Israel-Gaza war live: dozens reported dead after Israeli strike on Gaza school | Israel-Gaza war

• The death toll from an Israeli air strike on a Gaza City school has risen to 80, Palestinian health authorities said. The Israeli military acknowledged the strike on the Tabeen school on Saturday morning, claiming it hit a Hamas command centre within the school. Hamas denied having a base at the school. Fadel Naeem, director of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, said the facility received the bodies of 80 people killed in the strike.

• Around 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating from the Gaza City school that was struck by the Israeli air force on Saturday, an Israeli military spokesperson said. “The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility,” lieutenant colonel Nadav Shoshani said on X.

• The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force targeted a command and control centre where Hamas fighters were hiding. The military said it had taken steps to reduce the risk of harming civilians, “including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and intelligence information”. It did not immediately comment on the casualty reports from Gaza, Reuters reported.

• A spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, has urged the US to put an end to the “blind support that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly”. Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have condemned the overnight strike, which came as mediators were pushing to resume ceasefire talks. Reuters reports that senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the strike should serve as a turning point in their efforts.

• The presumptive Democratic nominee for the US presidential election addressed Gaza protesters after they interrupted her campaign speech in Glendale, Arizona. Harris stopped her speech looking to the area in the audience where the protesters were chanting from and told them she “respected” their voices. “Let me just speak to that for a moment, and then I’m going to get back to the business at hand,” she said, adding that she believed “now is the time” to agree a ceasefire and secure the release of hostages held in Gaza.

• The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell has said there is “no justification” for the attack on the school in Gaza. He posted on X: “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, w/ reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims. At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres We are dismayed by the terrible overall death toll.”

• At least 39,790 Palestinians have been killed and 91,702 have been injured in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry has said in a statement.

• According to the United Nations, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged in the war as of July 6. In June, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and children, according to local health officials. Israel has blamed the civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying the group endangers noncombatants by using schools and residential neighborhoods as bases for operations and attacks.

• Israeli tanks returned to the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis on Friday, forcing thousands to evacuate along congested roadways, as Palestinian fighters continued to attack Israeli troops from the ruins. Families fled eastern Khan Younis in vehicles and on foot, belongings heaped on donkey carts and motorcycle rickshaws as they made their slow escape along congested roads. The Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering residents and displaced people sheltering in the city to evacuate from an area that has already seen repeated waves of fighting.

• Iran is set to carry out an order by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to “harshly punish” Israel over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, a Revolutionary Guards deputy commander was quoted as saying on Friday by local news agencies. Ali Fadavi said Khamenei’s orders were “clear and explicit” and “will be implemented in the best possible way”. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, asked about Fadavi’s remarks, said the US was ready to defend Israel with plenty of resources in the region, adding: “When we hear rhetoric like that we’ve got to take it seriously, and we do.”

That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Israel-Gaza war live blog. Thanks for following along.

Ruth Michaelson

When Israeli security forces suddenly arrived with bulldozers and a demolition team to tear down Mahmoud Mahmud Jibril Nawaja’s house, they came with little explanation.

“This land does not belong to you,” the officer in charge told him as he handed Nawaja a demolition order. They accused him of building on land without a permit, although his family has owned the plot for generations. Nawaja had applied for one, providing the land deeds and other ownership documents, but had heard nothing from the authorities for years, until they arrived that day in June.

The Nawajas, a family of seven, moved into a tent next to the rubble of their destroyed home, with the tracks of the bulldozers still visible in the earth around them. The same security forces soon returned and demolished the tent one morning as they ate breakfast.

“These demolitions are equal to death. They are killing us, but just in a different way,” said Nawaja.

He and his family are just some of the 2,155 Palestinians the UN estimates have been displaced across the West Bank in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, when Hamas militants attacked towns and kibbutzim around Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking almost 250 hostage.

As an Israeli assault has ripped Gaza apart, killing almost 40,000 people, the West Bank has suffered another form of sweeping violence, including mass displacement, settler attacks and a marked land grab by the Israeli government.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for the US presidential election addressed Gaza protesters after they interrupted her campaign speech in Glendale, Arizona.

Harris stopped her speech looking to the area in the audience where the protesters were chanting from and told them she “respected” their voices.

“Let me just speak to that for a moment, and then I’m going to get back to the business at hand,” she said, adding that she believed “now is the time” to agree a ceasefire and secure the release of hostages held in Gaza.

“The president and I are working around the clock every day to get that ceasefire deal done,” she said.

Her intervention on the issue comes a few days after Harris hit back at another group of Gaza protesters in Detroit, Michigan who were chanting during another campaign speech: “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide”.

In her response, Harris rebuked the demonstrators saying: “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking”.

Michigan is a key swing state with a large Arab-American population that is increasingly disillusioned with the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza. One of the protesters in Detroit, Salma Hamamy, told Mother Jones that Harris’ response was “questionable”, adding: “It just shows her inability to understand what constituents are saying.”

You can read more on that here:

• The death toll from an Israeli air strike on a Gaza City school has risen to 80, Palestinian health authorities said. The Israeli military acknowledged the strike on the Tabeen school on Saturday morning, claiming it hit a Hamas command centre within the school. Hamas denied having a base at the school. Fadel Naeem, director of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, said the facility received the bodies of 80 people killed in the strike.

• Around 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating from the Gaza City school that was struck by the Israeli air force on Saturday, an Israeli military spokesperson said. “The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility,” lieutenant colonel Nadav Shoshani said on X.

• The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force targeted a command and control centre where Hamas fighters were hiding. The military said it had taken steps to reduce the risk of harming civilians, “including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and intelligence information”. It did not immediately comment on the casualty reports from Gaza, Reuters reported.

• Egypt has said that Israel’s “deliberate killing” of unarmed Palestinians shows that it lacks a political will to end the war in Gaza. The Egyptian foreign ministry statement, relayed by the Reuters news agency, comes after between 60 and 100 Palestinians were reported killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on a Gaza school.

• According to the United Nations, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged in the war as of July 6. In June, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and children, according to local health officials. Israel has blamed the civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying the group endangers noncombatants by using schools and residential neighborhoods as bases for operations and attacks.

• Israeli tanks returned to the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis on Friday, forcing thousands to evacuate along congested roadways, as Palestinian fighters continued to attack Israeli troops from the ruins. Families fled eastern Khan Younis in vehicles and on foot, belongings heaped on donkey carts and motorcycle rickshaws as they made their slow escape along congested roads. The Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering residents and displaced people sheltering in the city to evacuate from an area that has already seen repeated waves of fighting.

• Iran is set to carry out an order by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to “harshly punish” Israel over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, a Revolutionary Guards deputy commander was quoted as saying on Friday by local news agencies. Ali Fadavi said Khamenei’s orders were “clear and explicit” and “will be implemented in the best possible way”. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, asked about Fadavi’s remarks, said the US was ready to defend Israel with plenty of resources in the region, adding: “When we hear rhetoric like that we’ve got to take it seriously, and we do.”

• An Israeli strike on a vehicle in the south Lebanon city of Sidon on Friday killed a Hamas commander, the Palestinian militant group and the Israeli military said. Hamas said its “commander” Samer al-Hajj was killed. The group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, called Hajj a “field commander” in a separate statement, saying his death was an “assassination”. The Israeli military said its aircraft struck the Sidon area and “eliminated” Hajj, whom it identified as “a senior commander” for Hamas in Lebanon.

• US secretary of state Antony Blinken told Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant in a phone call on Friday that the escalation of tensions in the Middle East was “in no party’s interest” while also stressing the need for a Gaza ceasefire, the State Department said.

• A crude oil tanker was struck four times in suspected attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait linking the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. The Houthis did not immediately claim the assaults, though they follow a months-long campaign by the rebels targeting shipping through the Red Sea corridor over Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza.

• The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was deeply concerned by Israel’s decision to revoke the diplomatic status of eight Norwegian diplomats dealing with the Palestinian Authority. “Norway has long played a unique and valued role in supporting peace for Israelis and Palestinians. We urge Israel to reconsider,” the FCDO said in a statement on Friday.

• Dozens of countries, academics and rights groups have filed legal arguments either rejecting or supporting the international criminal court’s power to issue arrest warrants in its investigation into the war in Gaza and the 7 October attacks by Hamas in Israel. The slew of written submissions are likely to delay a decision by a panel of judges on whether to issue warrants and comes despite a 2021 ruling that the court has jurisdiction over territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 six-day war.

• Lebanon would struggle to meet even a fraction of its aid needs if full-scale war with Israel erupted, a senior official said, as it seeks increased donor support amid persistent border clashes. Nasser Yassin, the minister overseeing contingency planning for a wider conflict, told Reuters that Lebanon would need $100m monthly for food, shelter, healthcare and other needs in a worst-case scenario.