Middle East crisis live: Biden urges Iran not to attack Israel; IDF says new Gaza aid route open
It has gone 9am in Gaza and 10am in Tel Aviv. This is our latest Guardian live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.
The US president has said he expects an Iranian attack on Israel “sooner rather than later” and issued a last-ditch message to Tehran not to launch one.
Joe Biden’s comments came as the White House warned that the prospect of an Iranian attack on Israel in retaliation for the bombing of an Iranian consular building in Syria was “still a viable threat”.
The US has sought to deter Iran with concerted declarations of commitment to Israeli security, but also restricted the movements of its diplomats in Israel over security fears.
Biden said on Friday: “We are devoted to the defence of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed.”
Meanwhile, the first trucks carrying food aid entered Gaza through the newly opened northern crossing point, the Israeli military said on Friday.
The trucks were inspected at the Kerem Shalom crossing point near the Egyptian border before being transported inside Israel to the crossing, the military said.
In other developments:
Residents reported heavy Israeli fire in central Gaza on Friday, with authorities reporting dozens of new airstrikes in the area. The Hamas media office said 25 people were taken to hospital in Deir al-Balah city “as a result of an airstrike on a house of the al-Tabatibi family”. Israel’s military said its aircraft had struck more than 60 militant targets in Gaza over the previous day.
Dozens of angry Israeli settlers have stormed into a Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, shooting and setting houses and cars on fire. Palestinian health officials said one Palestinian man was killed and 25 others wounded in the attack. An Israeli rights group said the settlers were searching for a 14-year-old boy missing from their settlement. After the rampage, Israeli troops said they were still searching for the boy.
At least 33,634 Palestinians have been killed and 76,214 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
France has warned its citizens to “imperatively refrain from travel in the coming days to Iran, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories”. The foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, also asked that family members of French diplomats in Iran be evacuated. India, meanwhile, advised its citizens against travelling to Iran and Israel until further notice in view of the “prevailing situation in the region”.
Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said she had urged her Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to “use its influence in the region to promote stability, not contribute to escalation”. Wong posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Further conflict will only add to the devastation in the Middle East.”
Poland’s government called the killing of a Polish aid worker by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza “murder” and said the case should be brought before an independent court in Israel. Poland’s deputy foreign minister, Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski, said Poland was demanding compensation from Israel over the death of Polish volunteer Damian Soból, 35, who was killed along with six other workers of the World Central Kitchen charity in an Israeli airstrike.
Germany will face a fresh call to revoke all arms sales to Israel on Thursday in a lawsuit that puts more pressure on Berlin amid a rising outcry over the war on Gaza. The lawsuit has been issued by four human rights groups on behalf of five named Palestinians who say they are in fear of their lives in Gaza and are suffering a form of collective punishment by Israel.
A Unicef spokesperson says she was on an aid mission on Tuesday when the UN-marked vehicle she was in was shot, she told Australia’s ABC News on Friday. Tess Ingram, an Australian, said the Israeli military and Hamas were aware of the convoy’s movements as part of the mission, but she did not see the source of the gunfire. “It appeared to come from the direction of the checkpoint towards civilians, who then turned and ran in the other direction,” she said.
A Turkish state television journalist was badly injured and another slightly hurt in Gaza, the TRT channel said, adding that the team’s vehicle had been targeted by an Israeli strike. The team from TRT Arabi, its Arabic-language channel, was preparing to broadcast from the Nuseirat camp, the broadcaster said. It called Friday’s attack “Israeli brutality” and said Sami Shahada, a freelance cameraman, had “lost a foot and is currently in surgery”.
China urged the US to play “a constructive role” in the Middle East after its top diplomat, Wang Yi, spoke with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, over the phone on Friday. Blinken used the call to ask Beijing to use its influence to dissuade Iran from striking Israel, the US state department said.
An assessment conducted by a UN team in Khan Younis after the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the area in southern Gaza has reported “widespread destruction”. “Street and public spaces in Khan Younis are littered with unexploded ordnance posing a severe risk to civilians, especially for children,” said Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN’s secretary general, António Guterres. “Our team found unexploded 1,000-pound bombs lying on the main intersection and inside schools.”
The UK government’s continued refusal to suspend arms sales to Israel is inconsistent with previous wars and could make it complicit in war crimes, Oxfam has warned. Writing ahead of an open letter the charity is delivering to ministers, Oxfam said: “The prime minister and the foreign secretary have repeatedly defended the UK’s decision to continue arms sales. Yet in every previous escalation of violence in Gaza and against Palestinians in the region, the UK has at least revoked some licenses or otherwise suspended arms transfers to Israel.”