23:00 Israel’s Foreign Ministry says the official death toll in Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7 cross-border attack into Israel has been lowered to 1,200 people.
Israeli officials have previously estimated the death toll at 1,400.
The ministry gave no reason for the revision. But an Israeli official said the number had been changed after a painstaking weekslong process to identify bodies, many of which were mutilated or burned.
20:00 The Red Cross called Friday for medical facilities and workers in war-ravaged Gaza to be protected, warning the health system there had "reached a point of no return".
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that its teams in recent days had distributed critical supplies to medical structures across Gaza, and had seen "horrendous images that have now gotten worse due to sharpened hostilities".
This was severely affecting hospitals and ambulances, and taking a heavy toll on civilians, patients and medical staff, it said in a statement.
"Overstretched, running on thin supplies and increasingly unsafe, the healthcare system in Gaza has reached a point of no return."
19:00 Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group announced Friday that it had released three drones into Israeli airspace and alleged that the aircraft had struck two Israeli military sites.
The Israeli military said that one of the drones was intercepted and the two others fell in the northern part of the country. The statement did not say whether the drones had targeted military sites.
18:00 Palestinian evacuees fleeing Gaza’s northern combat zone say thousands of displaced people who had sheltered at the Shifa Hospital in the heart of Gaza City fled following overnight explosions there.
The hospital had sheltered nearly 80,000 people running from heavy ground battles and airstrikes.
Some of those fleeing Friday said only a few hundred badly wounded patients and doctors remained behind.
Doctors at Shifa Hospital could not immediately be reached for comment because of phone and internet connectivity disruptions.
16:30 The head of the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that more than 100 of its staff had been killed in the war in Gaza.
"Devastated. Over 100 UNRWA colleagues confirmed killed in one month. Parents, teachers, nurses, doctors, support staff," UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said on X, formerly Twitter.
"UNRWA is mourning, Palestinians mourning, Israelis mourning. Ending this tragedy needs (a) humanitarian ceasefire now", he added.
16:00 The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli snipers were shooting at Gaza City's Al-Quds hospital, reporting at least one death and 20 wounded.
"Fierce clashes now and occupation (Israeli) snipers shooting at Al-Quds hospital, casualties among the displaced" Palestinians sheltering at the facility, the medical organisation said in a statement.
15:00 The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said that 11,078 people have been killed in five weeks of Israeli war on Gaza.
The death toll includes 4,506 children while 27,490 people have been wounded, the ministry added.
13:45 Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi discussed the Israeli military escalation in the Gaza Strip with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, as part of his official visit to Cairo on Friday.
During their meeting, the two leaders reviewed intensive efforts aimed at achieving a ceasefire and ensuring sustained access to humanitarian aid in quantities that meet the needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Furthermore, El-Sisi and Tamim reaffirmed their rejection of any attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians or settle the Palestinian issue at the expense of the Palestinian people or regional countries.
Both sides confirmed their ongoing efforts to de-escalate the violence in Gaza, alleviate the suffering of civilians, and support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
13:30 Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah said that Israeli fire killed seven of its fighters, without specifying where or when they died, as border tensions persist amidst Israeli war on Gaza.
68 Hezbollah fighters were killed since border clashes with Israel began last month.
12:30 Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that the expansion of the Israeli war on Gaza has become "inevitable" due to Israel’s heightened aggression against civilians in Gaza.
"Due to the increasing intensity of the war against the civilian residents of Gaza, the expansion of the scope of the war has now become inevitable", Amir-Abdollahian said to his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in a phone call.
Both diplomats strongly condemned "the attacks of the Zionist regime against civilians," and discussed ways through which they could "end the brutal attacks of the Israeli regime", according to IRNA official news agency.
12:00 The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, arrived in Cairo and was received by the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi at Cairo International Airprot.
An Egyptian-Qatari summit is set to be held, according to the Egyptian presidency’s spokesman Ahmed Fahmy.
The two sides are expected to hold talks on the ongoing Gaza crisis, sources told Al Qahera news channel on Thursday.
10:45 Israeli strikes hit near several hospitals in Gaza City early Friday as the military pushed deeper into dense urban neighborhoods in its battle with Hamas militants, prompting increasing numbers of civilians to flee toward the south of the besieged territory.
Israel has accused Hamas fighters of hiding in hospitals and using the Shifa Hospital complex as its main command center, which the militant group and hospital staff deny, saying Israel is creating a pretext to strike it.
Growing numbers of people have been living in and around Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest, hoping it will be safer than their homes or United Nations shelters in the north, several of which have been hit repeatedly. Israeli troops were around 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the hospital, according to its director.
Early Friday, Israel struck the Shifa courtyard and the obstetrics department, according to the head of the Hamas-run media office in Gaza, Salama Maarouf.
A video at the scene recorded the sound of incoming fire waking people up in their makeshift shelters in the courtyard, followed by screams for an ambulance.
09:30 Israeli security forces have demolished the east Jerusalem home of a Palestinian family whose 13-year-old son has been accused of stabbing an Israeli police officer earlier this year, a case that has drawn attention to Israel’s tactic of punitive demolitions.
The United States Office of Palestinian Affairs condemned the demolition on Friday, saying that “an entire family should not lose their home because of the actions of one individual.”
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