Israel war on Gaza updates: Dozens dead as attacks on Palestinians continue

Read more about the killing of American-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi – shot by an Israeli sniper near Nablus in the occupied West Bank – here.

Israeli forces have withdrawn from Jenin in the West Bank following a siege that lasted 10 days, leaving behind a trail of devastation. See our photo gallery here.

And you can always find all our latest coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.

We’ll be closing this live page soon. Here’s a recap of the day’s main developments:

• At least 33 Palestinians have been killed in a spate of Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, including women and children, the Health Ministry said.
• Condemnation has been swift after the killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, an American-Turkish activist fatally shot in the head by an Israeli soldier during a demonstration in Beita, near Nablus.
• Bana Amjad Bakr, 13, was shot and killed by Israeli troops who were backing Israelis from illegal settlements during an attack on Qarout, a village south of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
• Civil defence crews in the West Bank city of Jenin have begun clearing out rubble and repairing destroyed infrastructure after Israeli forces ended a deadly 10-day incursion.
• Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel’s military exchanged cross-border attacks with at least two Lebanese nationals wounded following Israeli shelling on southern towns.

Earlier we reported a 13-year-old Palestinian girl was shot and killed in her home in the occupied West Bank village of Qarout.  Local media have now identified her as Bana Amjad Bakr.

Witnesses said dozens of Israeli settlers raided the village under the protection of Israeli soldiers, which led to clashes and troops firing live rounds at residents’ homes.

Bakr died of bullet wounds she sustained in the chest. She was in her bedroom with her sisters when she was shot, her father said.

Rob Sadler, a British human rights activist, who was at the scene when Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot and killed, says her sacrifice will not be in vain and efforts to halt Israeli aggression against Palestinians will continue.

“I want to start by immediately refuting the Israeli army statement that they were firing towards someone who was presenting harm to them. They fired at a crowd 200 metres away from them down the road. A sniper fired from a building – one or two shots – and they targeted and murdered Aysenur,” Sadler told Al Jazeera.

He said at least 17 Palestinians have been killed in the village of Beita over the past few years in Israeli attacks. “This goes hand-in-hand with their obscene disregard for human life and the genocide they’re carrying out in Gaza.”

Sadler said Ezgi Eygi, also known as Aysha, came to Palestine to document “the crimes” by the Israeli military.

“Aysha, in doing this work, has made the ultimate sacrifice. But we will continue to work in her name and make sure her sacrifice was not for nothing. We’ll continue to bring pressure to bear on Israel until Palestine is free.”

Gaza’s civil defence says its teams are dealing with a new Israeli attack on a residential building in the Nassr neighbourhood, west of Gaza City. No casualties have been reported yet.

At least 33 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Friday. At least 40,878 people have been killed and 94,454 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7.

Israeli forces conducted their largest assault in decades in the occupied West Bank, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians.

The escalation is coupled with increasing settler violence. So what are the consequences?

The two young men were detained by Israeli forces near the entrance of the Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reports.

The unidentified men were in a vehicle stopped by Israeli forces who stationed themselves on a road leading to the camp, it said.

Since October 7, Israeli forces stepped up arrests of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank. More than 9,000 have been arrested in the past 11 months, many of whom remain in detention without charge or trial.

Israeli forces appear to have withdrawn from three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank after 10 days of killing and destruction.

The raids involving hundreds of troops have been the deadliest in the occupied territory since the war on Gaza began in October.

While troops pulled out, the Israeli military suggested the incursion may not be over yet. The army is “continuing to act in order to achieve the objectives of the counterterrorism operation”, a statement said.

Fighting in Jenin accounts for 21 of 39 Palestinians, who local health officials say have been killed during the Israeli push. The military says most have been Palestinian fighters.

Jenin’s Governor Kamal Abu al-Rub said the damage to infrastructure was extensive. “We had numerous invasions in the past, but this invasion is the most destructive.”

He said the economy in the camp – where unemployment already ran at 21 percent – had been further wrecked.

Gaza’s civil defence says a number of Palestinians have been killed following an Israeli attack on a school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area.

The school was identified as Halimah al-Saadiyah and was housing displaced families in the area. A local journalist later reported eight people were killed and a number of others injured.

Condemnation has come fast after the killing of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, of Seattle – a recent graduate of the University of Washington. She was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which protests illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

At least three activists from the ISM have now been killed since 2000. ISM members often place themselves between Israeli forces and Palestinians to try to stop the Israeli military from carrying out violence.

Two ISM activists – American Rachel Corrie and British photography student Tom Hurndall – were killed in Gaza in 2003.

Corrie was crushed to death in March 2003 as she tried to block an Israeli military bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, near the Egyptian border. Hurndall was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier about a month later.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released its situation report on the latest developments in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Here are some of the report’s key highlights:

• The second phase of the polio vaccination campaign has commenced in southern Gaza, where vaccination teams aim to reach 340,000 children in four days.
• An estimated 12,000 patients in Gaza needing urgent medical care await to be evacuated for treatment abroad as Israeli forces continue to seal shut border crossings.
• The food security situation in Gaza is deteriorating because of critical shortages of aid and ongoing attacks.
• Daily meals provided to families in need have dropped by 35 percent across the Gaza Strip because of Israeli-issued evacuation orders.

The 2nd phase of the polio vaccination campaign, targeting 340k children in southern #Gaza, has started.

About 12k patients await permission to exit Gaza for urgent care.

Daily meals provided to families in need dropped by 35 per cent, from July to August.

Latest update👇

— OCHA oPt (Palestine) (@ochaopt) September 6, 2024

Senator Patty Murray of Washington state condemned the killing of American citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.

“The government of Israel must deliver answers immediately and hold the perpetrators of this killing accountable,” Murray said in a statement.

Representative Pramila Jayapal called Ezgi Eygi’s death a terrible tragedy and said her office is actively working to gather more information on the events that led to her death.

“I am very troubled by the reports that she was killed by Israeli … soldiers. The Netanyahu government has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank, often encouraged by right-wing ministers of the Netanyahu government,” Jayapal wrote in a statement.

“The killing of an American citizen is a terrible proof point in this senseless war of rising tensions in the region.”

It is a back-to-school week in the Middle East, except for Palestinian students in the Gaza Strip.

Their classrooms are in ruins or have become shelters for the displaced. Their backpacks used to be filled with books, but now they carry what little these students have left.

Almost 80 percent of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and the last remaining university in the Strip was demolished by the Israeli military in January. What effect will all these losses have on the culture and the memory of Palestinians?

Lebanon’s Health Ministry says one person has sustained injuries after Israeli forces fired artillery shells on the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila.

The wounded individual has been taken to the Marjayoun Governmental Hospital, state news agency NNA reports.

Another person was taken to the same hospital after inhaling “phosphorus” from shells fired by Israeli forces on the town of Burj al-Muluk, in southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh, it added.

The report comes as the Israeli military announced it struck “more than 15 launchers and military infrastructures” allegedly belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Qatar condemned the killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a US and Turkish citizen, who was fatally shot in the head with live ammunition fired by Israeli soldiers.

The 26-year-old activist was attending a demonstration in Beita, near Nablus, when she was shot.

“The heinous crime is part of a series of ongoing crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian cause and human rights,” Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“The silence of the international community regarding these violations is an incentive for the occupation to commit more atrocities.”

The intensity of cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and Israel has lessened after a major exchange of fire on August 25.

“Hezbollah has indeed re-established a significant level of deterrence,” Imad Salamey, a political analyst at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, told Al Jazeera.

“This refutes Israel’s claims of having substantially reduced Hezbollah’s capabilities and clearly shows that Hezbollah maintains firm command and control despite Israel’s 10-month-long, very expensive military campaign aimed at weakening the party.”

Read the full story here.

Jordan’s Foreign Ministry says those responsible for the killing of Ezgi Eygi in the occupied West Bank must be held accountable.

Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American activist, was shot and killed during a protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita near Nablus city in the northern occupied West Bank.

In a statement, the ministry described the killing as a “heinous crime that requires holding those responsible accountable”. The activist’s shooting is a continuation of Israel’s “crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank”, it added.

Witnesses said Ezgi Eygi was shot by Israeli soldiers who fired from a rooftop after skirmishes broke out.

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs says what’s been revealed by rights groups and testimony of released prisoners about the harsh conditions faced by detainees held in Israeli prisons is only a “small part of the ugly and bleak” reality.

Palestinians held in Israeli jails are “consistently and continuously” being killed, tortured and suffer intimidation tactics that “exceeds imagination”, it said.

The commission accused the Israeli government of turning these facilities into torture and killing chambers, using the “most heinous and most humiliating means in a manner that violates all the rules of international and humanitarian law”.

It called on the international community to put an end to these practices.

A general strike and massive protests took place this week in Tel Aviv after the bodies of six Israeli captives were found in a Gaza tunnel by Israeli forces at the weekend.

Huge numbers of protesters are calling on Netanyahu to sign a deal for the return of the remaining captives held in Gaza.

What do these protests signify about the growing calls and pressure for a ceasefire in Israel?

Here are the accounts of two witnesses who observed the killing of Turkish-American activist Ezgi Eygi, 26, in the occupied West Bank village of Beita:

• Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was participating in Friday’s protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside outside the northern town of Beita overlooking the illegal Israeli settlement of Evyatar.
• Soldiers surrounded the group as its members prayed and clashes soon broke out with Palestinians throwing stones and soldiers firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.
• The protesters and activists, including Pollak and Ezgi Eygi, retreated from the hill, and the clashes calmed down, he said. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and fired. He saw the flares leave the barrel of the gun when the shots rang out.
• He said Ezgi Eygi was about 10 or 15 metres (33 to 50ft) behind him when the shots were fired. Pollak then saw her “lying on the ground next to an olive tree, bleeding to death”, he said.
• Mariam Dag, another activist at the protest, also said she saw an Israeli soldier on a rooftop. Dag said she then heard the firing of two live rounds. One ricocheted off something metal and hit a Palestinian protester in the leg; the other hit Ezgi Eygi, who had moved back into an olive grove, she said.
• Dag said she ran towards the fallen woman and saw blood coming from her head. “The shots were coming from the direction of the army. They were not coming from anywhere else.”