Closing summary
It’s 4.20am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and we’ll close this blog shortly. Our live coverage will resume later today. Here’s a recap of the latest developments. Thank you for reading.
A United Nations security council vote on a resolution calling for a new ceasefire in Gaza was postponed for a second time as diplomats engaged in “intense negotiations” to meet US objections to the wording of the draft resolution. The vote, initially scheduled for Monday afternoon, is now scheduled for Wednesday. Amid reported policy differences inside the Biden administration, the draft resolution was changed on Tuesday in an effort to avoid a third US veto since the conflict began more than two months ago.
The Israeli military attacked a military structure of the Hezbollah militant group after intercepting six rockets launched from Lebanon on Tuesday, the military said. It also attacked a squad that carried out a shooting at a Israeli military post in the Malkia border area which left two reserve soldiers “moderately injured”, Israel Defence Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
Israeli forces bombed a home in southern Gaza, killing 25 people, as the number of Palestinian deaths in the war climbed towards 20,000. At least 13 Palestinians were killed and 75 others wounded in an Israeli strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Hamas-run health ministry said.
Ismail Haniyeh, the most senior political leader of Hamas, is set to travel to Egypt for talks on a ceasefire in Gaza and a prisoner exchange with Israel, according to reports. Haniyeh will reportedly head a “high-level” Hamas delegation to Cairo on Wednesday, where he will hold talks with Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, and others. Meanwhile, a senior Hamas official said on Tuesday that it rejected holding negotiations over exchanging prisoners while the war was ongoing but it was open to any initiative to end the war.
President Isaac Herzog has signalled Israel’s readiness to enter into another foreign-mediated Gaza truce to recover Hamas-held hostages and enable more aid to reach the besieged Palestinian territory. Meanwhile, a Qatari official described talks between Qatar’s prime minister and the heads of the CIA and Mossad spy agency on Monday as “positive”, but said no imminent deal was expected.
The International Committee of the Red Cross president has insisted on the organisation’s neutrality and said criticism was making it increasingly hard to operate in the Israel-Gaza war. The Swiss-based organisation has been accused by both sides in the conflict of not providing adequate help to those being held hostage. ICRC chief Mirjana Spoljaric Egger said in Geneva: “The pressure we experience now in the context of Gaza and Israel is so much more than what we experienced a year ago on Ukraine and Russia.”
The United States has launched a multinational operation to safeguard commerce in the Red Sea as attacks by Iran-backed Yemeni militants forced major shipping companies to reroute, stoking fears of sustained disruptions to global trade. The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said Britain, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain were among nations involved in the Red Sea security operation, which would conduct joint patrols in the southern Red Sea and the adjacent Gulf of Aden. The Houthi militant group has attacked international vessels sailing through the Red Sea in response to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
Israeli forces raided one of the last remaining hospitals in northern Gaza, putting it out of action, according to the hospital’s director. The overnight raid at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City led to the arrest of doctors, medical staff and patients, according to reports. The hospital was also reportedly damaged as a result of the assault. Israeli forces took control of the hospital after surrounding the facility for 12 days, according to medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières. The hospital still had dozens of patients inside, including 14 children, it said.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said the Israeli ground operation would “expand to additional areas” of the Gaza Strip. It is thought he was referring to the central Gaza Strip or the southern city of Rafah.
The military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has released a video it claimed showed two hostages who were taken to Gaza during the 7 October attack on Israel. The video posted by the al-Quds Brigades comes a day after Hamas’s military wing released video footage it claimed showed three elderly Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
The Israeli army has said it is investigating the deaths of Palestinian detainees who were arrested in military operations across Gaza. At least six Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons or Israel Defense Forces (IDF) detention facilities since the start of the war, according to a report, including “several” held at the Sde Teiman base near the city of Be’er Sheva in southern Israel. Meanwhile, the IDF said it had suspended a group of Israeli soldiers recorded smoking a water pipe and joking in front of Palestinians who were detained and blindfolded in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Nentanyahu, has met with some families of the hostages held captive in Gaza. About 15 family members of hostages were expected to attend the meeting, where Nentanyahu was joined by his wife and Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, Gal Hirsch. The prime minister “reiterated his commitment to bring about the release of all the hostages to their homes,” his office said after the meeting.
UN officials have expressed anger and disbelief about the situation in Gaza hospitals, where injured people do not have basic supplies. “I’m furious that children who are recovering from amputations in hospitals are then killed in those hospitals,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for the UN children’s agency. He added that Nasser hospital, the largest operational hospital left in the territory, had been shelled twice in the past 48 hours.
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, told MPs at a liaison committee that too many civilians were dying in Gaza but rebuffed questions on whether Israel had violated international humanitarian law or whether it was responsible for the death toll.
Updated
She was born amid war, in a hospital with no electricity in a southern Gaza city that has been bombarded daily. Her family named her al-Amira Aisha – “Princess Aisha”. She didn’t complete her third week before she died, killed in an Israeli airstrike that crushed her family home on Tuesday, writes Associated Press.
Its report continues:
Her extended family was asleep when the strike levelled their apartment building in Rafah before dawn, said Suzan Zoarab, the infant’s grandmother and survivor of the blast. Hospital officials said 27 people were killed, among them Amira and her two-year old brother, Ahmed.
“Just 2 weeks old. Her name hadn’t even been registered,” Suzan said, her voice quivering as she spoke from the side of her son’s hospital bed, who was also injured in the blast.
The family tragedy comes as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza nears 20,000, according to the Hamas-run ministry of health.
