Closing summary
It’s approaching 4.30am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and we’re about to close this blog. Our live coverage will resume later today. Here’s an overview of the latest key developments. Thank you for reading.
The prospect of a deal to release the remaining hostages held by Hamas appeared to recede on Sunday after an official in the militant group said Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of its conditions meant there was “no chance” of their return. The Israeli prime minister earlier dismissed Hamas’s conditions to end the war, which he said included leaving Hamas in power and Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza. A Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, said Netanyahu’s refusal to end the offensive in Gaza “means there is no chance for the return of the [Israeli] captives”, estimated to number 130. Netanyahu said that “I reject outright the terms of surrender” in Hamas’s demands.
A total of 25,105 Palestinians have been killed and 62,681 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday. The head of the UN, António Guterres, later denounced Israel for the “heartbreaking and utterly unacceptable” killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, saying: “Israel’s military operations have spread mass destruction and killed civilians on a scale unprecedented during my time as secretary general.”
Two US Navy Seals who went missing during an operation to seize Iranian weapons bound for Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been declared dead after a 10-day search failed to locate them, the US military has said. The US central command had previously said that two Seals who were reported as lost at sea were involved in the 11 January operation in which the elite special operations personnel boarded a dhow off the coast of Somalia and seized missile components made in Iran.
An Israeli strike killed a Hezbollah fighter on Sunday in south Lebanon, a source close to the group said. According to a Lebanese security official, the strike on a car in south Lebanon “killed a member of Hezbollah’s protection team”, while the senior commander he was protecting “escaped death”. The commander was in a vehicle with three other people behind the car that was hit, the official added.
About 9,000 demonstrators marched through Brussels calling for an end of Israel’s offensive in Gaza on Sunday. The rally in the Belgian capital came a day before EU foreign ministers will meet their Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Saudi and Jordanian counterparts in a string of meetings to discuss the war in Gaza and the plight of Palestinian civilians.
A strike on Damascus targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Syria spy chief and blamed on Israel killed 13 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said in an updated toll. The Guards confirmed it lost five members in Saturday’s strike.
Family members of Hamas-held hostages along with protesters have pitched tents outside Benjamin Netanyahu’s private home in Jerusalem after staging a demonstration demanding the government strike an immediate deal for the captives’ release.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) received 80 trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent via the Rafah border crossing with Israel over the weekend. The trucks carried food, water, relief items and medical supplies, the PRCS said, adding that no trucks entered through the Karm Abu Salem crossing.
The US said it was taking an attack by Iran-backed militants on an Iraq base “extremely seriously”. On Saturday, the US military said “multiple ballistic missiles and rockets” were fired by Iran-backed militants at al-Asad airbase in western Iraq, while an official said US personnel suffered minor injuries.
The UK’s defence secretary, Grant Shapps, described Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state as “disappointing”, while Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, condemned the Israeli prime minister’s stance. Netanyahu’s spokesperson claimed that in a phone call on Friday with Joe Biden, the Israeli leader told the US president that his country’s security needs left no space for a sovereign Palestinian state.
Hamas’s Qatar-based chief, Ismail Haniyeh, has held a meeting with the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, diplomatic sources told AFP, in the first official contact between the two since a phone call on 16 October. One of the sources said the main topics discussed were the establishment of a ceasefire “as quickly as possible” and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Updated
We have a full report on two US Navy Seals being declared dead after going missing during an operation to seize Iranian weapons bound for Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The US military’s declaration came after it said a 10-day search failed to locate them.
The US central command (Centcom) had previously said that two Seals who were reported as lost at sea were involved in the 11 January operation, in which the elite special operations personnel boarded a dhow off the coast of Somalia and seized missile components made in Iran.
Centcom on Sunday described the capture of the missile components as “the first seizure of lethal, Iranian-supplied advanced conventional weapons … to the Houthis since the beginning of Houthi attacks against merchant ships in November 2023”.
See the full report here:
Updated
