Israel has said it is intensifying attacks on northern Gaza and warned that anyone who stayed risked being considered as “an accomplice in a terrorist organisation”, as airstrikes continued on Sunday in the south, where civilians had fled hoping to survive the war.
A second trickle of aid was allowed into Gaza from Egypt on Sunday, but the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the humanitarian situation was now catastrophic for the 2.3 million people trapped inside the territory.
Speaking on ABC’s This Week programme, the WFP chief, Cindy McCain, described the amount of aid delivered into Gaza so far as a “drop”. “We need – we need secure and sustainable access in there ... This is a catastrophe happening and we just simply have to get these trucks in.”
Up to 19 aid trucks crossed into Gaza on Sunday but there was a brief panic at the crossing when witnesses said a blast was heard and that ambulances could be heard deploying from the Egyptian side.
Later, the Israeli military said one of its tanks accidentally hit an Egyptian post near the border. The military expressed sorrow for the incident but gave no further details. Several Egyptian border guards sustained minor injuries, the Egyptian army spokesperson said in a statement.
Israel is preparing for a ground invasion that is likely to deepen civilian suffering.
People are going hungry and drinking dirty water, and some doctors have been reduced to using vinegar as antiseptic and operating with sewing needles, the Associated Press reported.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, convened his cabinet late on Saturday, reportedly to discuss sending troops over the frontier. There has been pressure for a delay in military action from some Israeli allies with citizens held in Gaza and from the relatives of some hostages.
They fear that once Hamas and Israeli troops start fighting face to face, negotiations for the release of hostages will collapse. The release of two Americans on Friday raised hopes that others might be able to return home. The Israeli military has raised its estimate of the number of people held by Hamas to 212.
Israel’s leadership has pushed ahead with preparations for the next stage of the war, however, describing the destruction of Hamas as an urgent imperative. Netanyahu told troops on the frontier with Lebanon that it was an existential battle for Israel.
“We are in the fight of our life, a fight for our home. That’s not an exaggeration; it’s not an overstatement. That’s this war,” he said, according to an official transcript of his remarks.
He also warned Hezbollah against opening a second front in the war, saying Israel would respond with counter-strikes of “unimaginable” magnitude, but he added: “I cannot tell you right now if Hezbollah will decide to enter the war fully.”
Overnight, Israeli missiles struck airports in Syria, a Hezbollah ally, and a mosque in the Israeli-occupied West Bank – the second such airstrike in recent days – underlining fears that the fight with Hamas in Gaza might escalate into a broader conflagration. Israel also ordered the evacuation of 14 more communities in the north, near the border with Lebanon.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Sunday that Washington saw potential for escalation in the Middle East due to the actions of Iran and its proxies in the region. The US was not looking for escalation, he told NBC news.
Hours after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned of an intensified bombing campaign in northern Gaza, and called on civilians to move south “for your own safety”, airstrikes hit cities in the south crammed with refugees from the north.
Palestinian journalists said at least 11 people were killed in an Israeli strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, and that Israel was also bombing the southern city of Rafah.
The IDF’s chief spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said civilians should head south as the IDF prepared for the next stage of the war. “We will deepen our attacks to minimise the dangers to our forces in the next stages of the war. We are going to increase the attacks, from today.”
Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday got mobile phone audio messages, and leaflets marked with the IDF logo, warning they could be identified as sympathisers with a “terrorist organisation” if they stayed in the north, Reuters reported.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that Israel’s retaliatory attacks had killed at least 4,651 Palestinians, of which 40% were children, with more than a million of the territory’s 2.3 million people displaced. On 7 October, an attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants killed 1,400 people, mainly civilians, in massacres that traumatised Israel.
In the UK on Sunday, the family of the missing British teenager Noiya Sharabi announced she had been murdered in the Hamas attack, along with her 13-year-old sister, Yahel, and mother, Lianne. Noiya’s family told the BBC she had been formally identified.
The sisters had been declared missing after Hamas attacked the Be’eri kibbutz in southern Israel and killed their mother. Yahel was identified last week. “Noiya was clever, sensitive, fun and full of life – her smile lit up the room like a beacon,” her family said.
The US said late on Saturday that it would send more air defence systems to the Middle East and prepare to move in more troops, after attacks on its forces in Iraq and warnings from militants against intervening to support Israel.
Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the fenced border around Gaza for a planned ground invasion aiming to annihilate Hamas, after several inconclusive wars dating back to the group’s seizure of power there in 2007. “We are going to go into the Gaza Strip … to destroy Hamas operatives and Hamas infrastructure,” the IDF chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, told troops in a video distributed by the Israeli military.
The Israeli military said “an aircraft” carried out a strike on the al-Ansar mosque inside the Jenin refugee camp early on Sunday morning. It was the second time Israeli authorities have used missiles in the West Bank in less than a week, saying they were targeting Palestinian militants.
Video from Jenin showed Palestinian paramedics rushing into the mosque compound. Health officials said at least two people were killed in the strike, with several others wounded.
In a joint statement, the IDF and Israel’s domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, said they had targeted tunnels underneath the mosque, and claimed Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were using it as a headquarters to plan an imminent attack.
The same Palestinian refugee camp was the focus of an intense Israeli military campaign last July that left at least 14 Palestinians dead, including a raid on the al-Ansar mosque.
More than 90 people have been killed by Israeli forces, settlers or Palestinian authority security forces in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack on 7 October, as well as growing numbers arrested in overnight raids by Israeli forces across the territory.
The Israeli military said on Sunday morning that their forces had arrested 727 people across the West Bank, while Palestinian prisoner groups said at least 1,000 had been arrested in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the raids.
Canada’s Department of National Defence said late on Saturday that Israel was not behind the al-Ahli hospital explosion in Gaza on 17 October. The strike on the Anglican-run hospital was more likely caused by an errant rocket fired from Gaza, the department said, based on analysis of open source and classified reporting. Canada’s findings are similar to conclusions by France and the US.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 471 people were killed in the blast at the hospital last Tuesday. US intelligence has put the death toll at between 100 and 300 people. Gaza’s health ministry blamed an Israeli airstrike, while Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launched by militants.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said on Sunday that he had “no idea” how many people had died in the blast at the Anglican hospital, adding that assuming Israeli culpability could be tantamount to antisemitic libel.
“I have no idea about how many civilians there were. I’ve heard so many numbers,” he told reporters on a visit to Jerusalem, Reuters reported.
“What I have said to people, publicly, is: ‘Don’t assume it’s Israel. You have no proof that it’s Israel. Many people have made a clear case it’s not. At the very best, do not start propagating another blood libel.’”
With Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
