Andromeda Star targeted with three missiles, UK Maritime Trade Operations security agency said
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
A ship has been damaged when it was targeted twice with multiple missiles off Yemen’s coast on Friday, in the latest attack on international shipping in the Red Sea to be claimed by Houthi rebels.
Hamas said it was studying the latest Israeli counterproposal regarding a potential ceasefire in Gaza, a day after a delegation from mediator Egypt reportedly arrived in Israel in a bid to jump-start stalled negotiations. Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been unsuccessfully trying to seal a new truce deal in Gaza ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
An official briefed on the Egyptian delegation’s meeting with Israeli counterparts on Friday said Israel had no new proposals to make. However, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Israel was willing to consider a limited truce in which 33 hostages would be released by the Islamist movement Hamas, instead of the 40 previously under discussion.
Aid shipments to Gaza from Cyprus resumed late on Friday, a Cypriot source said, with a ship carrying food to the besieged Palestinian enclave after a pause following Israel’s killing of seven aid workers. The World Central Kitchen NGO paused aid to review its activity in the territory after the early April attack, halting the direct shipments into Gaza from Cyprus. A small cargo vessel left the port of Larnaca on Friday night with aid donated by the United Arab Emirates, a Cypriot source said.
China will host Palestinian unity talks between Islamist militant group Hamas and its rivals Fatah, the two groups and a Beijing-based diplomat said on Friday. Hamas controls Gaza while Fatah is the movement of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the western-backed Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli occupied West Bank. The two rival Palestinian factions have failed to heal their political disputes since Hamas fighters expelled Fatah from Gaza in a short war in 2007.
Iran’s foreign minister said the crew of a seized Portuguese-flagged ship linked to Israel have been granted consular access and are expected to be freed, Iranian media reported on Saturday. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized the container vessel MSC Aries with a crew of 25 in the Strait of Hormuz on 13 April, days after Tehran vowed to retaliate for a suspected Israeli strike on its consulate in Damascus.
A pro-Hamas Lebanese militant group said on Friday that two of its senior commanders were killed in an Israeli strike in eastern Lebanon. Jamaa Islamiya said in a statement that Mosab Saeed Khalaf and Bilal Mohammed Khalaf “died while carrying out their jihadist tasks… in a Zionist strike in the Bekaa” valley.
A UN probe into Israeli allegations that 19 members of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks has closed one case due to the absence of any evidence from Israel and suspended four others, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday. An independent review led by a former French foreign minister earlier this week said that Israel had yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims which led major donors including the US to suspend funding to the agency.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that any rulings issued by the International Criminal Court would not affect Israel’s actions but would “set a dangerous precedent”. “Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the International Criminal Court in the Hague to undermine its basic right to defend itself,” Netanyahu said in a statement shared on Telegram.
“While decisions made by the court in the Hague will not affect Israel’s actions, they will set a dangerous precedent that threatens soldiers and public figures.”
Four workers from Yemen were killed in a drone attack on an Emirati-owned gas complex in Iraq’s northern autonomous region of Kurdistan on Friday, Reuters reported citing local officials. A security source confirmed the attack against the site which is owned by the United Arab Emirates firm Dana Gas. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
