Middle East crisis live: Israeli attack on tents housing journalists in Gaza kills at least two, say Palestinian medics

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Israeli attack on tents housing journalists in Gaza kills at least two people, medics say

Welcome to our live coverage of the latest developments in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Israel’s continuing war on Gaza.

Israel struck tents outside two major hospitals in the Gaza Strip overnight, killing at least two people, including a local reporter, and injuring nine, including six reporters, Palestinian medics said.

One of the Israeli airstrikes hit a media tent outside Nasser hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, setting it ablaze, killing Yousef al-Faqawi, a reporter for the Palestine Today TV news website and another man. Two of the six reporters injured in the airstrike are in a critical condition, with one suffering from severe burns and the other with a head injury, according to reports.

Under international law, journalists are protected civilians who must not be targeted by warring parties. But more than 200 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

Israel also targeted tents on the edge of the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza, which said two people were killed and three injured in an Israeli airstrike on a home in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

Aftermath of Israeli airstrike on a tent housing journalists in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

In some other developments:

At least three people were killed by Israeli attacks on the Zeitoun district of Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
US airstrikes on Sana’a yesterday killed at least four people and injured over 20 others, including women and children, according to health officials and local reports.
Hamas said yesterday it had fired rockets at cities in Israel’s south in response to Israeli “massacres” of civilians in Gaza. Israel’s military said about ten projectiles were fired, but most successfully intercepted. Israeli emergency services said they were treating one person for shrapnel injuries.
A war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military in Gaza is to be submitted to the Met police by one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers.

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Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli airstrike in Taybeh, a border-village in the country’s south, killed one person on Monday.

The official national news agency (NNA) said the airstrike hit “in front of a motorcycle repair shop”.

The November ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, brokered by France and the US, brought an official end to Israel’s assault on Lebanon last year but it remains extremely precarious.

Under the agreement, Israeli forces were supposed to withdraw from all Lebanese territory by late January while Hezbollah had to end its armed presence south of the Litani river along the border with Israel. But each side accuses the other of not living up to those terms.

Israel delayed a promised troop withdrawal in January and continues to occupy several so-called “strategic” hilltops in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military has also carried out frequent attacks on the country, claiming it is targeting Hezbollah fighters and weapons, but many civilians have been killed in the airstrikes.

As we mentioned in the opening summary, ten Britons have been accused of committing war crimes while fighting for Israel in Gaza. Here is some more of the story, written by the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent Haroon Siddique:

Michael Mansfield KC is one of a group of lawyers who will on Monday hand in a 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit alleging targeted killing of civilians and aid workers, including by sniper fire, and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.

The report, which has been prepared by a team of UK lawyers and researchers in The Hague, also accuses suspects of coordinated attacks on protected sites including historic monuments and religious sites, and forced transfer and displacement of civilians.

For legal reasons, neither the names of suspects, who include officer-level individuals, nor the full report are being made public…

The report, which has been submitted on behalf of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the British-based Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), covers alleged offences committed in the territory from October 2023 to May 2024 and took six months to compile.

Each of the crimes attributed to the 10 suspects, some of whom are dual nationals, amounts to a war crime or crime against humanity, according to the report.

One witness, who was at a medical facility, saw corpses “scattered on the ground, especially in the middle of the hospital courtyard, where many dead bodies were buried in a mass grave”. A bulldozer “ran over a dead body in a horrific and heart-wrenching scene desecrating the dead”, the witness said.

Israeli attack on tents housing journalists in Gaza kills at least two people, medics say

Welcome to our live coverage of the latest developments in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Israel’s continuing war on Gaza.

In some other developments:

At least three people were killed by Israeli attacks on the Zeitoun district of Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
US airstrikes on Sana’a yesterday killed at least four people and injured over 20 others, including women and children, according to health officials and local reports.
Hamas said yesterday it had fired rockets at cities in Israel’s south in response to Israeli “massacres” of civilians in Gaza. Israel’s military said about ten projectiles were fired, but most successfully intercepted. Israeli emergency services said they were treating one person for shrapnel injuries.
A war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military in Gaza is to be submitted to the Met police by one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers.