Israel war on Gaza updates: New Gaza City ground invasion feared

Thank you for following Al Jazeera’s live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.

For more reporting on the day’s events, check out our story on the Israeli defence minister’s comments on the war in Lebanon here.

And you can follow all of our coverage here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s events:

• Israeli forces launched a surprise assault on Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood with at least seven people killed and dozens wounded – casualty figures expected to rise as rescuers search through the debris.
• Thousands of Palestinians fled eastern Gaza City after Israel’s army ordered an immediate evacuation, many carrying the wounded along with their hastily packed belongings.
• The World Health Organization welcomed news of the evacuation of more than a dozen cancer-stricken children but noted that “more than 10,000 patients still require medical care outside the Strip”.
• Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says his country doesn’t want war in Lebanon but could send its neighbour “back to the Stone Age” if it breaks out.
• Antigovernment protesters gathered in West Jerusalem and converged on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s home, lighting a bonfire on the street outside and calling for his resignation.

The UN Security Council approved a resolution demanding Yemen’s Houthi rebels halt all attacks on ships and urged the disruption to maritime security in a critical Middle East waterway be urgently addressed.

It was approved by a 12-0 vote with Russia, China and Algeria abstaining.

Speaking on behalf of the United States and Japan, which sponsored the resolution, US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood said Houthi attacks “threaten international peace and security” and they’re “a global challenge” that “necessitates a global solution”.

“With this resolution, the council once again sends a clear message to the Houthis: Cease these attacks immediately,” he said.

The Yemeni group has been launching attacks on shipping lanes in the region since November in what it says is an effort to support Palestinians and pressure Israel to end its war on Gaza.

Footage shows women, men and children carrying bags and food as they ran in the streets after the Israeli air strikes and artillery barrage began. Some men carried wounded children in their arms as they fled.

“This is the [Israeli] occupation targeting us as you can see. You can see the children, the targeting of children here,” said one Palestinian man carrying a bleeding boy in his arms.

Rescuers are still digging through the rubble for survivors after Israeli forces attacked the Shujayea neighbourhood in northern Gaza City with dozens reported wounded and several killed, including four children.

Gaza’s civil defence agency says its teams are unable to reach some of the victims because of ongoing Israeli fire. Residents said they were taken by surprise by tanks rolling in and shooting at midday with drones also attacking.

“It sounded as if the war is restarting, a series of bombings that destroyed several houses in our area and shook the buildings,” said Mohammad Jamal, 25, a resident.

Gaza City was heavily bombed in the opening weeks of the war. Israel ordered the evacuation of all of northern Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people have remained in the north, even as Israeli troops have surrounded and besieged it.

Task forces charged with proposing ways to combat anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian bias and anti-Semitism at Harvard University delivered recommendations.

“We must strengthen our ties with a sustained commitment to engaging each other with tact, decency, and compassion,” the school’s interim President Alan Garber wrote.

The move follows a tough academic year for the university that ended with major student protests over Harvard’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

While very different experiences were reported, some common themes emerged including a perception the university fell short of its stated values, specifically those that celebrate diversity while respecting differences.

Israel’s hardline finance minister says the government will promote illegal West Bank settlements and punitive measures against the Palestinian Authority in response to its moves against Israel on the international stage.

Bezalel Smotrich, who heads a pro-settler party, said in a statement the government supports his proposal.

Among the steps Smotrich says he’s advancing is the revocation of “various approvals and benefits” for senior officials in the Palestinian Authority and approving new settlement buildings.

Protesters sat on the highway and lay on the ground as police lifted and dragged them away. Officers mounted on horseback charged into the crowd. Many demonstrators held signs and chanted “To prison! Not to the army!”

The Supreme Court this week ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men saying the system of military exemptions is unequal.

“We all came here for one goal, we reflect the position of all the Orthodox public,” said a young man, identifying himself only by his first name, Ozer. “All the Orthodox public prefers to go to prison and not to the army.”

Military service is compulsory for most Jewish men and women in Israel. But politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have won draft exemptions for their followers that allow them instead to study in religious seminaries.

This longstanding arrangement has bred widespread resentment among the broader public – a sentiment that has grown stronger during the bloody eight-month war on Gaza. The ultra-Orthodox see their full-time religious study as their part in protecting the state.

Muhammad Ghurab, a doctor at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital, said the facility so far received seven “martyrs including four children” and more than 40 others wounded “as the Israeli forces advanced to the east of Shujayea neighbourhood”.

Hamas’s press office reported “a significant displacement of residents” around Shujayea.

Israel’s military ordered residents to head south to a declared “humanitarian zone” about 25km (15 miles) away. Such zones have repeatedly been attacked in the past.

Here are a few highlights from the content recently published on Israel’s war against Gaza:

• Watch: Palestinians flee barrage of Israeli attacks in Gaza
• News: Israel warns it can send Lebanon ‘back to Stone Age’
• Feature: Palestinians in Lebanon ready to fight if Israel starts war with Hezbollah
• Editor’s Analysis: Gallant’s US trip strengthens potential challenge to Israel’s Netanyahu
• In Photos: High risk of famine amid Israel’s war on Gaza and aid restrictions

And there’s plenty more here.

Al Jazeera obtained video showing an Israeli military dog attacking an elderly Palestinian woman in her home during an operation in the Jabalia camp.

Watch the video below:

Antigovernment protesters gathered in West Jerusalem and converged on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s home, lighting a bonfire on the street outside and calling for his resignation.

“We’ve been abandoned – Elections now!” read one sign that rose above the crowd. Demonstrators yelled through megaphones, waved flags, and banged on snare drums while police officers stood at the barricades.

Such demonstrations have grown more frequent as the war on Gaza rages and fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon threatens to escalate. But they have not reached the fever pitch of a year ago when Netanyahu’s government tried to overhaul Israel’s justice system.

Many in the crowd, which appeared to number in the thousands, also chanted their support for reaching a deal to free some 120 Israeli captives in Gaza being held by Hamas.

The World Health Organization welcomed news of the evacuation of 21 cancer-stricken children but noted “more than 10,000 patients still require medical care outside the Strip.”

“Of the 13,872 people who have applied for medical evacuation since 7 October, only 35 percent have been evacuated,” Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said in a post on X.

“Medical evacuation corridors must be urgently established for the sustained, organized, safe, and timely passage of critically ill patients from Gaza via all possible routes.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 37,700 Palestinians and wounded 86,000 others, the majority have been women and children.

Several people have been killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli attack on the coastal area of al-Mawasi, northwest Rafah, our Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues report.

Last week, an Israeli attack near the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) base at the al-Mawasi camp – designated by Israel as “a safe zone” – killed at least 25 people and wounded 50 others.

United Nations officials warn of the possibility of a wider war as fighting intensifies along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.

Each side says it’s responding to attacks by the other, but could the situation spin out of control? And what does that mean for the people who live there?

Hamas’s armed wing carried out several attacks on the Israeli army across northern Gaza City after it announced a surprise assault, firing artillery and carrying out air raids.

Here are some of the attacks the Qassam Brigades says it conducted:

• Hit a group of soldiers with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood, south of Gaza City.
• Targeted an Israeli army command headquarters in the Netzarim axis, south of Gaza City, with a short-range 107 missile.
• Struck an Israeli troop carrier with a 105-Yassin RPG in the Shujayea neighbourhood, east of Gaza City.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel and Gisha, an Israeli human rights organisation, have petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to create a “permanent mechanism” to allow people needing medical treatment to evacuate Gaza.

Adi Lustigman, an attorney with Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said that before May 7 – when the Israeli military launched its invasion of Rafah and took control of the main crossing – about 50 Palestinian patients per day crossed into Egypt for medical treatment abroad.

The fact that fewer than 70 people left the territory on Thursday “after [the] two months the crossing has been closed is beyond tragic”, said Tania Hary, executive director of Gisha. “Our sense of it is that it’s just unsustainable in terms of a response.”

She called on the Israeli military to reopen Rafah crossing and allow patients to exit the Erez crossing in the northern part of the territory, which had previously been the main crossing for Palestinians entering Israel.

Israel’s Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the petition on Monday.

Gaza’s civil defence agency says its workers were hit by fire from an Israeli warplane while carrying out “their humanitarian work”.

The agency “announces the martyrdom of three of its cadres and the injury of a number of others, working in the Bureij centre”, the organisation posted on X.

Bureij and Gaza’s first-responders have repeatedly been attacked since the war began. Israeli forces launched an offensive earlier this year for several weeks in Bureij and several other nearby refugee camps in central Gaza.

The United Nations Children’s Fund says Israel agreed to restore power to a key desalination plant in southern Gaza.

“UNICEF confirms an agreement was reached to re-establish the medium voltage feeder power line for the Southern Gaza Desalination Plant,” said spokesman Jonathan Crickx.

Water has become scarce for the Palestinian territory’s 2.4 million residents since war broke out nearly nine months ago.

More than two-thirds of Gaza’s sanitation and water facilities have been destroyed or damaged and only an intermittent supply of bottled water has been allowed in since Israel imposed a punishing siege on the territory.

The plant in Khan Younis, once resupplied with electricity, should produce enough water to “meet what humanitarian standards define as a minimum intake of 15 litres (four gallons) per day of drinking water per person, for nearly a million displaced people” in southern Gaza, Crickx said.

“This is an important milestone, and we are very much looking forward to seeing it implemented.”