Israel-Gaza war live: UN chief condemns ‘violations’ of humanitarian law after six Unrwa staff killed in Israeli airstrike
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.