Israel pounds Gaza from ground, air and sea on the 246th day of the war

A Palestinian worker checks a pipe at a water desalination plant that was hit during a strike in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on June 7, 2024.  © Bashar Taleb, AFP

Israeli strikes hammered large parts of the Gaza Strip from the ground, air and sea on Friday, targeting several homes including at least one in a refugee camp, witnesses said. The fresh assaults come as the Israel-Hamas war enters its ninth month.

Summary:

• Israeli strikes hammered large parts of the Gaza Strip from the ground, air and sea on Friday, targeting several homes including at least one in a refugee camp, witnesses said. 
• The US Central Command said on Friday it has repaired the temporary pier in Gaza, which will allow delivery of humanitarian aid to the war-torn enclave.
• At least nine Yemeni employees of UN agencies have been detained by Yemen’s Houthi rebels under unclear circumstances, authorities said Friday.
• Hamas has not yet given its response to the latest proposal for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza to mediators and is still studying it, Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said on Thursday.
• At least 36,731 Palestinians have been killed and 83,530 wounded in Israel’s war in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Some 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks and 250 people were taken hostage, with about 120 remaining in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Many have been declared dead by Israeli authorities.
• A spokesman for the Nuseirat municipality in central Gaza said Friday that the town’s mayor, Iyad al-Maghari, had been killed in an Israeli strike while visiting a water pumping station.
• Swedish police detained 19 pro-Palestinian activists who barricaded themselves in the country’s main technical education and research university on Friday.
• Unemployment in the Gaza Strip has reached 79.1 percent since the Israel-Hamas war erupted, while the West Bank has seen joblessness hit nearly 32 percent, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said in its fourth assessment of the impact of the war on employment. The figures give a combined unemployment rate of 50.8 percent.
• AFP/France24

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