Middle East crisis live: threat of Iranian attack on Israel ‘still viable’, says White House

An IDF soldier.

LIVE – Updated at 16:04

White House spokesperson says US and Israel in ‘constant communication’ amid threat from Tehran.

White House: prospect of attack by Iran on Israel remains ‘a viable threat’

16:04Julian Borger

John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, has told reporters that the prospect of an Iranian attack on Israel is “still a viable threat”, after concerted efforts by Israel and the US to deter it.

“We are in constant communication with our Israeli counterparts about making sure that they can defend themselves against those kinds of attacks,” Kirby said.

He confirmed that the head of US Central Command, Gen Erik Kurilla, is in Israel talking with Israeli defence officials, about how Israel can be best prepared.

It is also likely Kurilla is there to influence and moderate any Israeli response. The Biden administration is very concerned about the possibility of out-of-control escalation.

16:01Julian Borger

More on the White House’s warning on the “viable threat” of an impending attack by Iran on Israel:

Reporters pressed John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, on why the US does not release more detailed intelligence as it did in the run up to Russia full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He said the White House was “comfortable” with the messaging it had put out. But he added:

“What we are not going to sit back and be comfortable on is knowing exactly what this is going to look like. And that’s why we are working so intensively to make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself. And we have had conversations with others in the region too. Nobody’s sitting back and resting easy on this. It’s a serious threat. We’re taking it seriously and we believe that it’s best for those conversations to happen away from the public eye so that we can make sure Israel is as prepared as possible.”

15:56Julian Borger

The White House did not release any further details on the “viable threat” of an impending attack by Iran on Israel.

“I can’t speak to what the intelligence picture tells us in terms of the size, scale, scope of what that attack might look like, except to say that we’re taking this seriously,” said John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson.

US officials have said that Washington and Tehran have been exchanging messages in recent days, including a message from Iran warning the US to stay out of a Israel-Iran conflict, which elevated the level of alarm in the administration.

Kirby would not go into details about US messaging but said it included emphasis on America’s “iron clad” commitment to Israel’s security, the phrase used by Joe Biden earlier this week. Kirby added: “It has also been made clear that we will do what we have to do to protect our own people and our own facilities as appropriate. I think I just need to leave it at that.”

Poland: aid worker’s killing in Gaza should be brought before Israeli court

15:23

Poland’s government on Friday 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, the Associated Press is reporting.

In an address to parliament, Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski, Poland’s deputy foreign minister, called the 1 April killings of Polish volunteer Damian Soból, 35, and six other works of the World Central Kitchen charity, were “shocking and disturbing”, and said that Poland expects Israel’s “full cooperation” in the murder investigation opened by Polish prosecutors in Przemyśl, Soból’s hometown.

Poland was working with other countries whose citizens were killed in the shelling — Australia, Britain, Canada and the US — to jointly press for a detailed investigation into how cars marked as humanitarian convoy could have become targets of repeated shelling by the Israeli army, Bartoszewski said.

The dismissals and disciplinary measures applied to the officers responsible for the killings were “inadequate”, he said, and demanded that the case be tried by an independent court in Israel.

He stressed that all international rule of defence were violated by that attack, and that Poland is demanding compensation to Soból’s family.

Two Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces in West Bank, says Palestinian news agency

15:11

Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in an early morning raid on Friday near the occupied West Bank city of Tubas, reports Agence France-Presse citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

One man was killed when Israeli soldiers opened fire on his vehicle in Tubas, the report said.

Another Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli gunfire when troops raided al-Fara refugee camp near Tubas, the agency reported.

The Israeli military did not have an immediate comment on the raid.

The area around Tubas in the northern West Bank is a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups and the frequent target of Israeli military incursions.

The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence since early last year, particularly since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza on 7 October.

At least 461 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers across the West Bank since 7 October, according to official Palestinian sources, say AFP.

14:40

A number of countries have issued statements in recent days as a result of the threats being traded between Iran and Israel after the bombing of an Iranian consular building in Damascus.

Here is a round up of what countries, such as France, Australia, the US and Russia, have said and any travel advice they have announced so far:

India advised its citizens on Friday against travelling to Iran and Israel until further notice in view of the “prevailing situation in the region”. India’s foreign ministry said its citizens in the two countries should observe “utmost precautions about their safety and restrict their movements to the minimum”.

France on Friday warned its citizens to “imperatively refrain from travel in the coming days to Iran, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories”, the foreign minister’s entourage told Agence France-Presse (AFP). France’s foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné at a crisis meeting also asked that family members of French diplomats in Iran be evacuated, and no French civil servants be sent on missions to the listed countries.

Australia has urged Iran not to escalate tensions in the Middle East. Australian foreign affairs minister Penny Wong said on Friday she had spoken with her Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and urged his nation to “use its influence in the region to promote stability, not contribute to escalation”.“Australia is deeply concerned by indications Iran is preparing military action against Israel,” she said in a post on X. “Further conflict will only add to the devastation in the Middle East.”

The Australian government’s Smartraveller website has urged Australians to reconsider their need to travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with updated warnings citing the potential for airspace closures, flight cancellations and diversions

China urged the US to play “a constructive role” in the Middle East on Friday after its top diplomat Wang Yi spoke with his US counterpart Antony Blinken over the phone. According to the report by AFP, Blinken used the call to ask Beijing to use its influence to dissuade Iran from striking Israel, the US Department of State said.

US president Joe Biden has vowed that US commitment to defend Israel against Iran was “ironclad” as concerns rose in Washington that a “significant” Iranian strike could happen within days. US and allied officials fear that a strike is imminent and could come in the form of a direct missile launch from Iran, rather than an attack through a proxy like Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The US have restricted the movements of its diplomats in Israel over security fears, the embassy said. “Out of an abundance of caution, US government employees and their family members are restricted from personal travel” outside the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheeva areas “until further notice”, an embassy notice on Thursday said.

The US envoy to the Middle East reportedly called the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Iraq asking them to deliver a message to Tehran to lower tensions with Israel.

The UK prime minister said Iran’s threats of an attack were “unacceptable”. Rishi Sunak’s office said he reaffirmed British support for Tel Aviv’s right to defend itself. Speaking to broadcasters on Thursday, Sunak said: “We, like the Americans, fully support Israel’s right to defend itself against that.” The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, said on Thursday he had made clear to Amirabdollahian that Iran should not draw the Middle East into a wider conflict. “I am deeply concerned about the potential for miscalculation leading to further violence,” Cameron said on X.

Germany’s foreign minister called her Iranian counterpart to urge “maximum restraint” to avoid further escalation.

German airline Lufthansa extended a suspension of its flights to Tehran. Lufthansa said on Wednesday it had suspended flights to Tehran due to the situation in the Middle East. On Thursday, the airline said this had been extended until probably 13 April.

Austrian Airlines said it was still planning to fly on Thursday but was adjusting timings to avoid crew having to disembark for an overnight layover.

Russia’s foreign ministry on Thursday advised against travel to the Middle East, especially to Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Also on Thursday, the Kremlin urged all Middle East countries to show restraint and prevent the region slipping into chaos. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus was a violation of all the principles of international law.

Indian foreign ministry advises against travel to Iran and Israel

14:10

India advised its citizens on Friday against travelling to Iran and Israel until further notice in view of the “prevailing situation in the region”, reports Reuters.

The advisory from the foreign ministry came amid Iran’s threats to retaliate against a suspected Israeli airstrike on its embassy in Syria this month.

Countries including the US and Russia have issued similar travel advisories for their staff and citizens in the region.

According to Reuters, India’s foreign ministry said its citizens in the two countries should observe “utmost precautions about their safety and restrict their movements to the minimum”.

13:49

A Turkish state television journalist was badly wounded and another slightly hurt in Gaza on Friday, the TRT channel said, adding that the team had been targeted by an Israeli strike.

“The vehicle of a team from TRT Arabi [TRT’s Arabic-language channel] that was preparing to broadcast from the Nuseirat camp … was targeted by an Israeli army strike,” the broadcaster said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Sami Shahada, a freelance cameraman, was badly wounded,” it added.

TRT’s chief Zahid Sobaci said Shahada had “lost a foot and is currently in surgery”, calling the attack “Israeli brutality”. The channel reported that other journalists were wounded in the central Gaza refugee camp.

A tally from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) numbers at 95 the number of media workers killed in fighting since 7 October, 90 of them Palestinians At least 16 more have been injured.

13:38Patrick Wintour

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 about the scale of deaths and destruction in the war on Gaza.

A lawsuit in the German domestic courts will ask judges to urgently direct the government to revoke all arms licences to Israel issued since 7 October, when Hamas launched its attack on Israel.

Germany is widely seen as the second largest arms exporter to Israel behind the US, and is certainly a more significant provider of arms than the UK.

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.

The legal action is directed against the Green party-led federal ministry for economic affairs and climate action, the department responsible for export licences under the weapons of war control act.

89 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, says health ministry

13:12

The latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said 89 Palestinians were killed and 120 injured in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours.

According to the statement, at least 33,634 Palestinians have been killed and 76,214 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October.

The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

12:50

NGO Action For Humanity has shared some images of the slogans it projected onto Tower Bridge in London alongside the Save The Children charity last night.

The projection read:

Over 14,000 children killed in Gaza. What are you waiting for? Stop arming Israel. Ceasefire NOW.

The charity commissioned polling from YouGov, which shows increasing support from the public for stops on exports of arms and parts to the government of Israel. Results showed the percentage of the UK public who think the UK should stop exporting arms or parts to Israel rose from 56% to 62% between 27 March and 7 April.

12:39

Residents have reported heavy Israeli fire in central Gaza today, as regional tensions soar after Iran threatened reprisals over a strike in Syria this month that killed two Iranian generals.

AFP reports:

As ceasefire talks aiming to pause the six-month-old war dragged on, fears that Iran could soon launch an attack on Israel spurred France to recommend its citizens avoid travelling to the region.

Mohammed al-Rayes, 61, told AFP that he fled Israeli “air strikes and artillery shelling” in Nuseirat, central Gaza overnight.

He said:

It was all fire and destruction, with so many martyrs lying in the street.

Another resident, Laila Nasser, 40, reported “shells and missiles” throughout the night. She vowed to flee to the southernmost city of Rafah, like most of Gaza’s population.

She said:

They will do to Nuseirat what they did to Khan Yunis.

Israel last week pulled its troops from the devastated city of Khan Yunis after months of fighting, but officials said they were preparing for operations against Hamas militants in Rafah, near the Egyptian border.

Authorities in the Hamas-ruled coastal Palestinian territory on Friday reported dozens of new air strikes in Gaza’s central region.

The Hamas media office said 25 people were taken to hospital in Deir al-Balah city “as a result of an air strike 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.

Israeli forces kill two Palestinians near Tubas

12:23

Israeli forces have shot dead two Palestinians, including a member of the armed wing of Hamas, near Tubas in the occupied West Bank following a raid on the town earlier in the morning, the Israeli military said.

It said Mohammad Omar Daraghmeh, whom it described as the head of Hamas infrastructure in the Tubas area of the Jordan valley was killed during an exchange of fire with security forces. It said a number of weapons and military-style equipment, including automatic rifles were found in his vehicle.

Hamas confirmed Daraghmeh’s death and his membership of its armed Al Qassem Brigades.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said another man was killed by Israeli forces conducting a raid in the Al-Fara refugee camp in Tubas. Hamas said it mourned the man’s death but did not claim him as a member.

The military said forces carrying out the operation opened fire on Palestinians who threw explosive devices and killed one man it said was attempting to attack them.

Israeli food trucks enter Gaza

12:19

The first trucks carrying food aid have entered Gaza through the newly opened northern crossing point on Thursday, the military has said, as Israel stepped up supplies following mounting pressure to ease the humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

It said the trucks were inspected at the Kerem Shalom crossing point on the border with Egypt before moving north to cross.

Israel said earlier this month it would re-open the Erez crossing point that was closed since the start of the war with Hamas last October.

12:09

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 that the charity is delivering to ministers, Oxfam said:

Despite the fact the government of Israel has killed over 33,000 people, forced three quarters of the population to flee their homes and destroyed vital infrastructure in Gaza, 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.

In 2014, the UK government reviewed and suspended twelve export licences to Israel following the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

In 2009, licences for naval guns were revoked due to their use against civilians in Gaza in contravention of international humanitarian law.

During escalations in violence in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and early 2000s the UK imposed complete arms embargoes on Israel, because of violations of international law.

Aleema Shivji, Oxfam’s chief impact officer, said:

It is illegal, immoral and inconsistent for the UK to continue to sell arms to Israel, when it is clear that UK-made weapons and components are being used in serious violation of international humanitarian law – and after it imposed restrictions in previous escalations of violence when the scale of death and destruction had been lower.

The people of Gaza are facing unprecedented levels of bloodshed, schools and hospitals are being deliberately targeted and starvation is being used as a weapon of war. What more suffering must they endure for the UK Government to act? It must immediately suspend all arms exports – including parts and components – or it risks being complicit in war crimes.

For over 20 years, successive UK governments have sought guarantees from the Israeli government not to use any UK-exported weapons in the occupied Palestinian territory. However, Israel has frequently disregarded these conditions, and rather than enforcing them the UK government has chosen to stop imposing any conditions, Oxfam said.

Later today, campaigners will hand in an open letter, with nearly 45,000 signatories – and fronted by over 50 high profiles names from celebrities such as Annie Lennox, Brian Cox and Robert Lindsay, to a wide range of CEOs, experts and politicians – urging the foreign secretary, David Cameron, and Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch to end arms sales to Israel.

Oxfam is calling for the UK government to immediately suspend the sale of all weapons, parts and components to Israel and to use every diplomatic and economic lever at its disposal to help secure an immediate and permanent ceasefire, to stop the death and destruction, allow more aid in, and to ensure the safe release of hostages.

France warns its citizens to ‘refrain from travel’ to Iran, Lebanon, Israel and Palestinian territories

11:35

France on Friday warned its citizens to “imperatively refrain from travel in the coming days to Iran, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories”, the foreign minister’s entourage told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

France’s foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné at a crisis meeting also asked that family members of French diplomats in Iran be evacuated, and no French civil servants be sent on missions to the listed countries, reports AFP.

Australia urges Iran not to escalate tensions in the Middle East

11:22

Australia has urged Iran not to escalate tensions in the Middle East after Tehran’s supreme leader threatened to retaliate against Israel, reports the Associated Press and Reuters.

Iran has vowed revenge after Israeli war planes destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing at least 11 people, including a senior commander in the al-Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the strike tantamount to an attack on Iranian soil and said Israel “must be punished, and it shall be”.

Australian foreign affairs minister Penny Wong said on Friday she had spoken with her Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and urged his nation to “use its influence in the region to promote stability, not contribute to escalation”.

“Australia is deeply concerned by indications Iran is preparing military action against Israel,” she said in a post on X. “Further conflict will only add to the devastation in the Middle East.”

Wong also called on Iran to push Hamas towards an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and a hostage release.

11:09

Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:

Aid worker says convoy shot at in Gaza mission

10:40

Unicef spokesperson Tess Ingram says she was on an aid mission on Tuesday when the UN-marked, armoured Toyota LandCruiser she was in was shot, she told ABC News on Friday.

“If we hadn’t been in an armoured vehicle that would have shattered the window and things could have been a lot worse,” she said, according to a report by the Associated Press and Reuters.

Ingram, an Australian citizen, said the IDF 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.

The shooting showed issues surrounding aid coordination have not been resolved since seven humanitarian workers were killed when Israeli drones struck a World Central Kitchen convoy earlier in April, Ingram said.

The AP and Reuters report that she remains determined to go back. “I’ll be a bit more nervous … we know that it’s dangerous here in Gaza, but we’ve just got to keep trying,” she said.

OCHA say assessment by UN team in Khan Younis found ‘widespread destruction’ and ‘unexploded 1,000 pound bombs’

10:23

An assessment conducted by a UN team in Khan Younis after the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the area, has reported “widespread destruction”.

In an update on its website, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) wrote:

Every building they visited – and most of those they observed – had been damaged, and paved roads had been reduced to dirt tracks. They inspected a UN warehouse, four medical centres, and eight schools, and all but one had significant damage.”

It said the assessment had been carried out on Wednesday. Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN’s secretary general António Guterres, said:

Street and public spaces in Khan Younis are littered with unexploded ordnance posing a severe risk to civilians, especially for children. Our team found unexploded 1,000 pound bombs lying on the main intersection and inside schools.

Residents who returned to the area, and some who remained during the fighting, told the team about the dire shortages of food and water and the loss of critical health services due to the destruction of the al-Nasser and al-Amal hospital.”

09:46

China urged the US to play “a constructive role” in the Middle East on Friday after its top diplomat Wang Yi spoke with his US counterpart Antony Blinken over the phone, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

According to the report by AFP, Blinken used the call to ask Beijing to use its influence to dissuade Iran from striking Israel, the US Department of State said.

On Friday China confirmed the call had taken place, saying Wang “expressed China’s strong condemnation of the attack” while emphasising the “inviolable” right to security of diplomatic institutions and the need to respect the sovereignty of Iran and Syria.

“China will continue to play a constructive role in the resolution of the Middle East issue … and contribute to cooling down the situation,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning added. “The US side in particular should play a constructive role.”

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated on Wednesday a promise to retaliate against Israel over the killings of Iranian generals in Syria. Israel has not acknowledged its involvement.

Speaking at a prayer ceremony, Khamenei said the airstrike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Syria earlier this month was “wrongdoing” against a diplomatic post that is considered Iranian territory. “The evil regime must be punished, and it will be punished,” he said.

The US has repeatedly made public appeals for China to do more to address the crisis, including through pressure on Iran, which supports Hamas. Beijing in turn has criticised the US as biased toward Israel.

“This round of escalation is the latest manifestation of the spillover from the Gaza conflict, and it is imperative that the Gaza conflict be put to rest as soon as possible,” Mao said on Friday, adding Beijing was calling for an immediate ceasefire.

US president Joe Biden said on Wednesday that US support for Israel’s security was “ironclad,” despite his criticism of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza.

Hundreds of ultra-orthodox men and boys clash with Israeli police at Jerusalem demonstration

09:36Emma Graham-Harrison

Hundreds of ultra-orthodox men and boys clashed with Israeli police on Thursday evening at a demonstration in Jerusalem against plans to end the community’s sweeping exemption from military service.

Thousands of men had arrived, many with young sons in tow, to say prayers and hear speeches under a banner reading “don’t touch the yeshivot (religious schools)”, down the street from a conscription office.

One rabbi involved in organising the event, Abraham Manks from the hard line Peleg Yerushalmi or Jerusalem faction, described it as “a gathering, not a protest”, a show of Haredi unity. It drew the biggest crowds seen at an ultra-orthodox rally since before the Covid pandemic, said analyst Israel Cohen.

But although the majority were peaceful, a few hundred metres from the main stage, outside the military building, rows of angry boys pushed against police lines, taunting officers, throwing drinks and sticks, and trying to attack them with protest placards.

Some of the youngest looked as if they were under ten, and treated clashes with the police almost like a game, laughing as they tried to race past officers.

They carried signs and stickers reading “Either Haredi, or in the army”. The community says young men who go to serve, alongside secular men and women, will lose the religious outlook that is the heart of life at the conservative communities, were the sexes are strictly segregated and smartphones banned.

“The message to Israeli society is that there is a large group of people who don’t want to serve in the army,” Manks said. “The fear is that we will loose our identity, and joining the army will mean loosing our identity.”

He said the meeting aimed to unite Haredis, and protest that a decision affecting over a million Israelis had been made by a court, not by the government.

The supreme court ruled at the end of March that a system exempting ultra-Orthodox students at yeshivas from military service was discriminatory. It dates back to Israel’s founding, when only about 400 men were covered; now over one in ten Israelis are Haredim.

Conscription notices have started going out, and the government said it will cut stipends that are vital for religious students. But potential recruits say they would rather go to jail.

“We are the men they are telling (to join the army),” said Moshe, 19, who declined to give his last name. “There are many men here who have an arrest warrant because of that.”

“We are gathered here to show that we are not afraid of the supreme court decision, we are not afraid of prison.” Like many ultra-Orthodox, he said prayers of yeshiva students protect Israel more than its army.

The issue is a major threat to embattled Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. His coalition government relies on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties who have threatened to leave over the issue, bringing him down.

But opposition figures who joined an emergency unity government, including Netanyahu’s biggest rival Benny Gantz, have threatened to leave if the prime minister tries to find a way to once again exempt large numbers of ultra-orthodox Israelis from military service.

Quique Kierszenbaum contributed reporting

Aid ‘still not reaching Gaza’, as top US official warns famine has started

09:05

A promised surge in aid into Gaza that Benjamin Netanyahu promised Joe Biden a week ago has so far failed to materialise, aid workers say, as the US aid chief confirmed that famine is beginning to take hold in parts of the besieged coastal strip.

The increase in the number of truck crossing into Gaza claimed by Israel conflicts with UN records and already appears to be faltering.

“There is a lot less than meets the eye so far,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior official in the Biden administration, who is now president of the Refugees International aid advocacy organisation. “Very little has actually changed.”

One of Netanyahu’s pledges to Biden, to open the Ashdod port north of Gaza as a portal to sea-borne humanitarian aid, has led to no apparent action, according to the Israel N12 channel. N12 reported that none of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat) nor the Ashdod Port authorities have so far received instructions about opening the facility to shipments bound for Gaza.

Israeli officials had been promising their US counterparts for weeks that a crossing point would be opened into northern Gaza where the starvation is the most severe. It would either be at Erez, which was the main border point before the current war, or at a new site, they informed Washington. No decision was made, however, until Wednesday, six days after the Biden-Netanyahu call, when the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said construction had begun on a new crossing. It is not clear how long that construction work will take.

You can read the report by Julian Borger in Washington here:

Hamas says it does not have 40 hostages who fit criteria for deal with Israel

08:37

The Palestinian militant group Hamas has indicated it does not have 40 captives who are still alive who meet the “humanitarian” criteria for a proposed hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire agreement with Israel.

A senior Israeli official confirmed claims made at the weekend by Hamas during talks in Cairo that it does not have 40 hostages in Gaza who meet the exchange criteria.

Ceasefire talks have focused on a US-backed proposal of a phased exchange of hostages and prisoners. In the first instance women, children, and elderly or sick people – including five female Israeli soldiers – would be exchanged for an estimated 900 Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, alongside a six-week ceasefire in Gaza.

Hamas appears reluctant to make up the numbers for an exchange with surviving male hostages. Reliable information about how many hostages remain alive, who is holding them and where has been hard to come by.

The CIA director, William Burns, has presented a new proposal to try to bridge the gaps between the two sides.

The US is pressuring Israel to agree to release 900 Palestinian prisoners in the first phase of a three-stage deal as well as allowing the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza.

You can read Peter Beaumont’s full piece here:

08:10

Scotland’s migration minister has urged the government to expand the number of Palestinian people who can join their family in the UK, reports the Press Association.

In a letter to UK minister Tom Pursglove, Emma Roddick pushed for the Refugee Family Reunion scheme to include “immediate and extended family, including parents, children over 18, siblings and their children”. The current system allows only for partners and children under 18 to join family in the UK.

Roddick suggested the minister meet with families of people stuck in Gaza and hear their “harrowing experiences”.

According to the Press Association, Roddick also called for the Home Office to waive the need for biometric data to be collected for Palestinians looking to leave before they arrive in the UK, or to transfer those trying to come here to a site where they can make an application under the current system.

Roddick said:

The Scottish government and the Scottish Refugee Council fully support the aims of the Gaza Families Reunited campaign alongside more than 74,000 people who have signed a public petition as well as more than 75 migrants’ rights organisations and law firms across the UK.

The campaign calls for a scheme to be opened for relatives of all Palestinians in the UK, not just those with refugee status.

This should be open to a wider cohort of immediate and extended family, including parents, children over 18, siblings and their children.”

A spokesperson for the UK government said:

We are working around the clock to get British nationals, who want to leave, out of Gaza. We have a team on the ground in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing providing consular assistance.

We currently have no plans to establish a separate route for Palestinians to come to the UK. However, any dependants of British citizens who need a visa, can apply for one.”

A spokesperson for the Gaza Families Reunited campaign said they were “pleased” Roddick was pushing for action. “We all have a right to family unity but the UK Government’s reluctance to create a Gaza Family Scheme is endangering the lives of Palestinians in Gaza and keeping families apart,” they added.

The campaign said that while the UK government had “signposted to existing routes” in response to calls for family visa schemes for Palestinians from Gaza, these were “extremely limited and simply do not work”.

“We know that at least two people have died while waiting for the Home Office to decide whether they can reunite with their loved ones in the UK. This is unconscionable,” they said.

The campaign is calling on the British government to offer a similar scheme to that which was introduced for Ukrainian families:

The British government has previously offered sanctuary to Ukrainian families under the Ukraine Family Scheme. All we are asking is that the same option is afforded to Palestinians seeking protection from bombardment and starvation, who want to reunite with their loved ones.”

US seeking to deter Iran from strike on Israel, officials say

07:42

The US is seeking to deter Iran from carrying out a retaliatory strike against Israel with concerted declarations of commitment to Israeli security, while at the same time trying to prevent the outbreak of a major regional war, officials in Washington have said.

US officials still believe that a direct Iranian missile or drone strike is possible within the next few days, in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of an Iranian consular building in Damascus on 1 April, which killed a top Islamic Revolutionary Guards general and six other Guard officers.

The developments came as the US restricted the movements of its diplomats in Israel over security fears, the embassy said.

“Out of an abundance of caution, US government employees and their family members are restricted from personal travel” outside the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheeva areas “until further notice”, an embassy notice on Thursday said.

Israel would rely heavily on US-supplied weaponry in any response to an Iranian strike, a point that Benjamin Netanyahu made implicitly on Thursday, by standing in front of American-made F-15 fighters at the Tel Nof airbase in southern Israel to tell reporters: “Whoever harms us, we will harm them.”

You can read the full piece by Julian Borger and Patrick Wintour here:

Irish taoiseach and Spanish PM to discuss Palestine nation state plan

07:28Lisa O’Carroll

The new Irish taoiseach is to meet the Spanish prime minister to discuss their joint plan to recognise Palestine as a nation state and their attempts to force the EU to assess Israel’s human rights obligations as a condition of their trade deal with the bloc.

Pedro Sánchez, who is due to arrive in Dublin on Friday, is the first foreign premier Simon Harris will meet since his promotion to the office of the taoiseach this week.

In the months since the Hamas attacks of 7 October and Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Spain and Ireland have emerged as the EU’s most pro-Palestinian member states.

On Thursday in Brussels, Harris said he had made clear Ireland’s position on the need for an immediate ceasefire, during a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. He also reiterated its formal request, made with Spain two months ago, to review the Israel-EU association agreement.

“I believe the European Union must use all of the levers at its disposal [to protect the Palestinian people],” Harris said.

His remarks came as he faced sharp criticism from Israel for not mentioning the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza during his debut speech to the Irish parliament as taoiseach.

Opening summary

07:21

It has gone 8am in Gaza and 9am in Tel Aviv. This is our latest Guardian live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.

Israel’s defence minister has said the country will respond directly to any attack on Israel by Iran, as concerns mount of Iranian retaliation over a deadly Israeli strike in Syria.

“A direct Iranian attack will require an appropriate Israeli response against Iran,” Yoav Gallant told the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, on Thursday, according to Gallant’s office.

Iran has vowed retaliation after Israel destroyed an Iranian consular building in Damascus on 1 April, killing seven Revolutionary Guards including two generals.

The US is seeking to deter Iran from carrying out a retaliatory strike with concerted declarations of commitment to Israeli security, while at the same time trying to prevent the outbreak of a major regional war, officials in Washington have said.

The US on Thursday restricted the movements of its diplomats in Israel over security fears, the US embassy said, with personal travel outside the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheeva areas barred “until further notice”.

In other key developments:

The US president, Joe Biden, has pledged that Washington’s commitment to defend Israel against Iran is “ironclad”, amid rising US concerns that a “significant” Iranian strike could happen within days. The UK prime minister, meanwhile, said Iran’s threats of an attack were “unacceptable”. Rishi Sunak’s office said he reaffirmed British support for Tel Aviv’s right to defend itself.

Germany’s foreign minister called her Iranian counterpart to urge “maximum restraint” to avoid further escalation. The US envoy to the Middle East reportedly called the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Iraq asking them to deliver a message to Tehran to lower tensions with Israel. The Kremlin urged all Middle East countries to show restraint and prevent the region slipping into chaos.

The top US commander for the Middle East, Gen Erik Kurilla, is in Israel for security talks with Israeli military officials, the Pentagon has said.

Iran has signalled to Washington that it will respond to the Israeli attack in a way that aims to avoid major escalation and it will not act hastily, Iranian sources told Reuters. Tehran’s message to Washington was conveyed by Iran’s foreign minister during a visit to Oman, the sources said.

A promised surge in aid into Gaza that Benjamin Netanyahu promised Joe Biden a week ago has so far failed to materialise, aid workers say, as the US’s aid chief confirmed that famine was beginning to take hold in parts of the Palestinian territory. The increase in the number of truck crossing into Gaza claimed by Israel conflicts with UN records and already appears to be faltering. Several countries including France and Jordan airdropped about 110 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the French president and military said.

A video has surfaced of a senior official at Israel’s cyber intelligence agency, Unit 8200, talking last year about the use of machine-learning “magic powder” to help identify Hamas targets in Gaza. The footage raises questions about the Israel Defense Forces’ recent statement that it “does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist”.

Israeli forces killed three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an airstrike in Gaza without consulting senior Israeli commanders or political leaders including Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli media reports. Quoting senior Israeli officials, Walla news agency said on Thursday that neither Netanyahu, the prime minister, nor Yoav Gallant had been told in advance of the strike, which was coordinated by the Israeli military and the Shin Bet intelligence service.

Haniyeh said the Israeli attack, which also killed at least two of his grandchildren, would not change Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire and return of displaced Palestinians from their homes in ongoing negotiations mediated by Qatar and the US. “All our people and all the families of Gaza have paid a heavy price in blood, and I am one of them,” the militant group’s exiled political chief said from his base in Doha, the Qatari capital. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted Haniyeh’s sons, who it described as “three Hamas operatives”. The Turkish president offered his condolences in a phone call to Haniyeh, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s office said.

At least 33,545 Palestinians have been killed and 76,094 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday. The Hamas-run ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

Hamas has indicated it does not have 40 captives who are still alive who meet the “humanitarian” criteria for a proposed hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire agreement with Israel. Ceasefire talks in Cairo have focused on a US-backed proposal of a phased exchange of hostages including women, children and elderly or sick people. An Israeli official confirmed claims made by Hamas in Cairo that it does not have 40 hostages in Gaza who meet the exchange criteria.

An Israeli minister has said that after Hamas’s 7 October attack there is no longer a “moral” justification to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from army service, breaking a longstanding taboo within his community. The interior minister, Moshe Arbel, is from the ultra-Orthodox party Shas. Israel’s ruling coalition has been scrambling to find a compromise on drafting the cohort after the country’s top court effectively struck down the decades-old exemption as of 1 April.

Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”, according to US senator Tim Kaine. The Democratic party’s leading foreign policy voice told the Guardian that the Israeli prime minister had made Israel “dramatically less safe” and hurt its longstanding relationship with the US.

Israeli jets hit military targets of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the areas of Meiss el Jabal, Yarine and Khiam, as well as a Hezbollah observation post in the area of Marwahin and another compound in Al-Dahira in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said on Thursday.

The US destroyed an anti-ship ballistic missile launched from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen as well as 11 Houthi drones, the military said on Thursday, after the Iran-backed group claimed it had targeted Israeli and US ships off the Gulf of Aden. US central command said no injuries or damage to vessels were reported.

Israel’s foreign ministry denounced Ireland’s new prime minister, Simon Harris, for not mentioning the hostages held by militants in Gaza during a speech to the Irish parliament.