Updates: Israel guns down hungry Palestinians in Gaza mass-casualty attack

Read more on the call by the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory to end Israel’s war on Gaza, here.

Watch our video here on how the US immigration agency uses the Canary Mission site against students and professors critical of Israel.

And you can keep up to date on all our coverage of Israel’s war here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here are the day’s major developments:

• At least 61 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn – including 23 people in the Shati refugee camp and two others near an aid centre in Rafah.
• More than 30 starving Palestinians were wounded while attempting to collect food aid at a site operated by a US-Israel-backed group in Gaza.
• Israeli air strikes hit the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, killing 12 people, including seven Syrians at a camp for displaced people, while Syrian troops were also targeted in Suwayda.
• Israeli settlers torched Palestinian land and vehicles in the occupied West Bank village of Burqa, hours after diplomats and church leaders called for an end to settler violence.
• Netanyahu’s coalition suffered a blow as the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party announced it is quitting the government, leaving him with a razor-thin majority in the Israeli parliament.
  

  

The UN Syria Commission of Inquiry has expressed concern over Israeli attacks that killed at least 12 people in Lebanon, including seven Syrians at a displacement camp.

Israel also launched a series of attacks on Syria’s military near Suwayda, in the country’s south.

“The commission is alarmed by reports of Israeli air strikes in the area,” it said, warning that third-state military action “risks widening the conflict… and inflicting even greater suffering on the Syrian people”.

It called on all parties to de-escalate through dialogue, stressing the need to protect civilians and provide safe passage. The commission said it is investigating potential violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

As we reported earlier, Israeli forces stormed the town of Idhna, west of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.

During the incursion, troops closed the main street in the centre of town, preventing citizens from passing, which led to skirmishes. Israeli soldiers fired live rounds, sound bombs and tear gas.

A 17-year-old boy was shot in the thigh.

Palestinian Red Crescent Society crews provided first aid to the wounded teenager and transported him to a hospital.

On the outskirts of Gaza City, footage from the Shati refugee camp showed Palestinians searching for survivors through the rubble of a family home hit in a deadly Israeli attack.

Jihad Omar, 48, who used his bare hands to dig through the concrete ruins, said he was looking for two missing children.

“Every day, we bury children, women and elderly people. Homes collapse on the heads of their residents,” said Omar.

“Find a solution. Let us raise those [children] who remain. We barely have any left.”

Protests across Europe continue, including a small one outside the European Council, where foreign ministers discussed Israel’s devastating war and blockade on Gaza.

Dozens of protesters in Brussels called for more aggressive EU action to stop Israel’s bloody military campaign.

Alexis Deswaef, the vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, said the council must “agree on a package of sanctions for Israel to end the genocide and for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza”.

“It was able to do this for Russia,” he said.

Human rights groups have largely criticised the EU’s actions as insufficient.

“This is more than political cowardice,” said Agnès Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International.

“Every time the EU fails to act, the risk of complicity in Israel’s actions grows. This sends an extremely dangerous message to perpetrators of atrocity crimes that they will not only go unpunished but be rewarded.”

Israeli soldiers raided the town of Zababdeh, south of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.

The latest incursion comes after troops earlier stormed the town of Idhna, west of Hebron.

Often protected by the Israeli military, settlers regularly descend from their illegal settlements onto Palestinian towns, where they ransack homes, cars and farms and attack anyone who may stand in their way.

President Trump’s pick for US ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, says the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, “must be dismantled”.

“UNRWA in Gaza, with its staff involved in the October 7 massacre, its schools teaching anti-Semitic hate, must be dismantled,” Waltz said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. “It simply not only needs to be defunded … but it should be dismantled.”

In August last year, the United Nations said that nine UNRWA employees who “may have been involved” in the October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas had been fired.

Waltz, a former US national security adviser, was removed from the post after accidentally adding a journalist to a private Signal chat discussing secret military plans.

He told senators that UNRWA cannot be trusted with a humanitarian role in Gaza. “We can have a conversation on who and what can take up those humanitarian roles, but it certainly should not be UNRWA.”

Addressing Israel’s war on Gaza, Waltz said: “If Hamas would lay down their arms… the fighting would stop today.” He also pledged to veto “one-sided anti-Israel resolutions” at the UN.

Hamas has condemned Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza, especially on the Shati refugee camp, where 23 people have been killed, as an “escalation of the war of extermination”.

“Today’s horrific massacre of starving civilians north of Rafah once again confirms the brutality of the aid mechanism and its criminal objectives,” Hamas said in a statement.

“The medical sector in the Gaza Strip is facing the risk of complete collapse due to the blockade, and the international community must act immediately to break it.”

At least two people were killed near an aid site north of Rafah as aid seekers continue to be attacked by Israeli forces.

Since the end of May, nearly 900 Palestinians have been killed either at aid sites or en route to get aid after the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation group took over food distribution in the besieged enclave.

Court testimony from the US has revealed the immigration agency ICE is using the controversial group Canary Mission to identify students and professors critical of Israel.

The US government has acknowledged its use of Canary Mission — a shadowy pro-Israel website — to identify pro-Palestine students for deportation, sparking anger and concern by rights advocates.

Watch our video below:

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has pressed Israel to stop violating Syria’s sovereignty following recent Israeli bombardment, warning of the risk of wider regional instability.

“The secretary-general is also concerned by Israel’s air strikes on Syrian territory, and calls on Israel to refrain from violations of Syria’s independence, its sovereignty and its territorial integrity,” Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

Guterres also voiced alarm over the ongoing violence in southern Syria’s Druze-majority Suwayda governorate, where recent clashes between Druze militias and Bedouin fighters killed more than 30 people dead and dozens more injured.

“He is disturbed by reports of arbitrary killings of civilians, sectarian incitement and the looting of private property,” Dujarric said, adding Guterres “condemns all violence against civilians, especially acts that risk inflaming sectarian tensions”.

In response to an Israeli minister calling for the “elimination” of Syria’s president, Dujarric said, “The last thing this region needs is more incitement to violence and more violent rhetoric.”

Israel’s latest air strikes on southern Syria are part of a broader strategy to prevent a “second Lebanon” on its border, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says.

“We are working in Syria today, since the morning,” Netanyahu said in recorded remarks aired by Army Radio during a visit to Israeli soldiers.

“We have an obligation to maintain the southwestern Syria area as a demilitarized zone on Israel’s borders.”

Netanyahu said Israel is acting “to protect the Druze population through strong operations” – a justification likely to draw scrutiny given the mounting civilian toll of Israeli attacks across the region.

“I hope we do not have to do more,” the Israeli PM said. “That depends a lot on what they understand and do or do not do in Damascus.”

Israeli settlers have stormed a Palestinian resident’s home in the village of an-Nassariya, north of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

According to Wafa news agency, citing local sources, settlers from a nearby illegal outpost attacked the resident under the protection of the army. No injuries have been reported.

Settler attacks against Palestinians and their properties ramped up after Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, with Israeli forces and settlers killing at least 964 Palestinians.

According to the United Nations’ human rights office, since January, 757 settler attacks on Palestinians have taken place, up 13 percent from 2024.

Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, has called on Israeli authorities to “aggressively” investigate the killing of an American citizen beaten to death in the occupied West Bank.

Saif Musallet was attacked on Friday. His family said Israeli settlers surrounded him for three hours and assaulted medics who tried to reach him.

“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act. Saif was just 20 years old,” Huckabee wrote in a post on X.

In a statement, the family described Saif as a “kind, hard-working, and deeply respected young man, working to build his dreams”.

Since 2022, Israeli forces have killed at least nine US citizens, including Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. None of those cases have resulted in criminal charges.

I have asked @Israel to aggressively investigate the murder of Saif Mussallet, an American citizen who was visiting family in Sinjil when he was beaten to death. There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act. Saif was just 20 yrs old.

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 15, 2025

Israel plans to cut off electricity and water to offices of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in its latest step to shut down its operations.

Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen says the move is part of a new law designed to end UNRWA’s presence in Israel.

“The law to disconnect electricity and water from UNRWA offices, which will lead to the cessation of the organisation’s activities in Israel, has been published,” Cohen wrote on X. “Turning off the lights at UNRWA!”

In October 2024, the Israeli Knesset passed laws revoking UNRWA’s privileges and banning official contact with the agency.

The ban was implemented in January, forcing the agency to vacate its East Jerusalem office and leading to the closure of six UNRWA-run schools in the city.