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Key events
An update on the earlier attack on a school in Gaza City, as six people are now reported to have died in the Israeli attack on Saturday morning.
Al Jazeera reports two families – a total of six people – have been killed in the attack on the Fahd al-Sabah school sheltering displaced Palestinians in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City.
An Israeli air strike on alleged military installations in rural Syria has killed one person and injured six soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported the strikes had targeted military installations in the Saraqib area of Idlib.
The war monitor also said members of the Iranian revolutionary guards and pro-Tehran factions were based in the area. They include the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group.
Meanwhile eight soldiers have been injured in a separate Israeli air strike on a in countryside near Aleppo, the Observatory reported.
Syrian state media reported the strikes in the early hours of Saturday morning had caused damage and injured personnel in the area.
“At around 00:45 after midnight, the Israeli army launched an air aggression from the direction of southeast Aleppo, targeting a number of sites in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib,” the official SANA news agency said.
The report added that the attack had “resulted in the injury of a number of soldiers and some material losses”, without providing further details.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.
The Israeli military has intensified its strikes on Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the conflicts in the Middle East.
At least 14 people were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza late on Friday and early on Saturday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa has reported.
The dead included nine who were killed when Israeli fighter jets bombed tents housing displaced people in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that women and children were among the dead and that the tents were in the al-Mawasi area, which Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone” although it has repeatedly attacked it.
Another five were killed and others wounded when Israeli forces targeted a school housing displaced people in Gaza City. Al Jazeera reported that two journalist siblings, Ahmad Abu Sakhil and Zahra Abu Sakhil, were among the dead together with their father, Muhammad.
Israel has repeatedly been accused of targeting journalists in its military campaign – an unprecedented number have died in the conflict – which it denies.
Al Jazeera reported that a “densely populated house” was also hit in Beit Lahiya with at least one dead and others injured.
Lebanese state media said Israeli air strikes also hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday, while at at least three people were killed and 30 others wounded on Friday in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Tyre.
More on that soonest. In other developments:
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There is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of the northern Gaza Strip, a committee of global food security experts warned on Friday, as Israel claims to be pursuing a military offensive against Palestinian militant group Hamas in the area. “Immediate action, within days not weeks, is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert.
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The FRC said it could be “assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing” in north Gaza. “Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future,” the global hunger monitor said.
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Nearly 70% of the people killed in the war in Gaza are women and children, according to a UN analysis of verified deaths that highlights the heavy civilian toll of the conflict. In a new report, the most detailed analysis of its kind yet, the UN human rights office said it had verified 8,119 of those killed during the first six months of the war in Gaza. Of the fatalities, 3,588 were children and 2,036 were women. The youngest victim was a one-day-old boy and the oldest was a 97-year-old woman.
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The UN’s peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said on Friday that the Israeli military’s “deliberate and direct destruction” of its property was a “flagrant violation” of international law. Since Israel launched a ground campaign across the border against Hezbollah fighters at the end of September, Unifil has accused the Israel Defense Forces on several occasions of deliberately attacking its bases, including by shooting at peacekeepers and destroying watchtowers, which Israel denies. In its latest accusation, Unifil said the IDF used excavators and a bulldozer to destroy part of a fence and concrete structure at a UN peacekeeping position in southern Lebanon on Thursday. Peacekeepers had also observed Israeli troops this week removing a barrel that marks blue line, it said.
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Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed a hardline supporter of the war in Gaza and longtime backer of settlements in the West Bank as his ambassador to the US as Israel prepares for the incoming administration of Donald Trump. Yechiel Leiter, an American-born rightwing publicist and former government aide who immigrated to Israel four decades ago, was announced as Israel’s next ambassador to Washington on Friday.
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Amsterdam police have made more than 60 arrests after what authorities called “hateful antisemitic violence” against Israeli football fans. A plane carrying football supporters brought home from the Dutch capital by the Israeli government landed on Friday at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport after the clashes on Thursday, which took place after a Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
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Amsterdam’s police chief, Peter Holla, said there had been “incidents on both sides”, starting on Wednesday night when Maccabi fans tore down a Palestinian flag from the facade of a building in the city centre and shouted “fuck you Palestine”. A social media video verified by Reuters showed Maccabi fans setting off flares and chanting “Olé, olé, let the IDF win, we will fuck the Arabs”, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.