At least 52 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, including 12 at a Gaza City school and nine at a crowded market area in Deir el-Balah.

    The United States’s top diplomat Antony Blinken urged stakeholders to get the Gaza ceasefire deal “over the finish line now” as he ended his Middle East tour without an agreement between Israel and Hamas.

    Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that the six Israeli captives – whose bodies were recovered from Gaza on Tuesday – likely died from a gas leak in a tunnel during an Israeli military attack on Khan Younis.

    At least 40,173 people have been killed and 92,857 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 and more than 200 were taken captive.

    Israeli soldiers raid villages, towns across the occupied West Bank

    Israeli forces shot and injured a young man during a raid on the old city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank tonight, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting.

    Israeli soldiers also raided a number of other villages and towns across the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reported, including:

•          The suburb of Shuweika, in Tulkarem, where Israeli soldiers arrested a young man.
•          The village of Faroun, south of Tulkarem, where another young man was arrested.
•          The villages of Beit Qad and Faqqua, where Israeli soldiers ransacked and searched a home.
•          The town of Attil, north of Tulkarm, where Israeli soldiers raided a number of homes, destroying belongings.

    Aid groups, doctors call for urgent action to avert polio outbreak

    A group of 20 aid agencies and 20 doctors who have worked in Gaza have joined forces and called for an urgent ceasefire to administer polio vaccines to some 640,000 children under the age of 10 in the Palestinian enclave.

    The appeal came after health officials confirmed the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years.

    The group – which includes Save the Children, Oxfam, Action Aid and Islamic Relief Worldwide – blamed the reemergence of the poliovirus on Israel’s destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, as well as its restrictions on repairs and supplies.

    “Now polio is confirmed, the response needs to be measured in hours, not weeks,” said Jeremy Stoner, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East.

    “Without immediate action, an entire generation is at risk of infection, and hundreds of children face paralysis by a highly communicable disease that can be prevented with a simple vaccine,” he said. “These children do not have the luxury of time.”