conflict.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly reiterated Cairo’s opposition to the war during a meeting with Japanese counterpart Shigeru Ishiba at the Yokohama TICAD summit.

Dr. Ahmed Fouad Anwar, a member of Egypt’s Council for Foreign Affairs, argued that Netanyahu’s conditions are designed to “negotiate under fire,” projecting strength while undermining mediators’ credibility.

Palestinian analyst Ayman al-Raqab added that US backing gives Israel a green light to reject partial truces, predicting continued fighting unless guarantees are secured.

Tensions escalated further Friday with the UN’s declaration of famine in Gaza, the first such announcement in the Middle East. The report warned that 500,000 people face catastrophic conditions and blamed Israel for blocking aid.

Israel dismissed the findings as “Hamas lies,” while the US ambassador in Tel Aviv cast doubt on the assessment, instead highlighting the plight of hostages. Hamas responded by urging immediate action to open crossings and halt what it called “genocide.”

The World Health Organization reported that 148 people have died of malnutrition in Gaza since January. Analysts suggest the famine declaration could increase global pressure on Israel and force Netanyahu toward some form of deal, though likely after a symbolic show of military strength.

Still, as long as Washington maintains firm backing for Israel, experts warn that mediation efforts face a steep uphill battle.

Desperate Palestinians clutching pots and plastic buckets scrambled for rice at a charity kitchen in Gaza City on Saturday, a day after the United Nations declared a famine in parts of the war-battered territory, a charge that Israel vehemently denied.

On Friday, the United Nations Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system officially declared a famine in parts of the Gaza Strip, saying that nearly a quarter of the enclave’s two million residents are experiencing famine, and that number is expected to rise by the end of September.

Israel swiftly denied the report, saying that the IPC relies on Hamas sources, and accused the system of having “twisted its own rules” in declaring a famine, calling the report an “outright lie” and “a modern blood libel.”

In the 24 hours following the UN announcement, eight people in Gaza died of malnutrition-related causes, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures cannot be verified and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. According to the ministry, the overall toll of such deaths during the war is 281.

Israel has largely dismissed these figures and has pointed out that many of those included were suffering from preexisting conditions prior to their deaths, describing the reports as “an orchestrated campaign” by Hamas to discredit Israel.

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In Gaza, one Palestinian woman said the UN famine declaration came “far too late.”

The children are “staggering from dizziness, unable to wake up because of the lack of food and water,” said the 34-year-old Umm Mohammad, at a charity kitchen in Deir al-Balah.

In Gaza City, which Israel plans to seize as part of an expanded military offensive, footage showed women and young children among the chaotic jostle of dozens clamoring and shouting for food.

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“We have no home left, no food, no income… so we are forced to turn to charity kitchens, but they do not satisfy our hunger,” said Yousef Hamad, 58, who was displaced from the northern city of Beit Hanoun.

“We’re starving. We eat once a day. Will we be more hungry than we are now? There’s nothing left,” said Dalia Shamali, whose family has been repeatedly displaced from their home in nearby Shejaiya.

She said they spent most of their money over the last two years moving from one part of Gaza to another as the Israeli military issued evacuation orders. With Israel allowing more food in recently, the price of flour and other food items has been dropping, but the family still can’t afford them, Shamali said.

American surgeon describes ‘heartbreaking’ scenes

In the city, an American surgeon working at a local hospital described the levels of desperation he has witnessed since arriving in the Strip earlier this month.

“The level of hunger is really what’s heartbreaking. You know, we saw malnutrition before, back in November, already starting to happen. But now the level is just, it’s beyond imagination,” said Mohammed Adeel Khaleel, a spinal surgeon from Texas on his third volunteer stint in Gaza.

He said that shortly after he arrived at the hospital, a 17-year-old was brought in with gunshot wounds to both legs and one hand, sustained when he went to collect food at an aid site.

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In the emergency room, Khaleel said he noted the ribs protruding from the teen’s emaciated torso, an indication of severe malnutrition. When doctors at Al-Ahli Hospital stabilized the patient, he raised his heavily bandaged hand and pointed to his empty mouth, Khaleel said.

Khaleel, who spoke to The Associated Press ahead of the UN famine announcement, said the evidence of deprivation was already clear, but said he would leave it to others with more expertise to measure exactly what constitutes famine.

“Just the degree of weight loss, post-operative complications and starvation that we’re seeing. That wouldn’t surprise me at all if it was called famine,” said Khaleel, who traveled to Gaza as an independent volunteer via the World Health Organization.

But he knows what he saw in three weeks of treating patients in Gaza, most of the time at the hospital in Gaza City. Again and again, medical workers cut open patients’ clothing to treat injuries, revealing a loss of muscle and fat caused by hunger that left skin stretched tight over protruding bones.

“These patients, a number of them that we’re seeing are just exposed ribs, severely skinny extremities,” he said. “And you know that they’re just not getting calories in.”

At Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital earlier in the week, nutrition director Dr. Mohammad Kuheil led an AP journalist to the bedside of a thin-limbed girl. Aya Sbeteh, 15, was wounded in an airstrike. But her recovery has been set back by weakness from lack of food, which her family says has reduced her weight by more than a third.

“All we have are grains like lentils, sometimes,” said her father, Yousef Sbeteh, 44. “Even flour is unaffordable.”

Another patient, Karam Akoumeh, lay with sunken cheeks, his thin skin stretched like plastic wrap across his rib cage. His intestines were seriously damaged when he was shot while going out to collect flour, his family said, compromising his digestive system and requiring hard-to-find intravenous nutritional supplements.

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According to the UN, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire while seeking aid in recent months. Israel has disputed the figures and has said it only fires warning shots if crowds get too close to its forces.

Akoumeh’s father, Atef, said the lack of supplements compounded the hunger that reduced Karam’s weight from 62 kilograms (136 pounds) to just 35 kilos (77 pounds).

“I checked throughout all Gaza’s hospitals for [the supplements], but I have not found any,” he said.

“There are no protein sources, only plant-based protein from legumes. Meat and chicken are not available. Dairy products are not available, and fruits are also unavailable,” said Kuheil, the doctor in charge of nutrition at Shifa.

Earlier this week, Israel warned medical facilities in northern Gaza to prepare for mass evacuation ahead of the IDF’s planned offensive to capture Gaza City. On Saturday, a major hospital in southern Gaza began working to reopen, after it was shut for months due to IDF operations.

According to the IDF, Gazan medical officials were told that “the hospital infrastructures in the southern Gaza Strip are being adapted for the absorption of the sick and wounded, alongside an increased entry of necessary medical equipment in accordance with the requests of the international aid organizations.”

The planned campaign has sparked a major international outcry, with governments and humanitarian groups warning of potentially disastrous consequences for Gaza’s civilians, noting widespread malnutrition that has recently worsened significantly amid the 22-month war, which was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.

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The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 459.

47875.jpeg 2025 Anadolu BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND – APRIL 17: People, carrying Palestinian flags, gather in front of the mural of hunger striker Bobby Sands during pro-Palestinian protest in Belfast, Northern Ireland on April 17, 2025. (Photo by Conor McCaughley/Anadolu via Getty Images)

There is one part of the UK where terrorist flags and placards have rarely been off the news. For years, the Northern Ireland media has carried stories and editorials saying more should be done to remove the symbols of terrorist groups from lampposts and housing estates.

The failure to remove flags is cited as evidence of two-tier policing. Indeed, the phrase “two-tier policing”, which has now entered the Westminster lexicon, originated in Northern Ireland.

As it happens, the government is now bringing forward legislation, on my recommendation, to make it easier for police to remove these symbols. The legal provision in question is section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which makes it an offence for someone to display an article “in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”.

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A person who commits this offence faces a summary penalty, usually a fine or conditional discharge, and is not in law considered a terrorist (see section 40). This is separate from the more serious offence of inviting support, which requires the prosecution to prove what lawyers call a mental element such as intent.

Few have objected to date to police action to prevent public displays of support for Republican and Loyalist terrorist groups in Northern Ireland, or, in Great Britain, displays in favour of the Sri Lankan LTTE or the Kurdish PKK.

This does not mean calls to allow displays in support of Palestine Action are necessarily wrong. But they are unprecedented because if the law were changed it would leave Islamic State supporters free to hoist their black flags on UK high streets. This might please a certain school of free speech absolutism but is not a serious proposition.

There are essentially two arguments in favour of allowing placards saying: “I support Palestine Action.” The first relates to whether Palestine Action should be banned as terrorists at all. If proscription was off the table, then no one could be arrested for saying they supported the group. In my view this is the key argument.

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The second is a genuinely two-tier argument: that Palestine Action, whether because of the nature of its cause, or, worse, the venerable appearance of some supporters, should be given special treatment compared with other terrorist groups. Under this suggestion, the law might be changed to make it an offence to fund Palestine Action, but not an offence to express support for it. This is at the very least a recipe for confusion.

The home secretary’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action was clearly intended to dismantle an organisation of serious saboteurs who have given up on parliamentary democracy. Given the alleged nature and scale of their activities, I think proscription was novel but acceptable.

The cause of Gaza cannot mean terrorist methodology can be excused

Just as it would have been wrong to extend terrorism legislation in late 2023 to deal with some Gaza protest activity, a move I publicly opposed at the time, it would be wrong to shrink from the consequences of Palestine Action’s alleged agenda today. It cannot be sensibly suggested that the cause of Gaza, any more than the cause of environmentalism, Islamism, racial purity, 5G masts or Irish unification, means that terrorist methodology can be excused.

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Far from being an example of heavy-handed authoritarianism, it could be said that there is greater reason to fear the clunking fist of Palestine Action when it chooses to label a business or person “complicit” and therefore a suitable target for action, than the use of terrorism legislation in this way.

My only reservation is that the parliamentary debate was bundled up with debate on two other terrorist groups — Maniacs Murder Cult and Russian Imperial Movement. The government will have had its handling motives, but allowing MPs to vote separately on Palestine Action would have been cleaner.

There is no way ordinary criminal law would be effective against funding, training and recruitment. Ironically, some of those who say the police have sufficient powers believe Palestine Action’s behaviour should not be criminal at all. They argue juries should acquit, irrespective of any directions given by the judge on the law of necessity or self-defence. I believe this explains the involvement of the group Defend Our Juries.

I remain unconvinced the proscription of Palestine Action prevents or chills the expression of support for Palestine. Pro-Gaza marches organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign continue to take place. Proscribing the IRA does not prevent residents of Northern Ireland expressing support for a united Ireland. The distinction is between supporting the cause and the organisation. The issue is more acute where there is a similarity between lawful nationalist flags and the flags of terrorist organisations, as in the case of the Tamils/Tamil Tigers. At most, given the word Palestine appearing in the group’s name, the government should remain vocal about the right of protest.

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The motives of those who say “I support Palestine Action” are not always easy to discern. Rather than saying “I support Palestine” or “I oppose the proscription of Palestine Action”, a small number of demonstrators have gone out of their way to invite arrest. I am not sure that this makes the law ridiculous or heavy-handed.

Shorn of the power to arrest and prosecute those who display support in public, the police’s role in preventing the growth and operation of Palestine Action would be that much harder.

Jonathan Hall KC was appointed by the home secretary as the fourth independent reviewer of terrorism legislation in 2019

Photograph by Conor McCaughley/Anadolu, Getty

The Israeli Cabinet fully approved the Gaza City occupation plan in Thursday’s meeting, Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Friday.

“We approved the IDF’s (Israeli army) plans to defeat Hamas in Gaza, with intensive fire, evacuation of civilians, and manoeuvres,” Katz said through the US social media company X.

Katz warned that “The gates of hell will open upon Hamas,” if it doesn’t agree to Israel’s terms.

“If they do not agree, Gaza (City), the capital of Hamas, will become Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” he said.

Katz’s inflammatory statement comes amidst prior scepticism about whether Israel would follow through with the plan as described.

“It is not even definitively clear that whatever is announced is what will actually play out,” wrote David Horovitz, an Israeli writer and the founding editor of the Times of Israel, on August 6, when the plan was initially approved.

“The recently completed Gideon’s Chariots military operation proved less intensive than described ahead of time.”

Preparations as Israel kills dozens