Closing summary
It’s 2am in Gaza City, Tel Aviv and Beirut and we’re about to close this blog. Our live coverage will continue later in the day. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
At least 22,600 Palestinians have been killed and 57,910 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday. About 162 Palestinians were killed and 296 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added. At least six people have been killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike on a home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight.
The UN humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, has described the Gaza Strip as having become “uninhabitable” after relentless bombing by Israeli forces. In a statement, Griffiths warned that a “public health disaster is unfolding” in the territory as people are facing “the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded”. “Famine is around the corner,” he added.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has said it is “appalled” by the “continuous” shelling of al-Amal hospital and the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) headquarters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. In a statement on Friday, the IFRC said these strikes had resulted in the loss of innocent civilian lives, including a five-day-old infant, and that one of its medics had been injured.
The head of Unicef has said time is running out for children in Gaza who are “caught in a nightmare that worsens with every passing day”. Children in the territory face a “deadly triple threat” to their lives from the spread of diseases, plummeting nutrition and the escalation in fighting, Catherine Russell said in a statement, adding that most young children and women in the Gaza Strip are unable to meet their basic nutrition needs.
The governments of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda have denied a report that they have been in talks with Israel over taking in thousands of Palestinians from Gaza. According to the report, the Israeli government has been conducting secret talks with multiple countries regarding a “voluntary” migration scheme for Palestinians. The report came as two far-right Israeli ministers earlier this week called for the resettlement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has arrived in Turkey to start his fourth Middle East tour since the Israel-Gaza war broke out three months ago. Blinken will also travel to Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Egypt. The head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said he hoped Blinken’s visit will focus on ending aggression in the region.
France and Jordan teamed up to airdrop seven tonnes of aid to civilians and aid workers in Gaza late on Thursday, the French presidency has said. The “extremely complex” operation involved supplies equipped with systems that remotely guided them to a Jordanian field hospital set up in Gaza’s second city, Khan Younis, it said.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, warned against an Israeli occupation of Gaza as she called for more humanitarian pauses in the war. Israel “must do more for the protection of the civilian population” in its war against Hamas in Gaza, Baerbock said at a press conference on Friday. She is expected to travel to Israel on Sunday for her fourth visit since the outbreak of the Gaza war.
Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, has urged the UK government to demand an end to Israel’s “indiscriminate attacks” that have killed thousands of children in Gaza. In a statement on Friday, Yousaf said it was time for the UK to make clear to Israel that its actions in Gaza had gone “way beyond a legitimate response” to the 7 October Hamas attacks.
Hezbollah’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that the assassination of one of Hamas’s most senior officials, Saleh al-Arouri, in Beirut has changed the nature of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. In a second nationally televised address within three days, Nasrallah warned that a response is “inevitable”, further heightening fears of a dangerous escalation in the conflict. His comments came as Lebanon issued a formal complaint to the UN security council over al-Arouri’s killing, and over Israeli incursions into Lebanon’s airspace to attack targets in Syria.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has warned that time is running out on diplomatic efforts to end tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. Gallant, during a situational assessment at the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) northern command base on Friday, said that Israel would soon be left with no choice but to launch a military offensive against Hezbollah.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Friday that it carried out an airstrike on a Hezbollah command centre in the southern Lebanese village of Blida in response to attacks on the border. IDF tanks and artillery also shelled a number of areas along the Israel-Lebanon border, apparently to foil planned Hezbollah attacks, it said.
The commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said at the funeral on Friday for the victims of twin Islamic State bombings that their deaths would be avenged. More than 84 people were killed at a memorial in the city of Kerman on Wednesday for the former top commander Qassem Suleimani, who was assassinated in Iraq in 2020 by a US drone. Iranian security forces have detained 11 people suspected of links to the attack, Iran’s intelligence ministry said on Friday. The US has reportedly collected communications intercepts that confirm the Islamic State was behind the attacks.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, will be in Lebanon from 5 to 7 January to discuss the situation at the Israeli-Lebanese border and the importance of avoiding regional escalation, the EU said in a statement. Borrell will meet the speaker of the parliament, Nabih Berri; the prime minister, Najib Mikati, the foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, and the armed forces commander Gen Joseph Aoun. He will also have an exchange with the head of the UN’s interim force in Lebanon, Gen Aroldo Lázaro.
A Turkish court has decided to formally arrest 15 people and deport eight others suspected of being linked to Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency. Turkey warned Israel last month of “serious consequences” if it tried to hunt down members of Hamas on Turkish soil.
Jewish settlers have quietly carried out an “unprecedented surge” of unauthorised moves in the occupied West Bank while the world’s attention has been focused on war in Gaza, an Israeli watchdog group has warned. The result has been “not only physical harm to Palestinians and their lands but also a significant political shift in the West Bank”, a report said.
Updated
The UN’s migration agency has launched an urgent appeal for $69m (£54m) to support its response to rising and critical humanitarian needs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a statement, the International Organization for Migration (IMO) said hundreds of thousands of civilians need aid desperately, but that getting help to them continues to be hampered by “long clearance procedures for humanitarian aid trucks at the border (and) the intense ground operation and fighting”.
“Frequent disruption” to communication networks has also prevented humanitarian aid coordination, it said, as has “insecurity, blocked roads and scarcity of fuel”.
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