More Gaza aid site deaths as Netanyahu cites hostage 'progress'

• Israeli military strikes killed at least 35 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, most of them at an aid site operated by the U.S-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in central Gaza, local health officials said. READ MORE BELOW

• Britain and four other nations imposed sanctions on Tuesday on two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. READ MORE BELOW

• U.N. experts issued a report saying that Israel committed the crime against humanity of "extermination". READ MORE BELOW

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there had been "significant progress" in efforts to secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. READ MORE BELOW

• Washington's ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Bloomberg News he did not think an independent Palestinian state remains a U.S. foreign policy goal.

• Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has ordered the cancellation of a waiver on cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian banks, in a move that puts the Palestinian banking system at risk.

• The Trump administration imposed sanctions on leading Palestinian human rights organization Addameer and five charity groups in the Middle East and Europe, accusing them of supporting Palestinian militants including Hamas. 

• Campaigner Greta Thunberg arrived home in Sweden after Israel detained her and other activists aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat. Thunberg and four others were deported and banned from Israel for 100 years.

• Israeli forces struck Yemen's rebel-held port of Hodeida, the latest attack targeting the Iran-backed Huthis which Israel's military said was followed by a missile launched at its territory.

Dozens of deaths near aid sites reported

Medical officials at Shifa and Al-Quds Hospitals in Gaza said at least 25 people were killed as they approached the aid site near the former settlement of Netzarim, and dozens were wounded.

In a separate incident, 10 other people were killed in other Israeli military strikes in Khan Younis in the south of the enclave, they added.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

On Tuesday, when Gaza health officials said 17 people were killed near another GHF aid site in Rafah in southern Gaza, the Israeli army said it fired warning shots to distance "suspects" who were approaching the troops and posed a threat.

Israeli cabinet ministers sanctioned

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway joined Britain in freezing the assets and imposing travel bans on Israel's national security ministe  Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, both West Bank settlers.

Signalling a rare split with its close British ally, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that the U.S. condemned the move. He said it would not advance U.S.-led efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, end the war there and bring home hostages Palestinian Hamas militants abducted from Israel 20 months ago.

British foreign minister David Lammy, in a joint statement with the foreign ministers of the other four nations, said Ben-Gvir and Smotrich had "incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. These actions are not acceptable."

Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said the action by the five countries was "outrageous" and the Israeli government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond.

UN 'extermination' claim

UN experts said in a report on Tuesday that Israel committed the crime against humanity of "extermination" by killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites in Gaza, part of a "concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life."

The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel was due to present the report to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council on June 17.

"We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza," former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who chairs the commission, said in a statement.

The commission examined attacks on educational facilities and religious and cultural sites to assess whether international law was breached.

Israel disengaged from the Human Rights Council in February, alleging it was biased. Its diplomatic mission said on Thursday that the commission's latest report was an "attempt to promote its fictitious narrative of the Gaza war."

In its report, the commission said Israel had destroyed more than 90 percent of school and university buildings and more than half of all religious and cultural sites in Gaza.

Netanyahu cites hostage 'progress'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that there had been "significant progress" in efforts to secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, but that it was "too soon" to raise hopes that a deal would be reached.

Netanyahu, under pressure from within his right-wing coalition to continue the war and block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, said in a video statement shared by his office that there had been progress, without providing details.

Two Hamas sources told Reuters they had no knowledge of any new ceasefire offers.