Israel reportedly kills senior Hezbollah commander in drone strike – as it happened

It is has gone 6.30pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Israel-Gaza war coverage here and on the Middle East here.

Here is a recap of the latest developments:

• Hezbollah identified a top commander, that was killed in a reported Israeli strike outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Wednesday, as Mohammed Nasser. Reuters’ sources said Nasser was responsible for a section of Hezbollah’s operations at the frontier. One of the sources said a second Hezbollah fighter and a civilian were also killed. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military to Reuters.

• Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said the country will reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon. He said Israel would prefer to reach a negotiated agreement, but if not, the country knows how to fight. Earlier it was reported that Lebanon’s foreign minister had sent a message to his Israeli counterpart saying the country was seeking peace, not war, in a rare diplomatic engagement between the two nations, who have no formal diplomatic ties.

• Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe of the territory’s south. Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shejaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters said.

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• The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists”, located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the Israeli military said.

• Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in two military operations in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli sources said on Wednesday. A night-time airstrike killed four men at a refugee camp near the town of Tulkarm, while another man was killed by Israeli fire in a separate Israeli operation in Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. An Israeli military statement said forces “carried out a precise strike on the terrorist cell,” killing four militants it identified as Muhammad Shehade, Muhammad Kanouah, Yazid Shafa and Namer Ibrahim.

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• The Associated Press (AP) reported that some of the Palestinian people killed in airstrikes on Tuesday by Israel had followed Israeli military instructions to flee their homes, only to be targeted in an area which had been designated as a safe area. Nine members of the Hamdan family were killed.

• The UN relief works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa) said 250,000 people had been affected by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt. UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the southern evacuation order covers 117 square kilometres (45 square miles), “making it the largest such order since October”.

• Almost all patients in the European Gaza hospital and the Red Cross field hospital decided to flee after the evacuation order, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. Though the European Gaza hospital itself is not under evacuation instructions, the order has affected operations. “Now only three patients remain at the European Gaza hospital and three at the ICRC field hospital,” the WHO said, citing figures from Tuesday.

• A man was killed in a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in Karmiel in northern Israel which left another person injured. The suspect was shot and killed on the scene. Three members of the suspect’s family have been arrested by Israeli police.

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• Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, a settlement tracking group said on Wednesday. Authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley, according to a copy of the order obtained by the Associated Press (AP). The news agency said that data from Peace Now, the tracking group, indicates it was the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords at the start of the peace process.

• More than 37,953 Palestinians have been killed and 87,266 have been injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Over the same period, Israel says 320 of its troops have been killed during ground operations in the territory. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.

• At least 20 Palestinians were detained by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Most of the detentions were in the Hebron region, it said.

• Slovenia’s conservative opposition on Wednesday filed a demand for the country’s constitutional court to nullify parliament’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state. Slovenia’s parliament on 4 June passed a decree recognising a Palestinian state, pushing ahead with a vote in defiance of an opposition motion to derail it.

• Yemen’s Houthis will release Mohammed Qahtan, a member of the Islah party, under a deal reached with the Saudi-backed government in Aden, the head of the Houthi negotiating delegation at prisoners swap talks in Muscat, told Reuters on Wednesday.

• Joe Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein was in Paris today to talk to French officials about a pathway to defuse tensions in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, according to the New York Times.

The UN relief works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa) said 250,000 people had been affected by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Almost all patients in the European Gaza hospital and the Red Cross field hospital decided to flee after the evacuation order, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Though the European Gaza hospital itself is not under evacuation instructions, the order has affected operations, reports AFP

“Now only three patients remain at the European Gaza hospital and three at the ICRC field hospital,” the WHO said, citing figures from Tuesday.

UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the southern evacuation order covers 117 square kilometres (45 square miles), “making it the largest such order since October”.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN security council on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80% of Gaza’s population.

Kaag also said not enough aid was reaching Gaza and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.

“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”

Amid the war, siege and mass displacement, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions, the WHO said.

Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe of the territory’s south.

Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shejaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters said.

According to AFP, ten days after Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the war’s “intense phase” was winding down, the Israeli military again rained down airstrikes and artillery fire on militants in the Shejaiya district.

The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists”, located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the military said.

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Thousands have fled the fighting in Shejaiya, among them Umm Bashar al-Jamal, 42, who was now sheltering in Gaza City’s Yarmouk sports stadium.

“We were displaced five days ago,” she told AFP. “We fled from Shejaiya. We woke up to the sound of tanks. The houses were bulldozed. All our homes.”

The Israeli army – which issued an evacuation order for Shejaiya a week ago – on Monday did the same for a larger area near Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, raising fears of renewed heavy battles there.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere.

Slovenia’s conservative opposition on Wednesday filed a demand for the country’s constitutional court to nullify parliament’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Slovenia’s parliament on 4 June passed a decree recognising a Palestinian state, pushing ahead with a vote in defiance of an opposition motion to derail it. The move by the centre-left coalition followed the recognition of a Palestinian state by three other European countries.

AFP reports that Slovenia’s opposition in the court filing said the decision to go ahead with the parliament vote breached parliamentary rules and the constitution.

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“We call upon the constitutional court … to declare it null and void,” reads the court filing by the Slovenian Democratic party (SDS), led by former prime minister Janez Janša, and the Nova Slovenija party (NSi). It accused the government of “undermining democratic procedures,” according to the filing published on SDS’s website.

SDS, which says the government’s recognition “causes long-term damage to Slovenia by supporting the terrorist organisation Hamas”, had requested an advisory referendum on the recognition to precede the parliamentary vote, reports AFP.

By filing the motion just ahead of the 4 June vote, the SDS had expected to delay it since the law sets a 30-day deadline before lawmakers can vote on a disputed bill.

But lawmakers of prime minister Robert Golob’s ruling Freedom Movement party (GS) rejected the SDS motion, claiming it “abused the referendum mechanisms”. According to AFP, they quoted interpretations according to which the 30-day deadline referred only to bills rather than to decrees such as one recognising a foreign state.

Spain, Ireland and Norway recognised a Palestinian state a week before Slovenia, bringing the number of countries that do so to 146 out of the 193 UN member states.

Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in two military operations in the occupied West Bank where tensions have risen because of the Gaza war, Palestinian and Israeli sources said on Wednesday, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The news agency reports that a night-time airstrike killed four men at a refugee camp near the town of Tulkarm. The Palestinian Authority health ministry said the four were “killed as a result of the occupation’s bombing of Nur Shams camp”.

AFP reports that an Israeli military statement said forces “carried out a precise strike on the terrorist cell,” killing four militants it identified as Muhammad Shehade, Muhammad Kanouah, Yazid Shafa and Namer Ibrahim.

The statement said the four were “attempting to plant explosive devices” targeting Israeli soldiers operating in the area.

According to the Palestinian official news agency Wafa, the dead, aged 20 to 25, were killed by a drone near the centre of the camp.

Another man was killed by Israeli fire in a separate Israeli operation in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. The statement identified the man as Nidal Ziad al-Amer, 23.

An Israeli security official told AFP that al-Amer was killed as the Israeli army tried to arrest him for militant activity.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis will release Mohammed Qahtan, a member of the Islah party, under a deal reached with the Saudi-backed government in Aden, the head of the Houthi negotiating delegation at prisoners swap talks in Muscat, told Reuters on Wednesday.

A Hezbollah statement has identified the commander that was killed in the Israeli strike reported earlier outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre (see 13.11 BST).

Reuters reports that the militant group named him as Mohammed Nasser, declaring him a martyr without providing further details. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military to Reuters.

Reuters’ sources said Nasser was responsible for a section of Hezbollah’s operations at the frontier, where the sides have been waging their worst conflict since a war in 2006.

He was killed in an Israeli strike outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, the sources said. One of the sources said a second Hezbollah fighter and a civilian were also killed.

They said Nasser was of the same rank and importance to the group as Taleb Abdallah, a top commander who was killed by an Israeli strike in June, prompting Hezbollah to fire its largest barrages of drones and rockets yet in retaliation.

Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, a settlement tracking group said on Wednesday, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley, according to a copy of the order obtained by the AP. The news agency says that data from Peace Now, the tracking group, indicate it was the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords at the start of the peace process.

According to the PA, the land seizure was approved late last month but only publicised on Wednesday. It comes after the seizure of 8 square kilometers (roughly 3 square miles) of land in the West Bank in March and 2.6 square kilometers (1 square mile) in February.

That makes 2024 by far the peak year for Israeli land seizure in the West Bank, Peace Now said.

The AP reports that the parcels are contiguous and located north-east of the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the western-backed Palestinian Authority is headquartered. By declaring them state lands, the Israeli government has opened them up to being leased to Israelis and prohibited private Palestinian ownership, writes the AP.

Prominent human rights organisations have pointed to Israel’s rule over the West Bank in accusing it of the international crime of apartheid, allegations Israel rejects as an attack on its legitimacy.

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The AP reports that Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich has turbocharged land seizure and settlement construction since being granted expanded powers over Israel’s administration of the occupied territory under the current governing coalition.

Smotrich laid out his plans for the West Bank at a conference for his ultranationalist Religious Zionism party last month, a recording of which was obtained by Peace Now. He said he intended to appropriate at least 15 square kilometers (nearly 6 square miles) of land in the West Bank this year.

He also promised to expand the establishment of farming outposts, which hard-line settlers have used to extend their control of rural areas, and to crack down on Palestinian construction.

The declaration published on Wednesday was signed under the authority of Hillel Roth, a deputy Smotrich appointed earlier this year to boost settlement expansion and state land declarations in the West Bank, Peace Now said. The Ap reports that the declaration came a day after Peace Now said Israeli authorities were scheduled to approve or advance construction of more than 6,000 new settlement homes in the occupied West Bank in the coming days.

The AP reported that Cogat, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in the West Bank, was not immediately available for comment.

• A senior field commander in Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was reportedly been killed in an Israeli strike outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. Saudi media identified the person killed as Abu Ali Nasser, head of one of three Hezbollah regional divisions in south Lebanon

• Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant has said the country will reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon. He said Israel would prefer to reach a negotiated agreement, but if not, the country knows how to fight. Earlier it was reported that Lebanon’s foreign minister had sent a message to his Israeli counterpart saying the country was seeking peace, not war, in a rare diplomatic engagement between the two nations, who have no formal diplomatic ties

• The New York Times reported Joe Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein was in Paris today to talk to French officials about a pathway to defuse tensions in northern Israel and southern Lebanon

• A man has been killed in a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in Karmiel in northern Israel which left another person injured. The suspect was shot and killed on the scene. Three members of the suspect’s family have been arrested by Israeli police

• More than 37,953 Palestinians have been killed and 87,266 have been wounded in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Over the same period, Israel says 320 of its troops have been killed during ground operations in the territory. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Israel continued to carry out multiple strikes on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday

• Associated Press reports that some of the Palestinian people killed in airstrikes Tuesday by Israel had followed Israeli military instructions to flee their homes, only to be targeted in an area which had been designated as a safe area. Nine members of the Hamdan family were killed

• Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that at least 20 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank. Most of the detentions were in the Hebron region

Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant has said the country will reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon. He said Israel would prefer to reach a negotiated agreement, but if not, the country knows how to fight, Reuters reports.

Israel and anti-Israeli forces inside Lebanon, including the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, have been exchanging near constant fire since 7 October.

Earlier it was reported that Lebanon’s foreign minister had sent a message to his Israeli counterpart saying the country was seeking peace, not war, in a rare diplomatic engagement between the two nations, who have no formal diplomatic ties.

Haaretz reports that Israeli security forces blindfolded and arrested the mother, brother and sister of the suspect killed by police after a stabbing attack killed one person in the Israeli city of Karmiel.

It cited the local police chief, Yitzhak Abuhatzira, who said the three family members had arrived at the scene after recognising the suspect from pictures shared on social media. Police earlier said the suspect was an Arab-Israeli from Nahf.

Two men in their 20s were injured in the attack, one of whom has subsequently died.

Reuters is reporting that security sources have told it that a senior field commander in Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in the Israeli strike reported earlier outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.

Earlier Lebanon’s national news agency reported that there were two people injured as ambulances attended the scene.

Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent at the Times of Israel, posted on social media to state Saudi media has identified the person killed as Abu Ali Nasser. Fabian says he was “the head of the terror group’s Aziz unit, one of three regional divisions in south Lebanon The unit is responsible for the eastern district on the Israel-Lebanon border.”

Over 400 people have been killed inside Lebanon by Israeli forces since 7 October, including at least 80 civilians. Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced from their homes in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

According to Hezbollah’s own military media figures, about 330 of its fighters have been killed by Israel. On the Israeli side of the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries there have been about 10 civilians and 18 Israeli troops killed.

Israeli media is reporting that Lebanon’s foreign minister Abdullah Bou Habib has sent a message to his Israeli counterpart Israel Katz saying “We are interested in peace, we do not want war”.

Israel and Lebanon do not have direct diplomatic relations, and the message was conveyed via Azeri foreign minister Jeyhun Bayramov.

Lebanon’s national news agency reports that ambulances are at the scene of a suspected Israeli drone strike on a vehicle near Tyre. Two people were reported to be injured.

More details soon …

Haaretz reports that one of the people stabbed in a suspected terror attack in a shopping mall in the Israeli city of Karmiel has died. Two men in their 20s were said to be the victims of the attack. Police said the suspect, who was killed at the scene, was an Arab-Israeli from Nahf.

More details soon …