If Israel is breaking rules of war, that is a war crimepublished at 19:01 British Summer Time 5 April

19:01 BST 5 April

Jeremy Bowen
International Editor

Critics of Israel’s conduct in this war - and there are many - say that the aid convoy attack was not an isolated incident. That in fact it's the result of a systematic disregard for the lives of anyone other than Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

The Israelis are trying to say that this was a very unfortunate incident that should never have happened. They are saying senior officers have been disciplined and that this is now dealt with.

But that doesn’t deal with the wider question of whether there is a real problem with the way the Israeli army fights, which has resulted in deaths of more than 32,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children; more than 200 aid workers; and something like 100 Palestinian journalists who’ve been trying to cover the story there.

And the question of whether or not there is something systematically wrong with the way the Israeli military acts in Gaza, in terms of respect for international humanitarian law. Because if it is proven they are systematically breaking the rules of war, then that is a war crime.

Johanna Chisholm
Live reporter

Image source, EPA

We’re going to be pausing our coverage shortly, but you can get up to speed on the developments that we covered here today.

Most of the day’s updates focused around the news that the Israeli military sacked two senior officers as a consequence of an Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza on Monday. Our correspondent in Jerusalem gave us a detailed account inside the IDF’s briefing on that attack, which you can read about here.

Other important developments include:

• An initial inquiry released today by the IDF revealed that its drone operators mistook an aid worker carrying a bag for a gunman and proceeded to target a van belonging to WCK
• WCK has said Israel's apologies “represent cold comfort” as it called for an "independent commission" because the IDF "cannot credibly investigate its own failure"
• Divisions are forming within major UK political parties, as senior Labour and Conservative figures argued for a ban on arms sales to Israel
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming under pressure from members of his coalition after he announced Israel would be reopening the humanitarian corridors into Gaza to allow for more aid
• There continues to be serious concerns about the welfare of Gazans after aid organisations suspended their operations in the wake of Monday's attack

You can read more of our coverage on this story here.

This coverage was written by Sophie Abdulla, Ben Hatton, James Gregory, Anna Boyd, Sam Hancock, and Yaroslav Lukov. It was edited by Aoife Walsh, Nadia Ragozhinia, Emily McGarvey and myself.

Israel forced to shift blame for aid shortfallpublished at 18:43 British Summer Time 5 April

18:43 BST 5 April

Jeremy Bowen
International Editor

The question now is whether this statement from the IDF will go any way towards alleviating the suffering in Gaza. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the results are what’s going to matter.

So how do you measure those results?

They can be measured in whether large numbers of Palestinians keep getting killed and whether the rapid, imminent, full-on slide into famine is arrested - and whether or not, even though even more entrances into Gaza have been opened, Israel allows adequate supplies through them.

Up until now, Israel has insisted that all the aid that was needed was getting into Gaza, and that any shortfall was the fault of the UN and Hamas - they’ve now been forced to move away from that position after what must have been a very testy phone call between President Biden and Netanyahu last night.

The sequence of events that took place suggests that the Israeli army were out to get the people in that aid convoy. There was a suggestion that the army couldn’t see the logos, but don’t forget World Central Kitchen was co-ordinating extensively with the Israelis.

That aid team were bringing in food and other aid supplies by sea, onto a pier they had built - impossible without an enormous deal of coordination in advance.

David Gritten
BBC News

Image source, .

Western governments are coming under growing pressure to halt arms sales to Israel over how it is waging the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel is a major weapons exporter, but its military has been heavily reliant on imported aircraft, guided bombs and missiles to conduct what experts have described as one of the most intense and destructive aerial campaigns in recent history.

The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.

Germany is the next biggest arms exporter to Israel, accounting for 30% of imports between 2019 and 2023, according to SIPRI.

Italy is the third-biggest arms exporter to Israel, but it accounted for only 0.9% of Israeli imports between 2019 and 2023. They have reportedly included helicopters and naval artillery.

• Read the fully story here

Divisions form within UK parties over Israel arms sales banpublished at 18:15 British Summer Time 5 April

18:15 BST 5 April

Iain Watson
Political correspondent

Ministers are under pressure – including from some prominent Conservative figures – to suspend arms sales to Israel, following the killing of three British aid workers.

Government insiders are stressing that while the UK exports some military parts to Israel, these account for only around 0.02% of its imports.

And, these insiders add, their position is driven not by politics but by legal advice, which is kept under constant review.

Both Labour and eminent lawyers are calling for that advice to be made public, but I’m told there is no intention to do so.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has said he has "serious concerns" about whether Israel is abiding by international humanitarian law.

And Labour leadership, too, are under pressure from some influential politicians within their ranks – including the mayor of London and the party leader on Scotland – to call for an arms ban now.

Israel’s agreement to reopen new aid routes into Gaza may take some pressure off the UK government to take further action on arms sales.

At the moment exhortation appears to be the government’s approach, with Lord David Cameron calling for "a major change in the conduct of the conflict".

That rhetoric is robust but unless the reality on the ground changes, then divisions within and between the major parties here is likely to persist.

Image source, Reuters

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says the Israeli government is not doing enough "to prevent starvation in Gaza".

He was commenting on Israel's recent announcement to reopen the Erez crossing in northern Gaza and allow temporary use of Ashdod port in southern Israel.

That decision followed a call between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The binding UN Security Council Resolution 2728 must be implemented. Now," he adds, highlighting the resolution passed last month.

Image source, ABACA/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

The US has no plans to conduct an independent investigation into the killings of seven aid workers in Gaza, according to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

The senior US official has told reporters that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu briefed President Joe Biden in their phone call on the general findings of the Israel Defense Forces inquiry.

We're now getting some more fresh reaction from senior Israeli politicians to the news of the last 24 hours.

Vice-president of the Israeli parliament has recently said to the BBC that he believes it's wrong to open up new aid routes while Israeli hostages are being held.

Speaking to the BBC World Service's Newshour programme, Hanoch Milwidsky says he doesn't agree with the Israeli Cabinet's decision to increase aid into the Strip.

"I think we've done more than enough considering the fact we still have 134 hostages being held in Gaza," the Likud MP says.

When pressed on the people facing imminent famine in northern Gaza, Milwidsky replies: "We did not start the October 7 event."

Image source, Reuters

David Cameron says "major reform" is needed for Israel’s deconfliction mechanism - a system that allows relief organisations to work in some of the world's hottest conflicts - to ensure the safety of aid workers.

The foreign secretary says "we are carefully reviewing the initial findings" of the internal IDF investigation into the air strikes that killed seven aid workers on Monday, and calls for the findings to be published in full.

Those findings should be followed up with "a wholly independent review to ensure the utmost transparency and accountability", he writes in a post on X, external, formerly known as Twitter.

Image source, Reuters

A senior member of Israel’s governing coalition has strongly criticised its military's decision to sack two senior officers over the strike that killed seven aid workers.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called the chief of staff's decision to remove the two senior officers something that "amounts to the abandonment of troops in the middle of a war".

Ben Gvir, an ultra-nationalist politician who is known for making anti-Arab comments and has a past conviction for racism, says the decision to remove the officers is a “grave mistake that conveys weakness".

Even if mistakes were made, soldiers should be supported in war, he writes in a post shared on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has recently spoken to our colleagues on the BBC News channel after it was announced that two officers had been fired.

Lt Col Peter Lerner describes the strike on a convoy of trucks that killed seven aid workers in Gaza on Monday as an "immense human tragedy". But when put to him that "lethal force" was used on the basis of an "assumption" that Hamas gunmen had boarded the vehicles he says this is incorrect.

"It wasn't an assumption, it was a visual confirmation of a gunman," he says, before saying there was a "miscalculation" and that "two senior officers - a major and a colonel - have been dismissed from their roles" as a result.

"We're taking this incident very, very seriously," Lerner goes on, explaining how the situation on the ground shouldn't prevent humanitarian organisations doing their work. "We've clearly failed in this instance," he adds.

Pushed to explain how Israel's military technology failed to identify the marked WCK vans, Lerner says night vision "couldn't identify" the NGO's sticker on the roof and it was then thought they were Hamas vehicles.

"This is, again, another failure that we need to learn from ... so this doesn't happen again in the future," he says.

Image source, EPA

Our colleagues at BBC Arabic's Gaza Lifeline programme have been speaking to Gazans at the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza about the World Central Kitchen (WCK) temporarily suspending its work inside the Strip.

One woman says it is a "real tragedy".

"This organisation used to provide a lot of assistance to the people and we often saw its products in the markets where people traded and ate them," she says.

"As for the incident, it is a tragedy for the families of the victims and even the Palestinian people who have been negatively affected by it, as the aid we used to receive has decreased."

Targeting aid workers affects residents "a lot", one person says, adding: "It scares everyone who tries to help us because they know that they can be targeted at any moment".

Another woman says the food the workers from WCK provided was "healthy", with meals being "distributed safety at the school where we have been displaced".

Image source, Reuters

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says he hopes Israel quickly boosts aid access to Gaza, calling the situation in the territory after six months of war as "absolutely desperate".

"When the gates to aid are closed, the doors to starvation are opened. More than half the population – over a million people – are facing catastrophic hunger.

"Children in Gaza today are dying for lack of food and water. This is incomprehensible, and entirely avoidable," he says.

Echoing earlier calls from charity World Central Kitchen, Guterres says fixing failures in Israeli military procedures "requires independent investigations as well as meaningful, measurable changes on the ground".

The UN says at least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed since 7 October.

"We want to know why each one of them was killed," Guterres says.

A little earlier, Jo Floto, the BBC's Middle East bureau chief, brought us the breaking news that the Israeli military had sacked two of its senior officers over a strike that killed several humanitarian aid workers in Gaza.

Here, he explains a bit more about how that information was relayed to journalists:

Jo adds that the military's conclusions are that three major failings occurred - including that a coordination plan agreed between the WCK and the IDF was not distributed down to operational level.

• To read more on this, head here

Image source, Reuters

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the US is carefully reviewing Israel's investigation into the strike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza.

"It's very important that Israel is taking full responsibility for this incident. It's also important that it appears to be taking steps to hold those responsible accountable", he tells reporters in Brussels.

"Even more important is making sure that steps are taken going forward to ensure that something like this can never happen again."

He says Israel has to “prioritise the protection of civilians” when carrying out military operations against Hamas.

“It has to make that job number one. Their safety has to be a priority and military operations need to be designed around their protection, not the other way around,” he adds.

Attacks against aid workers in Gaza "may amount to a war crime", the UN Human Rights Office says.

It comes following an Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza on Monday.

Laurence said the strike underlines "the horrific conditions under which humanitarian workers are operating in Gaza"

"International law requires all parties to respect and protect humanitarian relief personnel and ensure their safety, security, and freedom of movement."

Israel's military has apologised for Monday's strike and called the attack a grave mistake.

If you're just joining us, our coverage in the latter part of the morning focused on the Israeli military's sacking of two senior officers after seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers were killed in a strike in Gaza on Monday.

It forms part of an initial inquiry into the incident - being carried out by retired Israeli military Maj Gen Yoav Har-Even - which drew condemnation from leaders around the world.

Here's some of the latest developments:

• As well as sacking two officers, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) admitted that its drone operators mistook an aid worker carrying a bag for a gunman and proceeded to target a van belonging to WCK
• The inquiry found that the IDF unit involved believed the three WCK vehicles eventually targeted with missiles had been taken over by Hamas gunmen
• All evidence from the initial review has been passed to the Israeli military's top legal authority to determine if there has been any criminal conduct, the IDF says
• WCK has called for an "independent commission", saying the Israeli military "cannot credibly investigate its own failure"
• Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu remains under pressure over aid after it was announced last night that two humanitarian routes into Gaza - the Erez Gate and Ashdod Port - had been opened
• It came hours after US President Joe Biden told Netanyahu that Israel must take steps to prevent civilian harm and humanitarian suffering if it wants to maintain US support

Why the UN rights council vote on Israel is significantpublished at 13:46 British Summer Time 5 April

13:46 BST 5 April

Imogen Foulkes
Reporting from Geneva

As we've been reporting, members of the UN Human Rights Council have backed a resolution calling for a weapons ban on Israel, because of its conduct in the war in Gaza.

Although a 'Yes' vote was expected, the size of the support for a weapons ban was a surprise.

Since the 7 October attacks Israel has had strong backing from Europe, but today that appeared to be ebbing away.

Finland, Luxembourg and Belgium all voted for a weapons ban – France abstained, describing the situation in Gaza as utterly catastrophic.

While nearly all member states backed Israel’s right to defend itself, there was strong condemnation of its conduct in the war – South Africa said the world could no longer stay silent.

Israel’s ambassador described the vote as a dark day for the United Nations – Israel has long viewed the council as biased.

But the lack of support at the UN’s top human rights body – just six countries voted no – will increase pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to change course.

Gaza aid convoy strike: What we knowpublished at 13:38 British Summer Time 5 April

13:38 BST 5 April

BBC Verify has been studying images shared on social media of the aftermath of Monday's attack to try to piece together what we know about the incident that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers.

The charity says the aid workers were travelling in three cars - two of them armoured.

It says the convoy's movements had been co-ordinated with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The convoy had unloaded more than 100 tonnes of food supplies at a warehouse in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, according to the charity.

By analysing images of three heavily damaged vehicles - one of them bearing a WCK logo on the roof - BBC Verify has worked out their locations.

They are around 2.5km (1.5 miles) apart, which suggests there was more than one strike.

Read more here.

Image source, .

IDF findings highlight its failings in Gazapublished at 13:21 British Summer Time 5 April

13:21 BST 5 April

Frank Gardner
BBC News, Security Correspondent

Fighting in built-up areas, known in military jargon as "FIBUA", has always been notoriously difficult, especially when one side is accused of hiding itself amongst the civilian population and uses civil infrastructure for military purposes.

But today’s admission by Israel’s military, the IDF, that its fatal targeting of humanitarian aid workers on Monday was "a grave mistake" is further proof that its entire military operation in Gaza cannot possibly achieve its aims without inflicting intolerable civilian casualties.

The admission contained in today’s IDF statement that the coordination plan agreed between it and the World Central Kitchen charity "was not distributed down to operational level" is symptomatic of a wider problem.

In the confusion of this 3-dimensional conflict, with drone pilots remotely targeting buildings, people and vehicles from the air, coordination with those on the ground is not working as it should.

Given the fact that six months into this operation significant elements of Hamas, including its leadership, have survived to fight on, it is hard to see how further mistakes are going to be avoided without a major overhaul of the IDF’s operational procedures, something likely to be resisted by commanders on the ground.