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
Pro-Palestinian protesters on Monday occupied university buildings in the Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Eindhoven, condemning Israel’s war on Gaza, the Dutch protest group behind the action said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the University of Amsterdam (UvA) confirmed the occupation and said it advised people who are not affiliated with the protest to leave the building, Reuters reported.
The Eindhoven University of Technology confirmed that there were “dozens of students peacefully protesting outside next to ten to 15 tents”.
Students in the Netherlands, like students in many other countries, including the US and in England, have been protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza to show solidarity with Palestinian people.
Many have called for an immediate permanent ceasefire and for schools/universities to cut financial ties with companies they say are profiting from the oppression of Palestinians.
Updated
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Israeli forces released two members from its ambulance crews this morning after 49 days of detention.
They were arrested during a raid on al-Amal hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis while they were working inside the hospital on 24 March 2024, the PRCS said.
“Meanwhile, the occupation continues to detain 4 members of the PRCS’s teams, and their fate remains unknown at the moment,” it added in a post on X.
This morning, the occupation forces released two members of the PRCS ambulance crews, who are the EMT Bassam Ahmad Abdul Khaliq Abu Ta'ima and the volunteer paramedic Mu'min Shaban Al-Taif, after 49 days of detention. They were arrested during the second raid on Al-Amal Hospital… pic.twitter.com/tOBkLuawPy
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) May 13, 2024
Our video team has put together an edit of the scenes from the Jabaliya refugee camp earlier today, where Israel has expanded its offensive.
Residents were seen fleeing with their belongings amid the sound of explosions and gunfire. Some residents said they had seen Israeli tanks in Jabaliya.
Death toll in Gaza reaches 35,091, says health ministry
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 on Monday.
Egypt’s foreign minister tells 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”, Reuters reports.
Sameh Shoukry also stressed in a phone call with Blinken the need to restart aid deliveries to Gaza after they discussed the Israeli seizure of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, the Egyptian foreign ministry says.
Israel’s embassy to the Holy See has issued a protest after a Yemeni Nobel prize winner accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza during an event hosted by the Vatican, the Associated Press reports.
The embassy says it feels “indignation and shock” over the comments from rights activist Tawakkol Karman made on Saturday evening during a conference organised by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation created by Pope Francis. Karman, who won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in the Arab spring protests, told an audience in the atrium of St Peter’s Basilica:
The world is silent in front of the genocide and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
In an open letter posted on X on Monday, the Israeli embassy has rejected Karman’s accusations, calling them lies.
The site was contaminated by a flagrantly antisemitic speech. We regret that such a speech was pronounced without anyone feeling the moral duty to intervene to stop this disgrace.
After mentioning Gaza, Karman got a loud round of applause from an audience made up of fellow Nobel prize laureates, politicians and church officials. The pope himself was not present.
Updated
Videos show settlers blocking aid trucks
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, writes my colleagues Lorenzo Tondo and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem.
Footage shows settlers unloading vehicles and diverting boxes of much-needed food to Gaza, where in most areas Israel’s military offensive has triggered a famine.
Last week, Israeli demonstrators blocked a road near the desert town of Mitzpe Ramon to protest against the delivery of aid trucks into the Strip. The protesters – who say the aid is helping Hamas and want to block its passage until all Israeli hostages are freed – formed a sit-in protest as they scattered rocks across the road to prevent vehicles from passing.
Last March, the international court of justice ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza, where sections of the population are facing imminent starvation, in a significant legal rebuke to Israel’s claim it is not blocking aid deliveries.
Israel’s siege of Gaza has created what aid officials are referring to as “man-made starvation”, with the territory facing the threat of mass deaths from famine with children already dying from hunger.
Updated
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) has shared a video of children returning to schools in Khan Younis to seek shelter, highlighting the “extensive damage” Israeli airstrikes and fighting had inflicted on the city in the southern Gaza Strip.
“A new level of desperation, unfolding under the world’s watch,” the relief agency, which has been supporting the Palestinian territories since 1950, said in a post on X.
Families & children, returning to @UNRWA schools in Khan Younis to seek "safety" & "shelter".
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) May 13, 2024
Extensive damage from where these @UN facilities have already been impacted. There is no water available in Khan Younis.
A new level of desperation, unfolding under the world's watch. pic.twitter.com/mtaEy5TMEz
Gaza’s second city – which had an estimated population of about 400,000 people – was the focus of a sustained onslaught by the Israeli army, who said they were targeting Hamas fighters, from December, and was deserted bit by bit as Israeli forces who mounted relentless bombardments.
Displaced Palestinians started to return to Khan Younis last month after Israel said it was reducing the numbers of soldiers in southern Gaza. They came back to devastation and ruined buildings.
Palestinian civil defence teams began exhuming bodies from a mass grave outside the Nasser hospital complex in Khan Younis last month after Israeli troops withdrew. More than 300 bodies had been found, according to Palestinian officials.
Updated
Summary of the day so far...
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 20 bodies of Palestinian people killed in the 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 has said the health system across the devastated enclave could collapse imminently. “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 on Monday received more evacuation orders through phone calls and text messages, sending yet more people to start packing and leave, witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP). More than 350,000 Palestinians have fled the southern Gazan city in the past week after Israeli warnings to evacuate before an imminent military assault. The parents of more than 900 Israeli soldiers deployed in Gaza have signed a letter urging the military to call off an offensive in Rafah, calling it a “deadly trap” for their children.
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.
Updated
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has briefed the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, about Israel’s military operation in Rafah, and the takeover of the nearby border crossing into Egypt, Gallant’s office said on Monday.
In an overnight phone call, Gallant and Blinken “discussed developments in Gaza … and the precise operation in the Rafah area against remaining Hamas battalions, while securing the crossing,” the statement said.
More people each day have fled Rafah since the Israel Defense Forces ordered the evacuation of eastern neighbourhoods shortly before seizing the border crossing with Egypt to the east of the city last week.
The Israeli Defense Force said this was a “precise, limited operation” to stop Hamas smuggling weapons or funds into Gaza.
Closure of the Rafah border crossing to Egypt and the difficulties in reaching the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel because of the fighting mean limited aid is reaching southern and central Gaza.
About a million people displaced from elsewhere in Gaza have been sheltering in Rafah for months. The city is now “emptying out”, UN officials there told the Observer, with further huge numbers expected to leave on Sunday in one of the largest displacements for many months.
Hezbollah claims responsibility for strikes that injured Israeli soldiers
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.
Earlier on Monday, Hezbollah – the powerful militant Lebanese group - said it launched “a swarm of explosive drones” targeting tents and “sleeping quarters” for an Israeli artillery battalion.
Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been trading fire since the Hamas 7 October attacks on Israel, in which, according to Israeli figures, about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 abducted.
The exchanges have become gradually more serious, displacing tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.
The parents of more than 900 Israeli soldiers deployed in Gaza have signed a letter urging the military to call off an offensive in Rafah, calling it a “deadly trap” for their children.
“It is evident to anyone with common sense that after months of warnings and announcements regarding an incursion into Rafah, there are forces on the other side actively preparing to strike our troops,” says the letter, sent on 2 May.
“Our sons are physically and mentally exhausted,” adds the letter, addressed to the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi. “And now, you intend to send them into this perilous situation? … This appears to be nothing short of recklessness.”
The letter was initially signed by the parents of about 600 soldiers but in recent days the parents of another 300 have signed it.
You can read the full story by my colleagues, Lorenzo Tondo and Quique Kierszenbaum, here:
Rafah residents on Monday received more evacuation orders through phone calls and text messages, sending yet more people to start packing and leave their homes, witnesses have told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
More than 350,000 Palestinians have fled the southern Gazan city in the past week after Israeli warnings to evacuate before an imminent military assault.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected US pressure to hold off a full-scale attack on the city, where about 1 million Palestinians sought shelter after fleeing fighting earlier in the conflict.
Israel has told those fleeing the new fighting in the north and Rafah to head to a designated a “humanitarian zone” along a stretch of coastline. But the area is already packed with vast numbers of displaced people and has limited available water, sanitation, healthcare facilities or food.
There has been a lot of commentary overnight about the UN’s Office for the coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) publishing new figures apparently “halving” the number of women and children killed in Gaza, not least how this has supposedly proved that figures by the Hamas run ministry of health in Gaza are unreliable.
The Guardian has been in contact with OCHA to ask about the methodology and it turns out these are not UN figures but updated figures from the Hamas-run health ministry.
The figures, which appear in a UN infographic tracking casualties, were updated last week. Previously it had shown some 9,500 women and 14,500 children among fatalities. The new figures list some 5,000 women and 8,000 children as casualties.
OCHA’s Jens Laerke points out:
The breakdowns in question have been published by the ministry of health in Gaza. The figures from the ministry of health can vary based on the verification process that they undertake.
The United Nations’ teams in Gaza are unable to independently verify those figures given the prevailing situation on the ground and the sheer volume of fatalities.
It is for this reason that all figures used by the UN clearly cite the health ministry in Gaza as the source. The UN will verify these figures to the extent possible when conditions permit.
It should be pointed out the revision to the figures doesn’t affect the overall total (which is slightly reduced from 34,844 to 34,735), only an adjustment to the proportion of women and children.
What does it mean? It remains entirely unclear whether this affects the number of civilian casualties. In the past Israel has tried to suggest that the presence of men of a certain age is suggestive that those killed are more likely to be combatants but others have questioned that methodology.
In the current conflict Israel’s own combatant casualty figures have tended to be quite contradictory. However, the framing by a number of media organisations – including Israeli – that this is a “gotcha” moment and that the UN has corrected ministry of health figures is undermined by the fact that these are still ministry of health figures.
Updated
Israeli overnight airstrikes on Jabaliya kill 20 Palestinians - officials
Palestinian health officials on Monday said they had recovered 20 bodies of Palestinian people killed in the overnight Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya in northern Gaza, while dozens were reported injured.
In the sprawling Jabaliya refugee camp, the biggest of Gaza’s eight such camps, tanks have pushed towards the heart of the district.
Residents said tank shells were landing at the centre of the camp and airstrikes had destroyed clusters of houses (see earlier post at 07.56).
Thick clouds of black smoke from explosions could be seen rising over northern Gaza from the Israeli border on Sunday, Reuters reported.
Israeli tanks entered the Jabaliya camp, which holds more than 100,000 people, on Sunday after heavy overnight bombardments of the area, according to reports.
The Israeli army said its aim is to eliminate “attempts by Hamas to rehabilitate its military capabilities in Jabaliya.”
My colleagues Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum explore how escalating US sanctions on violent settlers could affect the financial viability of Israeli settlements and companies in the occupied West Bank.
You can read the story in full here:
Updated
Gaza's health system could collapse in 'few hours', authorities say
Gaza’s health ministry has said the health system across the devastated enclave could collapse in a “few hours”.
“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 was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying in a post on social media.
Only around a third of Gaza’s 36 hospitals and primary health care centres are working and all face acute shortages of medicine, basic medical supplies, fuel and manpower.
Updated
A senior Egyptian official has told The Associated Press that Cairo has lodged protests with Israel, the US and European governments, saying the war on Gaza has put its decades-old peace treaty with Israel – a cornerstone of regional stability – at high risk. No further information has been given.
The Egypt-Israel 1979 peace treaty made Egypt the first Arab state to forge peace with Israel and underpinned Washington’s relationship with Cairo during Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.
The Sinai peninsula, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, was handed back to Egypt under the agreement, and diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt were established.
Residents and medics said several people were killed and injured in a series of Israeli airstrikes on the Jabaliya refugee camp overnight.
Medics said they have been unable to send teams to some of the bombed areas because of the intensity of the Israeli bombardment but they have reports of fatalities.
Jabaliya is the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight cinder-block refugee camps – which date to the 1948 war of Israel’s founding.
Updated
Israel intensifies attacks on Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza
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.
Tanks were trying to advance towards the heart of the camp, the biggest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, according to Reuters.
Israeli troops reportedly forced hundreds of Palestinians housed in shelters to leave.
Al Jazeera Arabic reported that Israeli forces are firing on ambulances trying to reach injured people as Israeli airstrikes hit crowded residential areas within the refugee camp. Israeli jets are bombing block 2 and block 4 of the camp, according to the outlet.
The Israeli military issued evacuation orders to residents of the Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday, telling them to leave “immediately” as it said its forces were trying to root out Hamas militants there.
“They were bombing everywhere, including near schools that are housing people who lost their houses,” Jabaliya resident Saed, 45, told Reuters yesterday. “War is restarting, this is how it looks in Jabaliya.”
Updated
Opening summary
Welcome to our latest live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and the wider crisis in the Middle East. Here’s a snapshot of the latest key developments.
Egypt has announced its intention to formally support South Africa’s case at the international court of justice (ICJ), which alleges genocide by Israel in the war in Gaza.
On Sunday, Egypt said its move to back the case comes “in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip”, according to a foreign ministry statement.
It further pointed to Israel’s systematic “targeting of civilians and destruction of infrastructure” and “pushing Palestinians into displacement and expulsion”.
South Africa brought its case to the ICJ in December, calling on the UN court to order Israel to suspend its military operations in Gaza. Israel has denied the allegations put forward by South Africa.
Hamas expressed its “appreciation” to Egypt in a statement Sunday evening, calling on “all countries around the world to take similar steps in support of the Palestinian cause by joining the lawsuit”.
Here’s a summary of some of the other main events:
Israel sent tanks into eastern Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday after a night of heavy aerial and ground bombardments, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens of others, Palestinian health officials said.
There were clashes reported in the south of Gaza, where tens of thousands fled the city of Rafah on Sunday, following bombardment and warnings from the Israel Defense Forces to clear central and eastern neighbourhoods before planned offensives. Israel says it considers Rafah Hamas’ last stronghold. But its advance into the city has prompted global outrage and strained relations with the US, its staunchest ally.
The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in several areas inside Gaza with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs, including in Rafah, previously the Palestinians’ last refuge where more than a million people were sheltering.
The UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, warned that a full-scale Israeli assault on Rafah “cannot take place”, saying it could not be reconciled with international law. He said a full-scale offensive could have a “catastrophic impact … including the possibility of further atrocity crimes”. The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said that it would be wrong for Israel to carry out a major offensive in Rafah “without a plan to protect people”.
Thousands of Israelis joined protests over the weekend calling for a deal to bring home hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas, early elections and the immediate resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, delivered some of the Biden administration’s strongest public criticism yet of Israel’s war on Gaza. In interviews on Sunday, Blinken said the US has worked with Arab countries and others for weeks on developing “credible plans for security, for governance, for rebuilding’’ in Gaza, but “we haven’t seen that come from Israel”. “Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left, or if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” Blinken said. He also said Israeli tactics have meant “a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians” while failing to neutralise Hamas leaders and fighters and could drive a lasting insurgency.
All 12 of Gaza’s higher education institutions have been destroyed or damaged, leaving nearly 90,000 students stranded, and more than 350 teachers and academics have been killed, according to Palestinian official data.
Updated
