Closing summary
It’s 4.15am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and this blog will close in a few minutes. We’re resume our live coverage later in the day. Here’s a recap of the latest developments.
Talks in Cairo attended by the political head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, on Wednesday ended “without results”, according to reports. His arrival in Egypt had been seen as a positive sign of a possible truce, but Hamas reportedly rejected an Israeli proposal for a week-long ceasefire in exchange for the release of dozens of hostages held in Gaza, insisting Israel must implement a truce before talks on a hostage release could begin. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to rule out a ceasefire on Wednesday as he vowed Israel would continue its war against Hamas “to the end”.
Joe Biden has said he does not expect an imminent deal between Israel and Hamas over the release of hostages. “We’re pushing it … There’s no expectation at this point,” the US president said.
At least 12 people were killed in a series of explosions in Rafah in southern Gaza, near the border with Egypt, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said. Dozens of people, including women and children, were wounded when the blasts occurred near the Kuwaiti hospital on Wednesday, it said. An Al Jazeera broadcast captured a strike near the hospital while one of its correspondents was live on air.
Israel ordered the evacuation of large areas of southern Gaza’s main city on Wednesday, the United Nations has said. Israel had released maps showing new areas covering about 20% of Khan Younis that had been marked for evacuation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has passed 20,000, Hamas says. According to the latest figures from the media office of the territory’s government, those killed since the war began on 7 October included about 8,000 children and 6,200 women.
The UN security council has postponed a vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza until Thursday as diplomats struggle to agree on the language of the draft resolution. The UN resolution, drafted by the United Arab Emirates, has been changed several times amid reported policy differences inside the Biden administration.
The Israeli military says it has uncovered a major Hamas command centre in the heart of Gaza City, inflicting what it described as a serious blow to the militant group. The army had exposed the centre of a vast underground network used by Hamas to move weapons, militants and supplies throughout the Gaza Strip, it said on Wednesday.
The first aid convoy to travel direct from Jordan to Gaza since the start of the war has delivered 750 metric tonnes of food to the Palestinian territory, the UN World Food Programme has said. The 46-truck convoy travelled through the Israel-Gaza Kerem Shalom border crossing, through which Israel last week approved the temporary delivery of aid into Gaza, opening a new route for supplies. Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign minister has said it wants to fast-track the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza through a maritime corridor from Cyprus.
Emmanuel Macron has said that Israel’s goal of fighting terrorism did not mean it had to “flatten Gaza”, referring to its response to Hamas’s attack on 7 October. The French president called on Israel “to stop this response because it is not appropriate, because all lives are worth the same and we defend them”.
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) has said it received “disturbing” information alleging that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) summarily killed at least 11 Palestinian men in front of their family members in Gaza. A report by the OHCHR in the occupied Palestinian territory said the incident took place on 19 December in the Al Remal neighbourhood in Gaza City, and warned that the allegations “raises the alarm about the possible commission of a war crime”. The Guardian was unable to confirm the claims. The IDF has not responded to them.
The head of the UN World Health Organisation has said he is “deeply concerned” about the “toxic mix of disease, hunger and lack of hygiene and sanitation” that people in Gaza are facing. The territory was “already experiencing soaring rates of infectious disease outbreaks”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned, adding that cases of diarrhoea among children aged under five were “25 times what they were before the conflict”. He also the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City – northern Gaza’s last functioning hospital until earlier this week – was a “shell” of its former self due to lack of fuel, staff and supplies, and bodies had been placed in rows in its courtyard “as they couldn’t be given safe and dignified burials”.
The political leaders of Hamas have begun talks with the group’s military wing about how to govern Gaza and the West Bank after the war with Israel ends, according to a report. “We want the war to end,” Husam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in Qatar, told the Wall Street Journal, amid sharpening divisions with Hamas’s military faction.
Amnesty International has called for an urgent investigation into what it called Israel’s “enforced disappearance” of Palestinian detainees from Gaza, after reports of deaths in military detention centres. The Israeli army said it was investigating the deaths.
Israel orders new evacuations from Khan Younis, says UN
Israel ordered the evacuation of large areas of southern Gaza’s main city on Wednesday, the United Nations has said.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Israel had released maps showing new areas covering about 20% of Khan Younis that had been marked for evacuation, Agence-France-Presse reports.
Before fighting broke out, the area was home to more than 110,000 people, OCHA said. The area now included 32 shelters that housed more than 140,000 internally displaced people, the vast majority from the north, it added.
The Israeli army said on Wednesday that “ground, aerial and naval operations were carried out on dozens of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure” on military command and control centres in Khan Younis.
