Closing summary
Residents said Israeli tanks pushed further into Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, with tank shells landing at the centre of the city’s refugee camp and airstrikes destroying clusters of houses. Palestinian health officials said they had recovered at least 20 bodies of Palestinian people killed in overnight Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya, while dozens of people were reported injured. Israeli forces fired on ambulances trying to reach injured people as Israeli air raids hit crowded residential areas within the sprawling refugee camp, Al Jazeera Arabic reported.
Gaza’s health ministry said earlier today that the health system across the devastated enclave could collapse shortly. “A few hours separate us from the collapse of the health system in the Gaza Strip as a result of the failure to bring in the fuel necessary to operate electricity generators in hospitals, ambulances, and transport employees,” the ministry said in a post on social media.
Rafah residents received more evacuation orders through phone calls and text messages, causing more desperate people to start packing and leave, witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Between 360,000 and 500,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah in the past week after Israeli warnings to evacuate before an imminent military assault. With the evacuation order and arrival of fighting, hospitals swiftly shut and meagre aid supplies vanished. Residents say they have no idea where they will go now, or how they will get there.
A series of videos are circulating on social media showing groups of settlers and rightwing activists blocking aid trucks travelling from Hebron towards Gaza in the West Bank crossing of Tarkumia.
Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, told the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, that continued Israeli military operations in Gaza, and especially in Rafah, the border city between Egypt and the enclave, have “grave security risks”.
It came after Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, briefed Blinken about Israel’s military operation in Rafah, and the takeover of the nearby border crossing into Egypt. In an overnight phone call, they “discussed developments in Gaza … and the precise operation in the Rafah area against remaining Hamas battalions, while securing the crossing,” the statement from Gallant’s office said.
At least 35,091 Palestinian people have been killed and 78,827 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement.
Hezbollah fighters fired “a guided missile” at an Israeli Merkava tank across the border on Monday morning, destroying it “after closely monitoring the enemy’s movements”, the group said in a statement. The Israeli army said “two anti-tank missiles” crossed from Lebanon into the area of Yiftah, a kibbutz community less than two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the border. The missiles injured four Israeli soldiers, the army said, one of them moderately and the rest lightly.
We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Updated
Satellite imagery obtained by Planet Labs shows the rapid growth of tent encampments set up between Khan Younis and al-Mawasi, a sandy narrow part of Gaza’s coastline designated as a “humanitarian zone” by the Israeli military.
The two images, overlaid on one another, show what the area looked like on the 16 April and on the 9 May where sprawling tents cities have emerged hosting people fleeing the fighting.
On Monday, UNWRA said nearly 360,000 people had fled Rafah after Israel issued an evacuation order last week. Other estimates put the figure closer to 500,000 people.
Updated
