Israel-Hamas war LIVE: UN suggests Hamas and Israel are BOTH guilty of war crimes as it warns ‘many more will die’ in Gaza

• Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry has been publishing death tolls regularly since Israel began its retaliatory strikes following the October 7 incursion.
• The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said that the tolls had proved to be ‘credible’ in previous conflicts.
• Human Rights Watch, which says it has done its own independent verification of Israeli strikes, called the numbers ‘reliable’.
• US President Joe Biden faced backlash after he said on Wednesday he has ‘no confidence’ in figures.
• Germany’s foreign ministry said via a spokesman today: ‘We cannot independently verify Hamas information, which is why a certain degree of caution is needed.’

Omar Shakir from Human Rights Watch told Al Jazeera in response:

All this time we’re debating death counts and death tolls the bodies continue to pile up, and the focus for leaders really needs to be on preventing further mass atrocities – not quibbling over numbers

The Israeli Defence Forces have claimed that Hamas is using Gaza’s largest hospital ‘as a shield for its underground terror complex’.

Spokesman Daniel Hagari says the IDF has ‘concrete evidence’ to suggest Shifa hospital in Gaza City is a Hamas base of operations.

At a press conference he said ‘hundreds of terrorists flooded in there after their attack on October 7’.

He said it is ‘one of many’ hospitals being used by the terror group and that they chose it to ‘exploit innocent Gazan civilians as human shields’.

‘Hamas’s use of hospitals is systematic. Precisely because they know Israel distinguishes between civilians and terrorists.’

He said Hamas is committing a war crime by using hospitals and that ‘Israel is putting this red flag to the world’.

He reiterated Israel’s call for Gazan civilians to move south in the enclave ‘for their own safety’.

‘For over two weeks, the IDF has called and continued calling the civilians of northern Gaza and Gaza City to move south to Wadi Gaza.’

Qatari-mediated negotiations for the release of over 220 hostages taken by Hamas are advancing, sources have told Al Jazeera.

Medical Aid for Palestinians has warned that the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip is ‘facing total collapse’.

In an update this afternoon, the non-governmental organisation said:

• Hospitals are facing ‘dire shortages of vital resources’ like water, fuel, personnel and medicine, forcing 12 to close.
• 101 medical professionals have been killed and many more displaced from their homes.
• Shortages of food mean children and pregnant women are at risk of malnutrition.
• Outbreaks of infectious diseases such as chickenpox, skin diseases and bronchial infections are increasing ‘at an alarming rate’ due to the unavailability of clean water and overcrowding in shelters and hospitals.

At least 7,326 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, the Hamas-run health ministry reports.

This figure includes 3,083 children who have lost their lives since October 7, it said.

• Rockets hit Tel Aviv this afternoon, with a residential building taking a direct hit.
• Hamas’s Al-Qasam Brigades have taken responsibility for the rocket barrage.
• Three people were injured, medical services said, including a 20-year-old man who suffered a moderately serious head injury.

The IDF has shared footage of a dramatic raid on southern Gaza which it says successfully destroyed Hamas infrastructure.

The United Nations has suggested that war crimes may be being committed by both sides in the war.

Ravina Shamdasani, the spokeswoman for the UN’s human rights office, said:

We are concerned that war crimes are being committed. We are concerned about the collective punishment of Gazans in response to the atrocious attacks by Hamas, which also amounted to war crimes.

She added that it was for an independent court of law to qualify whether war crimes had been committed.

• Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs met Hamas representatives in Moscow, Russian state news agency Tass said Friday.
• Iran discussed a ceasefire and providing humanitarian support to Gaza at the meeting, Tass reports.
• Israel’s foreign ministry slammed Russia’s decision to invite Hamas representatives to Moscow as ‘an act of support of terrorism.’
• The Kremlin responded by saying that Moscow believes it is necessary to maintain contact with all parties.

• The US has issued a second round of sanctions on Hamas and assets that help to fund the terror group.
• An official in Iran and members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are among those being targeted.
• A Gaza-based entity that Treasury said has served as a conduit for illicit Iranian funds to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group was also targeted.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said:

Today’s action underscores the United States’ commitment to dismantling Hamas’s funding networks by deploying our counterterrorism sanctions authorities and working with our global partners to deny Hamas the ability to exploit the international financial system.

• A convoy of 10 aid trucks containing food, water and medicines is reported to have entered Gaza today.
• This would bring the total number of trucks that have entered the enclave since the war began to 84.
• A medical delegation of ten doctors has also made their way into the Palestinian territory, Al Jazeera reports.

More than 1,000 bodies are thought to be trapped under the rubble in Gaza.

The estimate was given by World Health Organisation representative Richard Peeperkorn, who said those beneath buildings struck by Israeli airstrikes had not been identified.

The figure is not included in the death toll of over 7,000 – which has been provided by the Hamas-run health ministry.

The United Nations warned Friday that ‘many more will die’ as a result of Israel’s ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip.

In his speech this morning, commissioner general for UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini said:

As we speak people in Gaza are dying, they are not only dying from bombs and strikes, soon many more will die from the consequences of (the) siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. Basic services are crumbling, medicine is running out, food and water are running out, the streets of Gaza have started overflowing with sewage.

• The IDF says it has taken out Midhat Mabasher, the commander of the West Khan Yunis Battalion of Hamas.
• He had been involved in sniping attacks against IDF forces and Israeli settlements, the military said.
• It struck some 250 Hamas targets in the last 24 hours, including a ‘terrorist tunnel network in Gaza that detonated the secondary explosions.’

The IDF has shared more information about its ground raid in Gaza overnight.

‘The raid began yesterday in broad daylight, and all the forces I mentioned participated in it as combat forces, and it ended successfully in the hours of this morning,’ a spokesperson said.

The IDF said that an ‘aerial threat’ had been spotted in the Red Sea region and linked it to a projectile that landed on Egyptian coastal territory.

Egypt’s army spokesperson said that an unidentified drone crashed this morning near a hospital building in the town of Taba, near the Sinai Peninsula border with Israel, injuring six people.

Shortly after, reports emerged via Egyptian media that an ‘unidentified body’ fell near an electricity plant in the resort town of Nuweiba on the Sinai Peninsula – about an hour south of Taba.

A small convoy of around eight aid trucks is expected to enter the Gaza Strip later today, according to the UN agency for Palestine.

‘We have gotten in approximately 74 trucks. We’re expecting another eight or so today,’ Lynn Hastings said.

It comes shortly after the head of UNRWA said that the ‘handful’ of trucks that had passed through the Rafah crossing from Egypt ‘will not reverse the fact that Gaza is being strangled.’

The head of UNRWA, the UN agency operating in Gaza, said 57 of his colleagues have been killed since the war began.

Philippe Lazzarini said that 15 of the agency’s workers had been killed in one day.

‘One of our colleagues two days ago died while he was going to the bakery to get bread. He left six children behind, six displaced children in shelter.’

Hamas needs to locate where all the hostages it kidnapped from Israel are, according to an official.

During a trip to Russia, Abu Hamid told the Kommersant newspaper that the group has always been willing to release civilians, but ‘needs time to find them.’

He said that hostages are being held by various groups in the enclave and that it needs a ceasefire to retrieve and release them.

The chief of the UN agency operating in Gaza has said the small amount of aid being allowed into the enclave is insufficient.

Philippe Lazzarini said that while the trucks being allowed through had initially given a ‘glimmer of hope’, they are now a ‘distraction’.

He said they will not make a difference to the roughly 2 million people in need and that it is ‘not true that the siege is lifted’.

So far, just 74 trucks have been received by the Palestinian Red Crescent via the Rafah border.

‘This will not reverse the fact that Gaza is being strangled,’ Mr Lazzarini said.

• At least 481 people have been killed in Gaza by Israel airstrikes, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
• A total of 7,028 Palestinians have been killed in just three weeks, the authority has said.
• A list of 6,747 of the victims, including their names, ages and gender, has been released.
• It came after Joe Biden sparked outrage by casting doubt on the figures, saying he had ‘no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.’

• The IDF gave an operational update this morning, revealing it had conducted its second ground incursion on Gaza in as many days.
• The military said its ground troops, fighter jets and UAVs struck anti-tank missile launch sites, command and control centres and Hamas terrorist operatives.
• ‘The troops exited the area and no injuries were reported,’ it said.

Watch footage of the ground raid and aerial strikes here:

Follow along for live updates as the Israel-Palestine war enters its 21st day.

Here is what happened yesterday and overnight:

• Israel’s army says its ground forces backed by fighter jets and drones carried out a ‘targeted raid’ in Gaza.
• A Hamas spokesman stormed out of a BBC interview after being asked how the terrorists justified the killing of Israeli families on October 7.
• Two Iranian-controlled sites in eastern Syria were hit by US airstrikes in retaliation for attacks on American bases in Syria and Iraq.
• Iran’s Foreign Minister said at the UN that if Israel’s offensive against Hamas does not end it will ‘not be spared from this fire’.
• EU leaders have demanded ‘humanitarian corridors and pauses’ as Israel continues to bombard Gaza with airstrikes.