22: 30 President Joe Biden will announce Thursday that he is directing the U.S. military to help set up a temporary port off the Gaza coast to establish a sea route for food and other direly needed aid for Palestinian civilians trapped in the Israel-Hamas war, senior U.S. administration officials said.

The announcement signals further deepening U.S. involvement in the war and the escalating conflicts and tensions in the region. The move also shows the Biden administration resorting to a highly unusual workaround to deliver aid to Gaza's 2.3 million civilians, in the face of restrictions that U.S. ally Israel has placed on overland aid deliveries.

21:25 Spain said Thursday it would give an additional 20 million euros to the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, which is facing a cash crunch after several nations suspended their funding.

The agency has been at the centre of controversy since Israel accused about a dozen of its employees of involvement in the 7 October Hamas Al-Aqsa Flood operation in southern Israel.

Several countries -- including the United States, Britain, Germany, and Japan -- suspended funding to UNRWA following the Israeli allegations.

But the European Commission, recognizing steps taken by the UN, said Friday it would release 50 million euros ($54 million) in UNRWA funding.

Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares announced the extra funding at a joint news conference in Madrid with UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.

"We will make a new contribution of 20 million euros to UNRWA to support the organization in its crucial humanitarian work in Gaza and to provide the food, education, and health needs of the nearly six million Palestinian refugees in the region," he said.

UNRWA chief Lazzarini said he hoped Spain's move would encourage those nations that had suspended their aid to the agency to once again give it money.

And he repeated his call for the road crossings into Gaza to be opened to allow more aid into the territory.

"Today we do not have the meaningful, at scale, uninterrupted humanitarian assistance reaching the people in Gaza in desperate need of assistance," he said.

"The simple answer would be the political will to open the road crossing and to have daily, at scale, convoys and flow of humanitarian assistance going into the Gaza Strip."

UNRWA is at the centre of efforts to provide humanitarian relief in Gaza, where the United Nations has warned repeatedly of looming famine after nearly five months of Israeli bombardment.

UNRWA employs around 30,000 people in the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria -- with about 13,000 staff in the Gaza Strip.

21:10 Veteran aid worker Jean-Pierre Delomier said he has seen it all responding to conflicts and disasters worldwide over the decades, but the Gaza war is by far "the worst".

Returning from an eight-day mission to the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, the deputy director of Handicap International - Humanity & Inclusion (HI) said he was still "stunned".

He told AFP he had never seen such a combination of "bombardment of an extremely densely populated and closed-off area, and a near-complete lack of access for humanitarian aid".

Deliveries into the Gaza Strip have been reduced substantially since the start of the latest Israeli military campaign on the territory.

The United Nations has warned of looming famine, and calls have grown for the Israeli authorities to let in and ensure the safe delivery of desperately needed aid waiting in lorries on the Egyptian side of the border.

"I saw kilometres (miles) of trucks queueing on four lanes, all waiting to get into Gaza," said 61-year-old Delomier.

Foreign governments have scrambled to parachute in pallets of supplies from aeroplanes in recent weeks, but aid workers have warned they only cover a tiny fraction of needs and the method is hugely expensive.

"Planes fly over to drop a few pallets, whereas just behind (the border) there are kilometres of pallets waiting that could just be let in," he said, incensed.

The aid worker, who started his career in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, said what he witnessed in Gaza's southern city of Rafah was incomparable.

About 1.5 million of the territory's 2.4 million residents have crammed into Rafah, squashed up against the closed Egyptian border, most after fleeing Israeli bombardment on other parts of the territory.

When food is available, restrictions make it extremely expensive.

And Israel's air strikes have repeatedly hit the city.

Gazans, Delomier said, were caught in a "mousetrap, with only a trickle of aid -- whereas all that is needed is right there next door -- and bombardment."

He said people sometimes tried to compare the situation in Gaza with the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the Syrian civil war since 2011, or even the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

But the crisis in Gaza "is the worst I have ever seen," he said.

19:00 Haaretz revealed today that 27 Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip died or were killed in mysterious conditions while in custody at the Israeli Sde Teiman base, the Anatot base in Jerusalem, or during investigations in other facilities within the 1948 Territories.

According to the investigation conducted by the newspaper, the Israeli occupation army has not provided any information regarding the circumstances of their demise.

The newspaper pointed out that the arrest of citizens from the Gaza Strip was carried out under the Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows Israel to "imprison anyone without trial if they engage in hostile activities against the state, and are not defined as prisoners of war in Israel."

Since the beginning of the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza, the occupation government has exploited the law to solidify the crime of forced disappearance against Gaza detainees.

According to information provided by the Israeli Prison Administration to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the occupation authorities are currently detaining about 793 citizens from Gaza under this law, in addition to several hundred others held under criminal procedures, and others still in custody by the army.

In response to the reports published by the Hebrew media on this matter, the head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority, Qaddura Fares, stated, "Reports by the Hebrew media about the martyrdom of 27 detainees from the Gaza Strip in detention centres and prisons is a preliminary result of the crime of forced disappearance practised by the occupation state against detainees from the southern provinces."

Fares added in a press statement, "This tragedy represents the prelude to the announcement of other heinous crimes committed by the occupation state against detainees in Gaza over five consecutive months. Their enforced disappearance was essentially aimed at committing numerous premeditated crimes. All institutions of the occupation state, including its political, security, and military system, are involved."

Fares stated that the silence of the international community has encouraged the Israeli occupation to persist in committing many crimes that are still ongoing.

17:40 Talks for a truce in Gaza have not yet "broken down", the US ambassador to Israel said Thursday, after a Hamas delegation voiced dissatisfaction with Israel's positions and left Cairo.

"The differences are being narrowed. It's not yet an agreement. Everyone's looking towards Ramadan, which is coming close. I can't tell you that it will be successful, but it is not yet the case that it is broken down," Jack Lew said at a conference in Tel Aviv.

"The initial (Israeli) responses do not meet the minimum requirements related to the permanent cessation of hostilities" or other Hamas conditions for a ceasefire, he added.

15:50 Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, the United States, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium have conducted their fourth joint airdrop of humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday as part of the "Birds of Goodness" operation, aimed at easing the suffering of Palestinians under Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, Egypt’s military spokesman revealed in a statement on social media platform X.

Separately, Reuters reported on Thursday, that Turkey's Kizilay (Red Crescent) dispatched its largest aid shipment yet to Gaza via Egypt, with a ship carrying around 3,000 tons of food, medicine, and equipment.

The Turkish ship will make two trips to Egypt to deliver the aid – comprised of 200 trucks – which will then be delivered to Gaza’s border town of Rafah ahead of Ramadan, Reuters revealed citing Turkish  Red Crescent head Fatma Meric Yilmaz.

"This aid, which will be delivered to Gaza with the support and cooperation of the Egyptian Red Crescent, will keep the hopes of Palestinians alive on the eve of Ramadan," Turkey's ambassador to Cairo, Salih Mutlu Sen, said on social media platform X.

13:30 Hamas delegation left Cairo on Wednesday with Gaza ceasefire talks ongoing until an agreement is reached with Israel, the Palestinian group said in a statement.

Talks for reaching a ceasefire in Gaza before Ramadan are ongoing between all parties, an official source told Egypt's Al-Qahera News TV channel.

The delegation from Hamas has left Cairo for the time being for consultations, but talks will resume next week, the official said.

13:00 A senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, said on Thursday that Israel had "thwarted" all mediators' efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire agreement.

He told Reuters that Israel was rejecting Hamas' demands to end its offensive in the territory, withdraw its forces, and ensure freedom of entry for aid and the return of displaced people.

12:00 Three crew members of the True Confidence dry bulk carrier were killed in a missile attack off Yemen on Wednesday, the owners and manager of the ship confirmed in a statement on Thursday.

Two other crew members sustained serious injuries, they said.

The ship is drifting away from land, and salvage arrangements are being made, they added.

11:30 Two Belgian ministers have called for Israel's exclusion from the Eurovision Song Contest while the Gaza war is ongoing as a punitive measure for the toll on Palestinian civilians.

Controversy over the war has hit various cultural events, with organizer The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) resisting calls from some artists and activists for Israel to be dropped from Europe's 7-11 May annual song competition.

Belgium's French-speaking Culture Minister Benedicte Linard and Flemish counterpart Benjamin Dalle added their voices.

"Just like Russia has been excluded from competitions and Eurovision following its invasion of Ukraine, Israel should be excluded until it puts an end to its flagrant violations of international law, which are causing thousands of victims, especially children," she said on X.

11:00 The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said Thursday at least 30,800 people have been killed by Israel during the war on the territory which entered its sixth month.

The latest toll includes 83 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, while 72,298 people have been wounded in Gaza since the Israeli war erupted in early October.

Earlier on Thursday, the health ministry said 20 people have died of malnutrition and dehydration, at least half of them children.

One of the latest victims was a 15-year-old girl who died at Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, the health ministry stressed.

The latest deaths come as Israel’s relentless bombardment shows no signs of stopping killing scores of Palestinians every day, many of whom are women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Moreover, the Israeli siege of Gaza has limited aid access to the northern part of the territory, where hunger has reached "catastrophic levels."

UN agencies and Gaza health officials have warned that the famine in Gaza’s north could claim thousands of lives unless the Israeli siege is lifted and a ceasefire is established.

10:30 Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that the European Union (EU), on Thursday, condemned the Israeli government's decision to approve the construction of around 3,500 new settlement units in the West Bank and urged it to reverse the decision.

The statement by Peter Stano, the spokesperson of the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security, expressed the EU’s strong disapproval of Israel’s High Planning Committee’s decision to construct over 3,426 new housing units in the West Bank settlements, which are considered illegal by the international law.

“The EU reaffirms that the settlements are unlawful and undermine peace as they jeopardize the two-state solution,” the statement said, noting that the decision is incompatible with ongoing efforts to ease tensions ahead of Ramadan.

The statement also reiterated the EU's position, stating that it will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders, including those related to Jerusalem, unless agreed upon by the parties involved.

10:00 A missile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels hit a bulk carrier in the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday, with the crew reporting three people killed and at least four wounded, the US military said.

The Houthis have been targeting Israel-linked vessels transiting the vital Red Sea trade route for months to pressure Israel to halt its war and siege of Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the territory to rubble.

But Wednesday's deaths appear to be the first fatalities resulting from the Houthi offensive.

An anti-ship ballistic missile struck the Barbados-flagged, Liberian-owned M/V True Confidence, after which its crew reported "three fatalities, at least four injuries, of which three are in critical condition, and significant damage to the ship," the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.

"The crew abandoned the ship and coalition warships responded and are assessing the situation," it said, noting that the attack was the fifth time the Houthis had launched an anti-ship ballistic missile in two days.

The Philippine government's Department of Migrant Workers said in a statement on Thursday that two of the crew members killed were Filipinos and two others were "severely injured."

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on social media that the True Confidence was targeted with multiple missiles "after the ship's crew rejected warning messages" from the Houthis.

CENTCOM said several hours after the True Confidence was hit that it had carried out strikes against "two unmanned aerial vehicles in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen that presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships."

"These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US Navy and merchant vessels," it said in a separate statement without elaborating.

The British embassy in Sanaa said earlier the death toll on board the True Confidence was at least two, describing the loss of life as "the sad but inevitable consequence of the Houthis recklessly firing missiles at international shipping."