Live blog update| Israel's war on Gaza
This is an entry from: Israel's War on Gaza Live: Israel pounds Rafah in overnight strikes

Evening recap

12 April 2024 23:50 BST

Hello MEE readers. On Friday, Israeli forces engaged in another devastating bombing campaign across Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, a group of 1,500 Israeli settlers launched an attack on al-Mughayir, a Palestinian village northeast of Ramallah, killing one man and injuring more than a dozen others. Israeli settlers also attacked another nearby village, Khirbet Abu Falah, setting fire to cars.

Amid the rising Palestinian death toll in Gaza and the West Bank, the US has appeared to shift focus to Iran, warning it against conducting a strike on Israel, which Washington says would be an escalatory move.

Iran has vowed to respond to Israel after an air strike earlier this month targeted the Iranian consulate in Syria, killing three top Iranian military commanders.

When asked on Friday what his message to Iran is, US President Joe Biden said: "Don't."

Here's what else you need to know from today's developments:

  • Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British-Palestinian doctor who spent more than a month operating in Gaza's hospitals last year, was detained at an airport in Germany while attempting to enter the country for a conference on Palestine. German police later stormed that conference, shutting down the livestream and the electricity.

  • The UN warned that the lack of clean water combined with rising temperatures is increasing the spread of waterborne diseases in Gaza.

  • A cameraman for Turkish state TV channel TRT was badly wounded in an Israeli strike in Gaza on Friday.

  • Gulf monarchies are urging the US not to use American military bases on their territories to strike in response to any potential Iranian attack on Israel, sources told MEE.

  • A group of graduate students at Yale University launched a hunger strike in protest against the institution's investments in companies providing Israel with military weaponry.

  • Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets at “enemy artillery positions in Zaoura".

  • An Israeli bombing of a residence belonging to the al-Assi family has killed five people in central Gaza City.

  • Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said that it launched a barrage of rockets towards the Israeli city of Sderot, east of Gaza.