Israel’s war on Gaza live: ‘Bodies scattered on the road’ in Rafah attack

The US administration has asked Israel to stop targeting members of the civilian police force who escort aid trucks in Gaza, Axios website has reported.

Washington warned that a “total breakdown of law and order” is significantly exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the enclave, the outlet said, quoting three US and Israeli officials.

Israel claims the members of the police force are affiliated with Hamas, while US officials have said they “also include individuals who don’t have a direct affiliation with Hamas who are there as part of the Palestinian Authority’s remnant presence and security”.

As a result of the security vacuum, trucks that have recently entered Gaza have been overrun by Palestinians desperate for aid, the report said.

According to Israeli media reports, there are indications a deal has been reached in Paris that could see a six-week pause in the fighting in Gaza in exchange for around 40 Israeli captives and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners top be released from Israeli jails.

These are preliminary details, but Israeli officials are saying they are approaching this with cautious optimism. They say they now have an outline of a framework that they can move forward with in the negotiations. Israel’s delegation in Paris will present its report to Israel’s war cabinet.

But there are still a lot of sticking points, like which Israeli captives or Palestinian prisoners are going to be released, or how much humanitarian aid will be allowed into Gaza.

The US reportedly wants this deal to happen before the start of the Muslim holy month Ramadan, which is just more than two weeks away.

Israeli media reports say an agreement has been reached on the release of the captives held by Hamas in Gaza in a meeting in Paris between the representatives of the US, Israel, Egypt, and Qatar.

Citing two sources familiar with the contents of the talks, The Jerusalem Post said the war cabinet was expected to receive an update from the negotiating team and decide on further steps, which may happen as early as Saturday night.

The progress of the negotiations depends on whether Hamas will agree to the new framework established at the meeting in Paris, one source said.

The air raid [carried out] within the past hour took place on a very busy road leading to a market and hit a two-story residential building.

The area shook as if an earthquake hit it, there was complete destruction and fire everywhere. Cars were incinerated and people on the sidewalks were critically injured.

Victims were also pulled from the under the rubble for the building.

Seven people were reported killed, five of whom have been identified. Two of them could not be identified as they were incinerated beyond recognition.

The victims have been taken to Al-Najjar Hospital.

Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah, Saturday [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]

Yasser al-Dalu’s parents had waited eight years to have their child. Now, the four-months-old is dead.

“I struggled so much to be able to have him,” Noor al-Dalu, Yasser’s grieving mother, told the Reuters news agency.

Yasser was born not long after Israel attacked Gaza last year. He was killed along with 21 others when the house they were in was struck by Israeli missiles on Friday.

His small body is wrapped in a shroud inside a morgue.

Fourteen children, including Yasser, four women, and four men were killed in the attack on a house owned by the family of Mahmoud Abu Zaeiter, a comedian with 1.2 million online followers.

Their house in Deir el-Balah was where Yasser and his parents were sheltering in after they fled Gaza City at the start of the war.

“We were sitting, and suddenly the rubble fell on our heads, I don’t know how the missiles fell, I was holding the child, in my embrace. I was telling, Noor, ‘Look at your son,’ I started nudging the baby, and moving him, slapping him so he could cry, but he didn’t, he was still,” said Rasha Abu Zaeiter, Yasser’s grandmother.

Noor al-Dalu carries the body of her son Yasser, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah, Saturday [Doaa Ruqqa/AP Photo]

Dozens of victims of an Israeli strike on a residence where displaced people were sheltering in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah area are being transferred to the nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital.

Dr Khalil al-Degran said the medical facility has received “many dead and injured, most of whom were women and children”.

“We expect to receive many more by the ambulances that are still at the site,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We are not equipped to receive such large numbers of victims,” he said, adding that the strike was part of Israel’s “genocide against our people”.

Palestinians wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Friday [Adel Hana/AP Photo]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised the UN and Western countries for “just watching the humanitarian crimes” committed by Israel in Gaza, the Anadolu news agency reports.

“Neither Western powers nor the UN Security Council have made a useful effort to prevent Israeli violence,” Erdogan was quoted as saying at a meeting of the Justice and Development (AK) Party in Turkey’s northwestern province of Sakarya.

He decried the UN Security Council’s inability to impose an immediate ceasefire after the US vetoed a draft resolution, prompting widespread criticism from rivals and allies alike.

The US veto on Tuesday was the third UNSC resolution demanding ceasefire in Gaza and came a day after Washington circulated a resolution that would support a temporary ceasefire linked to the release of all Israeli captives from the Palestinian enclave.

(13:15 GMT)

Hamas has warned Israel about its plans to restrict access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“Let our enemy know that souls are boiling … [our] anger is imminent … and an explosion is coming in response to any restrictions on the entry of Muslims to Al-Aqsa Mosque during the month of Ramadan,” Hamas wrote on its Telegram page, according to a The Jerusalem Post report.

“We call on the people of our Palestinian people in the occupied territories, Jerusalem and the West Bank, to escalate the confrontation of the occupation everywhere,” the Palestinian group had written in an earlier post.

Al-Aqsa Mosque and its courtyard [Mohammad Hamad/Anadolu Agency]

At the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Abu Gibril is so desperate for food to feed his family that he slaughtered two of his horses.

“We had no other choice but to slaughter the horses to feed the children. Hunger is killing us,” the 60-year-old told the AFP news agency.

Food is running out, with aid agencies unable to get into the area because of the bombing and attacks on the few trucks that try to get through. Residents have taken to eating scavenged scraps of rotten corn, animal fodder unfit for human consumption and even leaves to try to stave off the growing hunger pangs.

The WFP said its teams reported “unprecedented levels of desperation” while the UN warned that 2.2 million people were on the brink of famine.

“We the grown-ups can still make it but these children who are four and five years old, what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?” Gibril said.

Palestinians line up for free food in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Friday [Fatima Shbair/AP Photo]

Mahmoud al-Najjar, 37, repairs old kerosene stoves in Gaza [Omar Qattaa/Anadolu Agency]

Amid cooking gas shortage, Palestinians have resorted to old methods of cooking [Omar Qattaa/Anadolu Agency]

There is widespread shortage of food and other essential items in Gaza [Omar Qattaa/Anadolu Agency]