Middle East crisis live: aid agency says four men killed by Israeli airstrike were a local escort | Israel

Israel’s military on Saturday said its forces killed two people in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, after one infiltrated an Israeli settlement and another shot at soldiers after his car exploded, Reuters reports.

Israel’s ambulance service said two men were wounded by gunshots in the incidents, but did not identify them. There was no immediate Palestinian comment.

“Terrorists attempted to run over a security guard at the entrance to the community Karmei Tzur a short while ago and infiltrated the community,” the military said, referring to an Israeli settlement.

Soldiers who arrived at the scene killed one assailant who had opened fire at them and were searching for others, it said.

In another incident, a car caught fire and exploded in a gas station, the military said. It said forces sent to the scene “shot and eliminated the terrorist who exited the vehicle and tried to attack them.” The military said it was too soon to know if the incidents were related.

Hamas issued a statement on Saturday praising what it called a “double heroic operation” in the West Bank, saying it “is a clear message that resistance will remain striking, prolonged and sustained as long as the brutal occupation’s aggression and targeting of our people and land continue”. The group, however, did not claim direct responsibility for the attacks.

Violence in the West Bank, already on the rise before the war in Gaza, has escalated recently, with stepped-up Israeli military raids and settler and Palestinian street violence.

An aid agency whose convoy was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday has said that the four men killed were local community members who had asked to serve as an escort for the convoy.

US-based NGO Anera said the four men were the only casualties from the strike, which hit the lead vehicle in which they were travelling. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described them as “armed assailants” who had hijacked the convoy.

The convoy was on the way to the hospital when the lead vehicle was hit by an apparent drone strike.

Its route had been coordinated in advance with the IDF, under a deconfliction process intended to prevent aid vehicles from being bombed. But, according to an Anera statement on Friday, shortly after the convoy had crossed into Gaza, four men from the local community who had worked with Move One before “stepped forward and requested to take command of the leading vehicle, citing concern that the route was unsafe and at risk of being looted”.

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Welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider crisis in the Middle East.

US-based aid group Anera, whose convoy was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday, has said that the four Palestinians killed were local community members who had volunteered to serve as an escort for the convoy. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described them as “armed assailants” who had hijacked the convoy.

Israel’s military on Saturday said its forces killed two people in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, after one infiltrated an Israeli settlement and another shot at soldiers after his car exploded, Reuters reports. Israel’s ambulance service said two men were wounded by gunshots in the incidents, but did not identify them. There was no immediate Palestinian comment.

More details on those stories shortly, in other recent developments:

• The World Health Organization has said it has already delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century. The WHO said that Israel’s military and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for the first round of vaccinations of 640,000 children against polio.

• The polio vaccination campaign in Gaza is planned to begin on Sunday, with the pauses scheduled to take place between 6am and 3pm, the WHO said. The UN has warned that failure to deliver the polio vaccination programme would be “disastrous” for children in Gaza and beyond.

• Executive director of Unicef, Catherine Russell, has said the area-specific humanitarian pauses to allow the polio vaccine rollout must be respected. She added that failure to do so would be an “unforgivable failure” for children in Gaza and the region.

• The UK is “deeply concerned” by Israel’s military operation in West Bank and “deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed”, a statement from the Foreign Office said.

• Israeli border police killed a senior Hamas commander in the West Bank and two Hamas gunmen on Friday, the Israeli military said. The Israeli military said its troops identified and killed Hamas leader, Wassem Hazem, while he was driving. When two others in the car – whom the military also identified as militants – attempted to flee, troops killed both in an airstrike.

• The Israeli military said on Friday it had wrapped up a month-long operation in southern and central Gaza that it said killed more than 250 Palestinian fighters. “The troops of the 98th Division have completed their divisional operation in the Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah area, after about a month of simultaneous above and underground operational activity,” a military statement said.

• A broader regional war in the Middle East where conflict already rages between Hamas and Israel remains a “significant risk”, the head of the UN peacekeeping force warned on Friday. United Nations undersecretary-general for peace operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said: “There is still a very significant risk of escalation at the regional level. We are still very much in a very, very dangerous type of situation.”

• Israel told the United States that an initial review found that shots were fired at a clearly marked World Food Programme (WFP) vehicle in the Gaza Strip after a “communication error” between Israeli military units, the deputy US envoy to the United Nations said on Thursday. “We have urged them to immediately rectify the issues within their system,” deputy US ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told a UN security council meeting on Gaza. “Israel must not only take ownership for its mistakes, but also take concrete actions to ensure the IDF does not fire on UN personnel again.”

• Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris told CNN on Thursday that a ceasefire and hostage release deal was needed in Gaza. She reiterated support for Israel and maintained her position that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Harris said that she would not change US president Joe Biden’s policy on supplying Israel with arms for its war in Gaza if elected in November.

• The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has launched a process that could lead to sanctions on Israeli ministers he said were responsible for “unacceptable hate messages” against Palestinians. Borrell said he had begun consultations with the EU’s 27 member states on whether they consider it “appropriate including in our list of sanctions some Israeli ministers [who] have been launching unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians” and made proposals that “go clearly against international law” and incite war crimes.