Closing summary
It’s approaching 4.50am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and we’ll close this blog in a moment. Our live coverage will resume later today. Here’s a roundup of the latest developments. And you can see all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here. Thanks for reading.
Israeli strikes killed 90 Palestinians in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on Sunday, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said. Videos posted online of what appeared to be the aftermath showed Palestinians digging through the rubble for survivors with shovels and their bare hands.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is “appalled” after Israel’s deadly raid on northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital at the weekend. WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said the “effective destruction” of the hospital over the past several days was “rendering it non-functional and resulting in the death of at least eight patients”.
The Israeli army has said it uncovered the biggest Hamas tunnel in the Gaza Strip so far, just a few hundred metres from a key border crossing. Such was its size that small vehicles would be able to travel within it, an AFP photographer granted access to it reported. The underground passage formed part of a wider branching network that stretched for more than 2.5 miles (4km) and came within 400 metres of the Erez border crossing, the army said. It would have cost millions of dollars and taken years to construct, Israeli forces said.
The United Nations security council could vote as early as Monday on a proposal to demand that Israel and Hamas allow aid access to Gaza – via land, sea and air routes – and set up UN monitoring of the humanitarian assistance delivered. Diplomats said the fate of the draft security council resolution hinges on final negotiations between Israel ally the US, which has council veto power, and the United Arab Emirates, which has drafted the text.
The Syrian army has said Israeli missiles launched from the occupied Golan Heights hit sites near Damascus that regional intelligences say targeted Iranian militias’ stronghold near Syria’s holiest Shia Muslim shrine. Syria’s air defences shot down some of the missiles that targeted the countryside around the capital in an incident that injured two soldiers, the army said in a statement on Sunday.
The Palestinian health ministry in the occupied West Bank is calling for an international investigation into reports that Israeli forces buried Palestinians alive in the courtyard of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital via bulldozers amid its deadly raid over the weekend. Palestinian health minister Mai Alkaila cited reports from witnesses who said they saw Israeli forces burying Palestinians alive in the courtyard of one of the few remaining functioning hospitals in Gaza, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. The Guardian could not confirm the reports and Israel had not responded to them.
The Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza opened on Sunday for aid trucks for the first time since the outbreak of war, officials said, in a move intended to double the amount of food and medicine reaching the territory. Two sources in the Egyptian Red Crescent said trucks had crossed Kerem Shalom on Sunday on their way into Gaza. One said there were 79 trucks.
France said that one of its workers was killed by an Israeli attack in Rafah, Reuters reports. According to French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, who spoke to journalists following a visit to Israel and the West Bank, the man who was killed was a Palestinian national who worked for the French Institute for decades.
The director of Israeli spy agency Mossad has met the Qatari prime minister for talks on resuming indirect negotiations on the release of hostages, CNN has reported, quoting diplomatic sources. The sources said the meeting on Friday between David Barnea and Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani was positive, the network said. Reuters has quoted two Egyptian security sources as saying Israel and Hamas are both open to a renewed deal involving a ceasefire and hostage release, although disagreements on detail remain. They said Hamas was insisting on setting the list of hostages to be released unilaterally and demanding Israel withdraw its forces behind pre-determined lines.
Former UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has warned Israel that it risks undermining the legal basis for its action in the Gaza Strip, adding to growing international pressure over the escalating conflict. Writing for Britain’s Telegraph, the senior Tory warned against a “killing rage” and said Israel’s “original legal authority of self-defence is being undermined by its own actions”.
The US is to announce the launch of an expanded maritime protection force involving Arab states to combat the increasingly frequent Houthi attacks being mounted from Yemen’s ports on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The force is due to be announced by the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, during his Middle East visit. Five big shipping companies have now stopped their ships using the Red Sea in the wake of attacks mounted by Houthis in protest at Israel’s efforts to eliminate Hamas in Gaza.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has said of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza: “By any account, I haven’t seen anything of this scale.” Philippe Lazzarini went on to say in an interview with Al Jazeera: “Everything is absolutely unprecedented and staggering. The number of people who have been killed … in 40 days, more women and children killed than the number of civilians in the Ukraine war.”
Updated
The director of Israeli spy agency Mossad has met the Qatari prime minister for talks on resuming indirect negotiations on the release of hostages, CNN has reported, quoting diplomatic sources.
The sources said the meeting on Friday between David Barnea and Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani was positive, the network said.
CNN’s report continues:
The meeting comes after another trip Barnea was meant to make to Doha was cancelled earlier in the week by the Israeli government.
This latest meeting was planned before the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accidentally killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza on Friday, but that incident has added urgency to the conversations, the source said.
On Thursday an Israeli official told CNN that the war cabinet felt “conditions are not right” to try to restart the talks.
Qatar and the US have been working to try to resurrect the negotiations, with new proposals made to free more of the more than 100 hostages in Gaza.
As we reported earlier, Israel and Hamas are both open to a renewed deal involving a ceasefire and hostage release, although disagreements on detail remain, according to two Egyptian security sources.
Reuters said that according to the sources, Hamas is insisting on setting the list of hostages to be released unilaterally and demanding Israel withdraw its forces behind pre-determined lines.
Israel agreed on Hamas deciding the list and has asked for a timeline and to review the list in order to decide on ceasefire’s time and duration, the sources said. However, Israel has refused to withdraw, they said.
