A group of United Nations experts on Thursday warned arms manufacturers against taking part in the transfer of weapons to Israel, saying it could make them complicit in human rights abuses and violations of international law. The UN experts said on Thursday the risk to arms firms had increased since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel last month to halt its military offensive in Southern Gaza's Rafah. Read our blog to see how the day's events unfolded.
This blog is no longer being updated. For more coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, please click here.
Summary
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Israeli authorities on Thursday freed 33 Palestinians who had been detained during the past months by Israeli forces in different areas of the Gaza Strip. The freed detainees were admitted into Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza's Deir Al-Balah.
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The US military-built pier in Gaza is up and running again after being detached for a second time last week because of rough seas, according to Cyprus officials Thursday.
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Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for a deadly air strike in south Lebanon that Israel said killed a Hezbollah operative. Israel said it had approved plans for a Lebanon offensive, fuelling fears that the conflict in Gaza would widen into a regional war.
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Israel's military forces pounded areas in the central Gaza Strip overnight, killing three people and wounding more than a dozen others, according to health officials and medics, while tanks deepened their invasion into Rafah in the south, residents said.
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At least 37,431 Palestinians have been killed and 85,653 injured in Israel's war in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. Some 1,170 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks and 250 people were taken hostage, with about 120 remaining in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Many have been declared dead by Israeli authorities.
Yesterday’s key developments:
- Israeli tanks backed by warplanes and drones advanced deeper into the western part of Rafah on Wednesday, killing eight people, according to residents and Palestinian medics.
- Israeli forces may have repeatedly violated fundamental principles of the laws of war and failed to distinguish between civilians and fighters in their Gaza Strip military campaign, the United Nations human rights office said on Wednesday.
- Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday warned Israel against a full-blown war and threatened the use of "new weapons" and intelligence capabilities. In a televised address, he also threatened Cyprus for allowing Israel to use its airports.
- Israel's top army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Wednesday that Hamas cannot be eliminated as an ideology, prompting a rebuttal from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office.
- Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed three Hezbollah fighters on Wednesday, the militant group said, as a US envoy tasked with avoiding a regional war returned to Israel after meeting officials in Lebanon.
Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent. For more on the health ministry’s casualty figures, click here.
(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and Reuters)
