This blog is now closed. A fresh Guardian live Middle East crisis blog will open later on today. Until then, see all of our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.
Summary of the day
It is 5pm in Gaza City and in Tel Aviv. Here are the headlines …
A senior Hamas official has told the Reuters news agency that the group is studying a new proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza, presented by mediators after talks with Israel. The ceasefire proposal followed talks in Paris involving intelligence chiefs from Israel, the United States and Egypt, with the prime minister of Qatar.
In its latest operational update, Israel’s military says it continues to operate in the central and northern Gaza Strip, and claims its forces are “conducting targeted raids on terrorist infrastructure and eliminating dozens of terrorists”. In al-Shati in the north, it claims to have killed ten people and to have “located large quantities of weapons, as well as documents and military equipment belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation”. The IDF has announced that three soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday.
The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) has vowed the country is not afraid of war with the US. The commander-in-chief, Maj Gen Hossein Salami, said: “We hear some threats from American officials about targeting Iran. We tell them that you tested us and we know each other. We do not leave any threat unanswered, and we do not look for war, but we are not afraid of it. This is the well-known truth.”
Security forces in Sweden have found a suspiscious object at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. A controlled detonation is to be carried out.
Israeli media reports several protesters have been detained by police at the Kerem Shalom border crossing where for days a group has been gathering attempting to prevent humanitarian aid crossing into the Gaza Strip while Hamas still holds people hostage.
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Wednesday he was hopeful it could be decided later in the day which member state could lead the forthcoming EU mission to protect vessels in the Red Sea, adding the operation could be launched before mid-February.
The head of Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd shipping company has said he does not expect disruption to Red Sea voyages caused by Yemen’s Houthis to end anytime soon. Overnight US central command reported that Yemen’s Houthis fired one anti-ship cruise missile towards the Red Sea, which was shot down by USS Gravely.
You can find all our latest coverage of the Israel-Gaza war here.
Israel’s ambassador in Sweden, Ziv Nevo Kulman, has issued a statement on social media about the events in Stockholm today, where a suspicious device was found on the grounds of the Israeli embassy.
He said:
Today we were subject to an attempted attack against the embassy of Israel in Stockholm and its employees. We thank the Swedish authorities for their swift response. We will not be intimidated by terror.
Israeli media reports there have been clashes at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, with between 18 and 40 protesters detained by police.
The site has been the scene of continuous days of demonstrations attempting to prevent aid entering the Gaza Strip. The protests have featured family members of Israelis being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.
SVT in Sweden reports that in Stockholm a large cordon has been set up around the Israeli embassy after the national bomb protection unit assessed a suspicious object as live and was seeking to destroy it in situ.
It reports that embassy personnel found the suspicious object by the embassy fence. Police said there was no danger to the public.
Updated
Bloomberg News is reporting that Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is set to visit Egypt on 14 February. The two countries have had a fractious relationship over the last decade, but discussions will revolve around the Israel-Hamas war.
The heads of several UN bodies have united to warn of “catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza” if key donor countries don’t resume funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a lifeline for millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza.
AP has more here:
The United States and more than a dozen other countries have announced plans to suspend contributions to the agency known as UNRWA after Israel alleged that 12 of its thousands of workers participated in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
UN officials fired most of the workers and vowed an investigation.
The heads of the World Health Organisation, World Food Programme, Unicef, International Organization for Migration and other agencies and partners said the allegations were “horrifying.”
“However, we must not prevent an entire organisation from delivering on its mandate to serve people in desperate need,” the joint statement said. “No other entity has the capacity to deliver the scale and breadth of assistance that 2.2 million people in Gaza urgently need.”
UN officials have warned that UNRWA will have to halt operations by the end of February if funding is not restored.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, appealed to 35 donor nations in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday and sought new support as well.
Updated
A potentially dangerous object has been found near the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, according to Reuters.
The national bomb squad is on its way to investigate the object, which was found outside the embassy area, Reuters said a police spokesperson had told public broadcasters SVT.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
It is 3pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv, and 4.30pm in Tehran. Here are the headlines …
A senior Hamas official has told the Reuters news agency that the group is studying a new proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza, presented by mediators after talks with Israel. The ceasefire proposal followed talks in Paris involving intelligence chiefs from Israel, the United States and Egypt, with the prime minister of Qatar.
In its latest operational update, Israel’s military says it continues to operate in the central and northern Gaza Strip, and claims its forces are “conducting targeted raids on terrorist infrastructure and eliminating dozens of terrorists”. In al-Shati in the north, it claims to have killed ten people and to have “located large quantities of weapons, as well as documents and military equipment belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation”. The IDF has announced that three soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday.
It is reported that the Nasser medical complex and al-Amal hospital remain under Israeli military siege in Khan Younis. The Palestine Red Crescent Society has called on the international community to protect the healthcare facilities. It reported earlier that a security guard at the hospital had been killed by Israeli fire. At least 26,900 Palestinians have been killed and 65,949 injured by Israeli military action in Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said in a statement on Wednesday.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that Israel has detained a further 16 people, including two women, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It reports that about 6,420 Palestinians have been detained by Israel since 7 October in the territory.
The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) has vowed the country is not afraid of war with the US. The commander-in-chief, Maj Gen Hossein Salami, said: “We hear some threats from American officials about targeting Iran. We tell them that you tested us and we know each other. We do not leave any threat unanswered, and we do not look for war, but we are not afraid of it. This is the well-known truth.”
In its latest update on the situation in Gaza, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reiterated its criticism of Israeli authorities for hindering the delivery of humanitarian aid to the north of the Gaza Strip.
Norway is urging countries that have cut funding to the UNRWA agency to consider the consequences of their actions on the population in Gaza, its foreign minister has said.
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, appears to have distanced himself from words by the UK foreign secretary and former prime minister, David Cameron, earlier this week that suggested the UK might recognise Palestine as a state.
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Wednesday he was hopeful it could be decided later in the day which member state could lead the forthcoming EU mission to protect vessels in the Red Sea, adding the operation could be launched before mid-February.
The head of Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd shipping company has said he does not expect disruption to Red Sea voyages caused by Yemen’s Houthis to end anytime soon. Overnight US central command reported that Yemen’s Houthis fired one anti-ship cruise missile towards the Red Sea, which was shot down by USS Gravely.
Updated
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, appears to have distanced himself from words by the UK foreign secretary and former prime minister, David Cameron, earlier this week that suggested the UK might recognise Palestine as a state.
In parliament in London, Michael Ellis, an MP in Sunak’s Conservative party, asked if Sunak agreed that any recognition of the Palestinian state could come about only as a result of negotiations between Israel and Palestine.
Sunak said recognition of Palestine would have to be part of a process. He suggested that many steps would have to come first, and he said the UK stood with Israel.
My colleague Andrew Sparrow notes:
That sounded like a mild rebuke to Cameron. Neither Ellis nor Sunak mentioned Cameron, and Cameron’s speech on this earlier this week did not explicitly contradict what Sunak was saying today. But Cameron was floating the idea of bringing forward the moment when the UK might recognise a Palestinian state – while Sunak seemed to be kicking the prospect back into the long grass.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the newswires from Gaza and Israel.
Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor
The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) vowed the country was not afraid of war with the US, as the Pentagon weighs how directly to respond to the killing of three US service personnel in a drone attack in Jordan.
The IRGC commander-in-chief, Maj Gen Hossein Salami, said: “We hear some threats from American officials about targeting Iran. We tell them that you tested us and we know each other. We do not leave any threat unanswered, and we do not look for war, but we are not afraid of it. This is the well-known truth.”
It is expected that more Iranian-backed militia in Iraq are preparing to follow the example of Kataib Hezbollah, the group blamed for the fatal drone attack on the US service base on Sunday, and suspend operations against US bases as they attempt to stave off an imminent American attack. Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful member of the Islamic Resistance group in Iraq, announced the decision on Tuesday.
Read more of Patrick Wintour’s report here: Iran not seeking war with US but ‘not afraid of it’, says military chief
Updated
Dr Mohammed Salha at al-Awda hospital in the northern Gaza Strip has told Al Jazeera that the hospital has been shelled by Israeli forces for the second time in 48 hours.
In its latest update on the situation in Gaza, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reiterated its criticism of Israeli authorities for hindering the delivery of humanitarian aid to the north of the Gaza Strip.
It writes:
Between 1 and 25 January, 51 missions to deliver humanitarian aid were planned for the north of Wadi Gaza; however, only eight were facilitated by the Israeli military while 29 were denied access. Most of the missions that were facilitated access were related to food distribution, while those intended to support critical hospitals and Water, Hygiene and Sanitation (WASH) facilitates were largely denied access.
In an emerging pattern, the access of an additional eight planned missions was initially facilitated, but subsequently impeded as routes designated by the Israeli military proved to be unpassable, or the imposition of excessive delays prior to the departure of the missions or at checkpoints en route.
On the 26 January, the international court of justice ordered in The Hague that “Israel must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.
Updated
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that the Nasser medical complex and al-Amal hospital remain under Israeli military siege in Khan Younis.
It stated a source informed it “armoured tanks continue to intensively target and surround al-Amal hospital for the tenth day, amid constant shooting to prevent any movement on the ground.”
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has called on the international community to protect the healthcare facilities. It reported earlier that a security guard at the hospital had been killed by Israeli fire.
🚨عاجل:استشهاد موظف الأمن لمستشفى الأمل التابع للجمعية في خانيونس جراء اطلاق الاحتلال النار عليه اثناء وقوفه قرب الباب الخلفي لمستشفى الأمل.
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 31, 2024
⚠️استهدافات عنيفة في محيط مستشفى الأمل واطلاق للقنابل الدخانية .#مستشفى_الأمل #غزة #لست_هدفا ❌ pic.twitter.com/zddQi8fWo0
Updated
The head of Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd shipping company has said he does not expect disruption to Red Sea voyages caused by Yemen’s Houthis to end anytime soon, saying: “We don’t think it will be over the day after tomorrow.”
Reuters reports Rolf Habben Jansen as saying in Hamburg: “Whether it’ll be one, three or five months – I don’t know.”
Rerouting around Africa takes vessels two to three weeks longer to make the journey if they cannot use the Suez canal.
He added it was important that the EU actively supported a multinational naval coalition to protect commercial traffic in the region. EU defence ministers are meeting today to discuss a potential mission to the Red Sea, similar to the operation it mounts around the Horn of Africa to protect shipping from piracy.
Updated
At least 26,900 Palestinians have been killed and 65,949 injured by Israeli military action in Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said in a statement on Wednesday.
Reuters reports the ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, said 150 Palestinians had been killed and 313 injured in Israeli strikes in the previous 24 hours.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict, and Gaza’s health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in the death toll.
Israel has claimed to have killed about 9,000 fighters during the course of its military assault on Gaza. On Friday 26 January, the international court of justice in The Hague told Israel it must “take all measures within its power” to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention of the genocide convention.
Updated
Norway is urging countries that have cut funding to the UNRWA agency to consider the consequences of their actions on the population in Gaza, its foreign minister has told Reuters.
Norway said on Sunday it would maintain its funding to UNRWA despite accusations some agency staff took part in the 7 October attack inside Israel by Hamas.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that Israel has detained a further 16 people, including two women, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
It reports that about 6,420 Palestinians have been detained by Israel since 7 October in the territory.
Reuters has spoken by telephone to a father-of-six called Ahmed in Rafah about the prospect of a ceasefire deal. He and his family have fled their home in Gaza City, and he said:
Any ceasefire that doesn’t end the war and return us to our homes in Gaza City and the north is not worth it. We are exhausted. We were happy to learn about the news of a possible agreement. We hope they don’t disappoint us by signing any agreement that won’t return us to our homes and end the war.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the newswires from Gaza.
Updated
Borrell hopes decision will be taken today on who will lead EU mission in Red Sea
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Wednesday he was hopeful it could be decided later in the day which member state could lead the upcoming EU mission to protect vessels in the Red Sea, adding the operation could be launched before mid-February.
“We have to decide which country will take the command, where the headquarters will be and what navy assets the member states will provide,” Reuters reports he said before the start of an EU defence ministers meeting, adding he hopes that today it will be decided who will take the lead.
He added the operation will be named Aspides, “which means protector”, and said that 17 February was a possible launch date.
The EU already has one naval mission near the region, operation Atalanta, which works against piracy off the Horn of Africa. Some member states were reluctant to expand its mission to cover the Red Sea and counter Yemeni Houthi attacks, preferring to set up a new group.
Updated
US shoots down Yemen Houthi anti-ship missile
Overnight the US central command reported that Yemen’s Houthis fired one anti-ship cruise missile towards the Red Sea, which was shot down by USS Gravely.
The attack was at 11.30pm local time.
UK armed forces minister James Heappey has floated the idea that the Royal Navy might send one of its two aircraft carriers to the Red Sea to replace the USS Dwight D Eisenhower when its deployment finishes.
In an interview in with the House magazine he said: “There’s no real need for more carrier mass … our judgment was that with the Eisenhower on station and with jets available from Akrotiri, that we were able to meet the challenge as it is now.”
PA Media reports Heappey said: “The fact is the Eisenhower can’t stay there forever”, adding “when the Eisenhower goes home, if we were needed to plug a gap in US deployments, or if the situation deteriorates” then the UK might deploy either HMS Queen Elizabeth or HMS Prince of Wales.
Updated
In its latest operational update, Israel’s military says it continues to operate in the central and northern Gaza Strip, and claims its forces are “conducting targeted raids on terrorist infrastructure and eliminating dozens of terrorists”.
In al-Shati in the north, it claims to have killed ten people and to have “located large quantities of weapons, as well as documents and military equipment belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation.”
It also claims to have carried out “a significant targeted raid on terrorist infrastructure embedded inside a school” in the north of Gaza, resulting in the detention of “10 Islamic Jihad terrorist operatives, who were using the school as a hideout”.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with a top Israeli official on Wednesday, the White House has said.
Sullivan will discuss the Gaza conflict with Ron Dermer, who is Israel’s minister for strategic affairs and a well-known figure in Washington, having served as Israel’s ambassador.
The US has been working with Israel and Qatar to reach a deal for the release of hostages still held by Hamas.
Iran warns it will act decisively to any attack after Biden says he has decided on response to Jordan drone strike
Iran’s envoy to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, has warned that Tehran would respond decisively to any attack on its territory, its interests, or Iranian nationals outside its borders.
His comments come a day after US president Joe Biden said he had decided how to respond to a drone attack by Iran-aligned groups that killed US service members in Jordan, without elaborating.
The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, has been looking into the mood in Iran as Biden mulls his response.
Updated
The UN’s coordinator for Gaza aid has said nothing can “replace or substitute” UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency.
“There is no way that any organization can replace or substitute [the] tremendous capacity, the fabric of UNRWA – [their] ability and their knowledge of the population in Gaza,” said aid coordinator Sigrid Kaag.
Several countries, including the US, Britain, Germany and Australia, have suspended funding to UNRWA after some staff were implicated in the Hamas attacks on Israel.
UNRWA says it has acted promptly over allegations by Israel that 12 of its staff were involved in the Hamas attacks, adding that cuts in funding would affect ordinary Palestinians.
Updated
UN secretary general António Guterres met with dozens of UNRWA donors in New York for more than two hours on Tuesday, to discuss the actions being taken in response to the Israeli accusations that some agency staff took part in the 7 October attack by Hamas militants.
The Reuters news agency reported that several ambassadors described the meeting as constructive.
Guterres appealed to countries who had suspended funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees to reconsider and to “other countries, including those in the region, also to step up to the plate,” Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour told reporters after the meeting.
China’s UN ambassador Zhang Jun said Guterres shared information with donors about the individual accusations made against UNRWA staff.
“We are at a very critical moment in coping with the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the war is still going on … we should not allow these individual cases to dilute our attention in pursuing a ceasefire,” Zhang told reporters.
The accusations became public on Friday when UNRWA announced it had fired some staff after Israel provided the agency with information. Guterres said on Sunday that of 12 people implicated nine were fired, one is dead, and the identity of the remaining two was being clarified.
The United States – UNRWA’s biggest donor – temporarily paused its funding, along with a number of other countries.
The US ambassador to the UN said earlier on Tuesday that UNRWA needs to make “fundamental changes” before Washington will resume funding.
WHO decries 'serious shortage' of medicine, fuel and food at Nasser hospital
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), has said that Nasser hospital in southern Gaza is only “minimally functioning” and facing shortages of major resources.
The hospital – Gaza’s largest remaining healthcare facility – is situated in the southern city of Khan Younis which has been under sustained assault from Israeli forces.
Although the WHO says it was able to deliver some medical supplies on Monday, there remains shortages of “specialised medical practitioners”, “medicines, oxygen, food, fuel” and “ways to dispose of solid waste”.
Efforts to deliver food to the hospital were delayed, said Tedros.
Today, due to delays around the checkpoint, the crowds took food being delivered, and once again it did not reach Nasser. This underscores the utter desperation of people in Gaza, who live in hellish conditions, including severe hunger. We continue to seek permission to deliver the fuel to the hospital.
Three Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza
The IDF has announced that three soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday.
They were named as Sgt Maj (Res) Yuval Nir, 43; Capt (Res) Gavriel Shani, 28; Maj (Res) Netzer Simchi, 30.
The Israeli army has said that all three died in fighting. The army also said that five soldiers were seriously injured.
Updated
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh going to Cairo to discuss ceasefire proposal
A senior Hamas official has told the Reuters news agency that the group is studying a new proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza, presented by mediators after talks with Israel.
The ceasefire proposal followed talks in Paris involving intelligence chiefs from Israel, the United States and Egypt, with the prime minister of Qatar. In a mark of the seriousness of the negotiations, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said he was going to Cairo to discuss it, his first public trip there for more than a month.
The proposal reportedly involved a three-stage truce, during which the group would first release remaining civilians among the hostages it captured on 7 October, then soldiers, and finally the bodies of hostages that were killed.
The proposal appears to be the most serious peace initiative since a brief truce in late November.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure from the Biden White House to chart a path towards ending the war, and domestically from relatives of hostages who worry that negotiations are the only way to bring them home. But far-right parties in his ruling coalition say they will quit rather than endorse a deal to free hostages that left Hamas intact.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu repeated his vow not to pull troops out of Gaza until “total victory”, a reminder of the huge gap in the public stances of the warring sides over what it would take to halt combat even temporarily.
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
The Hamas leadership is studying a new proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages from Gaza, in what is being considered the most serious peace initiative in months.
As details of the truce emerge, analysts have cautioned that huge gaps remain in the public stances of the warring sides over what it would take to halt combat even temporarily.
We’ll have more on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
Joe Biden has said he has decided how to respond to a drone attack on a US service base on Sunday that killed three US service personnel and injured dozens in Jordan. The US president did not elaborate on his decision but said he wasn’t looking for a wider war in the Middle East. The US could opt for a tiered response involving “multiple actions”, the White House’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said.
Biden’s statement came as the Iran-backed militia that Washington blamed for the attack said it had suspended anti-US operations. Kataib Hezbollah said its the decision was intended to prevent “embarrassment” to the Iraqi government.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he will not accept any ceasefire deal that requires the departure of Israeli troops from Gaza or the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners. Netanyahu poured cold water on any deal that required Israeli soldiers to leave Gaza permanently without a clear military victory, saying the war in Gaza was not “another round” with Hamas and he would not end it without achieving Israel’s goals.
The Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said he was willing to travel to Cairo to discuss proposals for a potential new deal. Haniyeh said the group’s aim remained to end Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and secure a full pullout of Israeli forces from the territory. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad secretary general, Ziad al-Nakhala, ruled out the group engaging in any ceasefire that does not involve the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
Egypt, Qatar and the US are hoping to see if the two sides can be persuaded to accept a ceasefire lasting at least a month, which would offer the chance for almost all the hostages to be released. The proposal, described as a framework, was hammered out during talks in Paris. Leaks suggest the first phase of the proposed ceasefire would include the release of about 35 hostages including civilian women, older men and hostages who are ill or injured, in return for a six-week pause of the fighting. The second stage would be focused on male and female soldiers, and the third stage would see the release of the bodies of dead hostages.
Israeli forces dressed in doctors’ scrubs and women’s clothes killed three Palestinian militants in an undercover operation in a hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The units entered Ibn Sina hospital on the outskirts of the city’s refugee camp early on Tuesday, CCTV footage of the aftermath of the operation showed. The hospital’s medical director said the three killed were “executed in cold blood”.
The Israel Defense Forces denied reports that its forces stormed al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, or that it ordered people inside to evacuate at gunpoint. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on Tuesday said Israeli forces had demanded displaced people and its teams to evacuate the building “under the threat of arms”. A later update said Israeli tanks were stationed in the front yard of the hospital as Israeli forces were firing live ammunition and smoke grenades at displaced individuals and its staff.
The Israeli military said it had channelled seawater into Gaza’s tunnels in an effort to destroy the sprawling underground network used by Hamas militants. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement said it was “part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF to neutralise the threat of Hamas’s subterranean network of tunnels.” Israeli officials have said Hamas’s underground system has been key to its operations on the battlefield.
A total of 26,751 Palestinians have now been killed and 65,636 wounded by Israeli military action in Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures from the Gaza health ministry on Tuesday. The figures include 114 Palestinians killed and 249 injured in the past 24 hours. Israel claims it has killed about 9,000 enemy combatants while losing 221 of its own forces in the ground campaign inside the territory.
Israel has handed over to Palestinian authorities the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in recent weeks, health officials in the Palestinian territory have said. The bodies, which had been held in Israel, were handed over on Tuesday through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing and would be buried in mass graves in the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, the officials said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged donors not to suspend funding to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack. “Cutting off funding will only hurt the people of Gaza who desperately need support,” the WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
