Five reported dead in Gaza after Israeli strike on school sheltering displaced people – Middle East crisis live | Middle East and north Africa

At least 798 people have been killed while trying to receive food aid in Gaza since the end of May, the UN human rights office said on Friday, Reuters reports.

Of the total number of people killed while receiving food assistance since May 27, 615 were in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, a spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) told reporters.

It added that 183 of the total figure were on the routes of aid convoys.

Aid groups say Israeli military restrictions and recurring violence have made it difficult to deliver assistance in Gaza even after Israel eased its 11-week total blockade in May.

Experts have warned the strip is at risk of famine, 21 months into the Israel-Hamas war, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

Militant fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) began handing over their weapons near the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah on Friday, marking a symbolic but significant step in the decades-long conflict between Turkey and the outlawed group.

The disarmament ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the PKK from armed insurgency to democratic politics, as part of a broader effort to draw a line under one of the region’s longest-running conflicts.

An Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent said 30 Kurdish PKK fighters, four of whom were commanders, destroyed their weapons at a ceremony in a cave in the mountainous Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday.

Tensions rose ahead of the ceremony as two drones were shot down overnight near Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga bases, one in Sulaymaniyah, and the other in Kirkuk to the west, according to officials who did not say was behind the attacks. No casualties were reported.

Founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK took up arms in 1984, beginning a string of bloody attacks on Turkish soil that sparked a conflict that cost more than 40,000 lives.

But more than four decades on, the PKK in May announced its dissolution, saying it would pursue a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with a historic call by Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence in Turkey since 1999.

in Brussels

Elsewhere, the EU’s diplomatic service has drawn up a list of options to sanction Israel, after finding “indications” that the Middle Eastern country had breached its human rights obligations over its conduct in Gaza and the West Bank.

A document for EU foreign ministers to discuss next week outlines ten options, such as suspending the EU-Israel association agreement or visa-free-travel for Israelis, freezing preferential trade terms, or terminating Israel’s participation in Europe’s research and student exchange programmes.

The five-page text seen by the Guardian, first reported by Reuters, makes no recommendations.

It remains unclear if any of the proposals will gain traction. So far only one member state, Spain, has pushed for the suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement, which requires unanimity. Even governments that are Palestine’s strongest supporters in the EU are reluctant to back any move to reduce people-to-people contacts.

The paper emerged after EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced a potentially-significant deal with Israel to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza.

In a statement on Thursday Kallas said Israel had agreed to “the substantial increase of daily trucks for food and non-food items to enter Gaza”, as well as the reopening of the Jordanian and Syrian aid routes, distribution of food from bakers and public kitchens and resumption of water supply to the water desalination facility.

A spokesperson for Kallas said the agreement was the outcome of a dialogue Kallas launched with Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar. Her pledge to raise the humanitarian crisis with Israel was made after the completion of the review of the EU-Israel agreement.

One open question is whether Kallas and EU member states now feel enough has been done to pressure Israel to change course, or whether more is needed. The EU response will certainly reflect how Israel implements the aid deal.

“We count on Israel to implement every measure agreed,” Kallas said.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Friday killed at least six people in the Palestinian territory’s north, including five at a school-turned-shelter, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The agency said in a brief statement:

Five martyrs and others injured in an Israeli strike on Halima al-Saadia school, which was sheltering displaced persons in Jabalia al-Nazla, northern Gaza.

In a separate strike on Gaza City, to the south, the agency said at least one person was killed and several others wounded.

In central Gaza on Friday, the Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat said it received several casualties after Israeli forces had opened fire at civilians near an aid distribution point.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has recently intensified its operations in the Gaza Strip as the war against Hamas militants entered its 22nd month.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency and other parties.

A Palestinian speaking to AFP from southern Gaza on condition of anonymity said there were ongoing attacks and widespread devastation, with Israeli tanks seen near the city of Khan Yunis.

“The situation remains extremely difficult in the area – intense gunfire, intermittent air strikes, artillery shelling and ongoing bulldozing and destruction of displacement camps and agricultural land to the south, west and north of Al-Maslakh,” an area to Khan Yunis’s south, said the witness.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Friday killed at least six people in the Palestinian territory’s north, including five at a school-turned-shelter.

“Five martyrs and others injured in an Israeli strike on Halima al-Saadia school, which was sheltering displaced persons in Jabalia al-Nazla, northern Gaza,” the agency said in a brief statement.

In a separate strike on Gaza City, to the south, the agency said at least one person was killed and several others wounded.

In central Gaza on Friday, the Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat said it received several casualties after Israeli forces had opened fire at civilians near an aid distribution point.

The civil defence agency said eight children – killed as they queued for nutritional supplements outside a health clinic – were among 66 people who died in Israeli strikes across the territory on Thursday.

The agency said the children were among 17 victims in a strike on Deir el-Balah.

According to the UN children’s agency, the dead included a one-year-old boy whose mother said he had spoken his first words just hours earlier. The mother was critically injured, UNICEF added.

US-based charity Project Hope, which runs the facility, said the victims were waiting for the clinic to open to receive treatment for malnutrition, infections and illness. The charity gave a toll of 15 dead, including 10 children and two women.

In other developments:

• A UN team got about 75,000 litres of fuel into Gaza on Wednesday, the first such delivery in 130 days, said UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric on Thursday. “The amount entered yesterday isn’t sufficient to cover even one day of energy requirements. Fuel is still running out and services will shut down if far greater volumes do not enter immediately,” Dujarric told reporters. It comes as doctors at Gaza’s largest hospital say crippling fuel shortages have led them to put several premature babies in single incubators as they struggle to keep the newborns alive while Israel presses on with its military campaign.

• The EU has reached an agreement with Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, including increasing trucks for aid and opening crossing points and certain aid routes, the EU’s top diplomat said on Thursday. “These measures are or will be implemented in the coming days, with the common understanding that aid at scale must be delivered directly to the population and that measures will continue to be taken to ensure that there is no aid diversion to Hamas,” Kaja Kallas said in a statement.

• Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he hoped to reach a deal in a few days for the release of more Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Netanyahu said 50 hostages were still being held captive by Hamas. Of that figure, he said, only 20 are believed to be alive. He said Israel’s “fundamental conditions” were that “Hamas lays down its weapons” and no longer has “governing or military capabilities”. “If this can be achieved through negotiations, great. If it cannot be achieved through negotiations within 60 days, we will achieve it through other means, by using force, the force of our heroic army,” he added.

• Hamas said on Wednesday it had agreed to release 10 living hostages but on Thursday it said it opposed a deal that includes a large Israeli military presence in Gaza. It said there were several sticking points in the ongoing ceasefire talks including the flow of aid, withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, and “genuine guarantees for a permanent ceasefire.”

• The UN warned on Thursday that Washington was setting a “dangerous precedent” by imposing sanctions on a UN expert for criticising US policy on Gaza and called for the cancellation of the action. It comes after the US said on Wednesday it was imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, who has been very critical of US ally Israel’s war in Gaza.

• French president Emmanuel Macron on Thursday urged joint UK-France recognition of a Palestinian state, calling such moves “the only hope for peace” in the conflict-ridden region. Flanking UK leader Keir Starmer at a news conference as he wrapped up a three-day state visit to Britain, Macron said he wanted to “initiate this political dynamic” of recognising Palestinian statehood.

• An explosive drone was shot down near Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq’s oil-rich province of Kirkuk early on Friday, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement.

• Yemeni Houthi militia leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said on Thursday that no company could be permitted to transport goods related to Israel through designated areas at sea. He reiterated that a Houthi ban on navigation the group sees as associated with Israel through the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea would remain in place. The Iran-aligned Houthis sank two ships in the Red Sea earlier this week after months of calm.

• Rescuers pulled three more crew members and a security guard alive from the Red Sea on Thursday, maritime security sources said, a day after Houthi militants sank the Greek ship Eternity C and said they were holding some of the crew still missing. This brings the total number of those rescued so far to 10, including eight Filipino crew members, one Indian and one Greek security guard. The people found on Thursday had spent more than 48 hours in the water. Another 11 people are still missing.

• Israel will strike Iran again if it is threatened by Tehran, defence minister Israel Katz said on Thursday. “Israel’s long arm will reach you in Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan, and anywhere you try to threaten or harm Israel. There is no place to hide”, Katz said at an air force graduation ceremony, according to a statement from his office. He added: “If we must return, we will do so with greater force.”

• A gas leak leading to an explosion in Iran’s capital Tehran has wounded at least four people, Iran’s state media reported on Thursday.