Closing summary
We’re closing this blog now, here is a recap of the day’s main developments:
The Palestinian Authority on Saturday lambasted the Israeli government’s decision to expand its military operations in Gaza, as it called on the international community to push for the entry of aid into the strip.
Muslim nations must work in total unison and work to mobilise the international community against Israel’s plan to take control of Gaza City, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Saturday after talks in Egypt.
The UK has announced another £8.5 million for UN aid to Gaza after Israel unveiled plans to expand its military operations in the territory. Development minister Baroness Jenny Chapman said the money would “help address urgent need” in Gaza, but only if Israel allowed the region to be “flooded with aid”.
Five Lebanese soldiers were killed in a blast on Saturday while removing munitions from a Hezbollah military facility in south Lebanon, a military source told AFP.
Iran’s judiciary said Saturday it was investigating the cases of 20 people arrested over their suspected links with Israel following the 12-day war between the two arch-foes.
Updated
Russia condemns and rejects Israel’s plan to expand its military operation in the Gaza Strip, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
“The implementation of such decisions and plans, which provoke condemnation and rejection, is fraught with the risk of exacerbating the already extremely dramatic situation in the Palestinian enclave, which has all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe,” the ministry said in a statement.
Updated
The explosion in southern Lebanon which killed six soldiers was caused by “remnants of the Israeli war” in the coastal city, security sources told Reuters.
The Lebanese army said on Saturday that the soldiers were killed and others wounded in an explosion while they were inspecting a weapons depot and dismantling its contents in the city of Tyre.
An investigation was underway to determine the cause of the blast, the army added in a statement.
Israel occupation plan an 'unprecedented challenge and provocation', Palestinian Authority says
The Palestinian Authority on Saturday lambasted the Israeli government’s decision to expand its military operations in Gaza, as it called on the international community to push for the entry of aid into the strip.
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the PA’s presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the Israeli government’s moves were “an unprecedented challenge and provocation to the international will to achieve peace and stability”.
He also called on the “international community, led by the UN Security Council, to urgently compel the occupying state to cease its aggression, allow the entry of aid, and work diligently to enable the State of Palestine to assume its full responsibilities in the Gaza Strip”, reported Wafa.
Early Friday, the Israeli security cabinet approved plans to launch major operations to seize Gaza City, triggering a wave of outrage across the globe.
Updated
Iran opposes the Lebanese government’s decision to disarm Tehran-backed militant group Hezbollah, a senior adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei said on Saturday, the Tasnim news agency reported.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is certainly opposed to the disarmament of Hezbollah,” international affairs adviser Ali Akbar Velayati said. “Iran has always supported the people and the resistance of Lebanon and continues to do so.”
Updated
Five Lebanese soldiers were killed in a blast on Saturday while removing munitions from a Hezbollah military facility in south Lebanon, a military source told AFP.
Under a November truce that ended a recent war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, the army has been deploying in south Lebanon and dismantling the militant group’s infrastructure there.
“Five soldiers were killed in an explosion... inside a Hezbollah military facility,” the source said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to brief the media.
The blast erupted as the troops were “removing munitions and unexploded ordnance left over from the recent war” between Israel and Hezbollah, the source said.
Iran’s judiciary said Saturday it was investigating the cases of 20 people arrested over their suspected links with Israel following the 12-day war between the two arch-foes.
“These cases were immediately filed under the supervision of the esteemed investigators and are being investigated,” Judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir told reporters in Tehran, adding that further information would be shared as it became available.
Iran’s intelligence agency said in late July that it had identified and arrested “20 spies, Mossad operational and support agents, and elements connected to the regime’s (Israel’s) intelligence officers in Tehran” as well as several other provinces.
In mid-June, Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign against Iran, triggering a war during which Iran responded with missile and drone strikes.
Turkey says Muslim countries must be united against Israel's Gaza takeover plan
Muslim nations must work in total unison and work to mobilise the international community against Israel’s plan to take control of Gaza City, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Saturday after talks in Egypt.
Speaking at a joint press conference in El Alamein with his Egyptian counterpart after meeting Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Fidan also said the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation had been called to an emergency meeting.
The UK has announced another £8.5 million for UN aid to Gaza after Israel unveiled plans to expand its military operations in the territory.
Development minister Baroness Jenny Chapman said the money would “help address urgent need” in Gaza, but only if Israel allowed the region to be “flooded with aid”.
She said:
It is unacceptable that so much aid is waiting at the border - the UK is ready to provide more through our partners, and we demand that the government of Israel allows more aid in safely and securely.
The insufficient amount of supplies getting through is causing appalling and chaotic scenes as desperate civilians try to access tiny amounts of aid.
The money, to be delivered through the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), is part of a £101 million UK commitment to the Occupied Palestinian Territories this year.
OCHA has warned of widespread hunger among Gaza‘s 2.1 million people, along with difficulties accessing water amid a severe heatwave and “significant impediments and other delays” to UN efforts to provide aid.
Updated
Here are some of the lates images coming out of Gaza as the war continues:
Updated
Arab and Muslim countries call Israel occupation plan a "dangerous escalation"
Several Arab and Muslim countries on Saturday condemned as a “dangerous escalation” Israel’s plan to take control of Gaza City.
Some 20 countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, said the plan constituted “a flagrant violation of international law, and an attempt to entrench the illegal occupation and impose a fait accompli... in contravention of international legitimacy”.
Updated
The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has launched an undiplomatic attack on Keir Starmer by invoking the allied second world war bombing of Dresden after the British prime minister criticised the Israeli security cabinet’s decision to expand the war in Gaza.
“So Israel is expected to surrender to Hamas & feed them even though Israeli hostages are being starved?” Huckabee wrote on social media in response to a post by Starmer calling for an immediate ceasefire and lamenting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as well as the fate of the remaining Israeli hostages being held by Hamas.
Provocatively, Huckabee added: “Did UK surrender to Nazis and drop food to them?
“Ever heard of Dresden, PM Starmer? That wasn’t food you dropped. If you had been PM then UK would be speaking German!”
Read the full report here:
The US and UK have “disagreements” on Gaza including over whether to recognise a Palestinian state, JD Vance has suggested as he arrived in England for his summer holiday.
The US vice-president was speaking before a bilateral meeting with David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, at his 17th-century grace-and-favour country house, Chevening.
His remarks on Gaza marked a note of discord in what otherwise appeared to be a convivial meeting between the two politicians, who have struck up an unlikely friendship. The pair have bonded over their Christian faith and difficult childhoods.
The vice-president says that, unlike Britain, the White House has no plans to recognise the Palestinian state. Read the full report here:
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff met Qatar’s prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Saturday in Ibiza, Spain to discuss a plan to end the war in Gaza and release hostages, Axios reporter Barak Ravid said on X.
🚨🚨שליח הבית הלבן סטיב וויטקוף נפגש היום (שבת) באיביזה שבספרד עם ראש ממשלת קטאר שייח׳ מוחמד בן עבד אל-רחמן אל-תאני, כדי לדון עמו על תוכנית לסיום המלחמה תמורת שחרור כל החטופים שמוחזקים בידי חמאס. הפרטים בכתבה שלי ב-@N12News https://t.co/WRnH2TPArm pic.twitter.com/t6PCr75LyH
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) August 9, 2025
Microsoft is investigating how Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, is using its Azure cloud storage platform, amid concerns the company’s staff in Israel may have concealed key details about its work on sensitive military projects.
Senior executives are scrambling to assess what data Unit 8200 holds in Azure after a Guardian investigation revealed how the spy agency has used the cloud platform to store a vast collection of intercepted Palestinian mobile phone calls.
The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found Unit 8200 has used a customised and segregated area within Azure to store recordings of millions of calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank.
There are concerns that the tech company’s Israel-based staff may have concealed key details of work, read the full piece here:
People collecting aid among 10 reported killed by Israel in Gaza on Saturday
Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 10 people were killed across the Palestinian territory on Saturday, including civilians who were waiting to collect aid. Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that at least six people were killed and 30 wounded after Israeli troops targeted civilians assembling near an aid point in central Gaza.
It comes after, early Friday, the Israeli security cabinet approved plans to launch major operations to seize Gaza City, triggering a wave of outrage across the globe. Despite the backlash and rumours of dissent from Israeli military top brass, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained defiant over the decision.
In a post on social media late Friday, Netanyahu said “we are not going to occupy Gaza - we are going to free Gaza from Hamas”. Netanyahu faces mounting pressure to secure a ceasefire to bring the territory’s more than two million people back from the brink of famine and free the hostages held by Palestinian militants.
Meanwhile:
The worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel’s plans to expand military control over the enclave have pushed Germany to curb arms exports to Israel, a historically fraught step for Berlin driven by a growing public outcry. Conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz, hitherto a staunchly pro-Israel leader, made the announcement on Friday arguing that Israel’s actions would not achieve its stated war goals of eliminating Hamas militants or bringing Israeli hostages home.
The UN Security Council announced an emergency meeting on Israel’s plans was rescheduled to 10am EDT on Sunday (3pm BST) after originally being scheduled to take place at 3pm EDT (8pm BST) on Saturday. The UN Mission of Panama, which holds the council presidency this month, provided no details, but Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath and Israel is certain to want to speak at the meeting.
The efforts for a new ceasefire have the backing of major Arab Gulf monarchies, according to two officials who spoke to AP anonymously due to the sensitivity of the discussions. One is involved directly in the deliberations and the second was briefed on the efforts. The monarchies are concerned about further regional destabilisation if Israel fully reoccupies Gaza, the officials said. A senior Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to brief the media, said the group has yet to receive details on the latest efforts to revive ceasefire talks.
Updated
