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The US military has begun moving aid ashore in Gaza, as the UN says truck convoys by land remain the most efficient way of getting aid in
The Israeli military said on Saturday it killed a senior Palestinian militant during an airstrike on an “operations centre” in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
“A number of significant terrorists were inside the compound,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement posted to Telegram, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The bodies of three hostages kidnapped by Hamas, including the German-Israeli Shani Louk, have been retrieved from Gaza by the Israeli military. The other two hostages were identified as Amit Buskila, 28, and Itzhak Gelerenter, 56, according to military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, who said the three victims were taken to Gaza after being killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival. Footage of what appeared to be the body of Louk, 22, on the back of a pickup truck on the streets of Gaza was one of the first images to surface after 7 October, as the scale of the horror of the attacks became clear.
Israel on Friday defended its Gaza offensive at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) after South Africa asked judges to order it to halt operations in Rafah and completely withdraw from the Palestinian territory. Israeli justice ministry official Gilad Noam called South Africa’s case, which accuses Israel of violating the genocide convention, “completely divorced from facts and circumstances”.
Noam told the ICJ hearing that South Africa’s charge of genocide was “an obscene exploitation of the most sacred convention”, referring to the international treaty banning genocide, agreed after the Holocaust in the second world war. Noam said that Israel’s military operations were not aimed at civilians, but at Hamas terrorists using Rafah as a stronghold, who have tunnel systems which could be used to smuggle hostages and militants out of Gaza.
Hearings at the ICJ were briefly interrupted on Friday by a protester who called out “liars” as an Israeli official was presenting arguments. Reuters reported that a woman was seen being removed by court security guards.
Israeli forces battled Hamas fighters in the narrow alleyways of Jabalia in northern Gaza on Friday in some of the fiercest engagements since they returned to the area a week ago, while in the south militants attacked tanks massing around Rafah.
Israeli airstrikes on Friday hit an area of southern Lebanon far from the border killing an adult and two children, according to Lebanese official media. Hezbollah announced a fighter from Najjariyeh had died, while Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said two Syrian children were killed in the Najjariyeh strike, identifying them as Osama and Hani al-Khaled.
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