Live: Five Palestinian journalists killed, Gaza media office says

The Palestinian civil defence on Thursday said Israel is conducting a "massacre" against Palestinians in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Arabic media is reporting several dead and wounded Palestinians on al-Houja Street in the besieged Jabalia refugee camp. 

The chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps has called out the US's deployment of a Thaad missile defence system to Israel, as the region braces for an Israeli strike on Iran. 

“Just as the Arrow anti-missile systems did not work during Operation True Promise 2, the Thaad systems will not work either. Do not rely on Thaad, they have limited capabilities,”  IRGC chief Hossein Salami said, according to Russian news agency, TASS. 

True Promise 2 was the name of Iran's 1 October ballistic missile attack on Israel. 

Israel has offered every family of a soldier killed fighting in Gaza and Lebanon postmortem sperm retrieval since 11 October 2023, according to a story published by The Financial Times. 

Israel has offered the service to every family when it announces the death of a soldier killed in combat. 

According to the FT report, roughly 30 percent of Israeli soldiers who die in combat now have their sperm retrieved and frozen after their death. 

Israel's military announced on Thursday that four of its soldiers were killed fighting in southern Lebanon. 

The soldiers belonged to the Carmeli Brigade. 

At least three Palestinians were killed and several injured on Thursday by Israeli artillery shelling near Khan Younis in Gaza, according to Palestinian media reports. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said no country in the Middle East wants a “big war", adding that tensions between Israel and Iran have dramatically escalated. 

"The level of confrontation between Israel and Iran has sharply risen. This is all reminiscent of a chain reaction and puts the whole Middle East on the verge of full-scale war," Putin said on Thursday. 

"The key demand for restoring peace and stability on Palestinian territories is carrying out the two-state formula approved by the UN Security Council and General Assembly," he added. 

"Until this question is resolved, it will not be possible to break the vicious circle of violence". 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced on Thursday that an Israeli delegation led by Mossad chief David Barnea will travel to Doha, Qatar on Sunday. 

The Prime Minister's office said  Barnea will meet CIA chief William Burns, Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, and Egyptian spy chief, Hassan Rashad. 

Israel's offensive on Lebanon has killed at least 19 people in the past 24 hours, the Lebanese government said on Thursday. 

Lebanon's death toll since October 2023  now stands at 2,593.

Israel's military chief of staff Herzi Halevi suggested on Thursday that Israel's war on Lebanon could end quickly.

“In the north, there is a possibility of reaching a sharp end. We finished Hezbollah’s senior chain of command in a very thorough way,” he said in a video provided by Israel's military. 

The situation around Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza on Thursday is deteriorating by the minute, with the hospital totally blocked by Israeli soldiers. 

Al Jazeera is reporting heavy gunfire outside the hospital, with a car set on fire outside the hospital's main gate. 

Hussam Abu Safia, director of the hospital, told Al Jazeera that at least 15 operations cannot be performed as a result of Israeli shelling. 

Israeli soldiers are not letting supplies into the hospital or allowing patients to leave. 

Israel "directly" targeted Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital's director, told Al Jazeera on Thursday. 

Safia said the attack caused severe damage to the hospital's intensive care unit.

“The hospital was directly targeted," he said. 

Israeli soldiers threw Palestinian children into a pit and circled around them with a tank, spewing dust and sand into the hole, a Palestinian journalist reported on X on Thursday.

“They took all the children from their mothers and put them inside what resembled a pit or a hole. The tank came to circle around them repeatedly until their bones cracked under the pressure of dust and sand, amidst the screams of children and the wailing of mothers," the Palestinian journalist said, quoting one of the mothers who witnessed the incident. 

According to the report, the soldiers followed up by throwing children towards a group of mothers, who were forced to carry the children with no guarantee that the child they received was their own. 

Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen is reporting that Israeli air strikes have targeted towns near Boudai and Al-Halaniya, near the city of Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley.

Over 770 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel's military assault on northern Gaza, according to the enclave's civil defence agency.

The organisation's spokesperson, Mahmoud Bassal, said that the toll is likely to rise due to the numbers of people buried beneath the rubble.

The agency said that it was halting its emergency services in the region due to the intensity of Israel's assault.

Medical staff and eyewitnesses have reported that bodies and injured people remain strewn across the streets in Jabalia and Beit Lahia, with first responders and ambulances barred from reaching them by Israeli fire.

Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP has criticised the UK’s Charity Commission for closing a probe into the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a charity that described the government’s decision to restore funding for the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees as “obscene”.

According to the UK's charity law, an organisation cannot be a charity "if its purposes are political". The CAA has been accused of political partisanship.

In April 2020, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) filed a complaint with the Charity Commission against the CAA, accusing it of acting as a "highly politically partisan organisation which does not deserve charitable status". 

JVL alleged that the CAA had persistently conflated antisemitism with criticism of Israel and accused Labour Party activists of antisemitism with "minimal" supporting evidence. 

The CAA, which was founded in 2015 and says it is "dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism", played a leading role in antisemitism allegations against the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and has since pursued complaints against Labour MPs.

Read more: John McDonnell urges regulator to rethink decision to clear Campaign Against Antisemitism