Summary
Hello and thank you for reading the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
Here is a quick roundup of some of the key developments from today:
At least 24,285 Palestinians have been killed and 61,154 have been wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in the territory said in a statement on Tuesday. In the past 24 hours, 158 Palestinians were killed and 320 wounded, the ministry added.
Iran destroyed two bases of Baluchi militant group Jaish al-Adl in Pakistan by launching missiles on Tuesday, Iranian state media reported. According to Reuters, the group has previously mounted attacks on Iranian security forces in the border area with Pakistan.
Arab countries are not keen to get involved in the rebuilding of Gaza if the Palestinian enclave will be “levelled” again in a few years, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Tuesday, adding that the Palestinian statehood question needed to be addressed.
Aid agencies have begun suspending vital operations in Yemen after the recent US and UK strikes on Houthi targets, amid warnings that further military intervention risks deepening one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The EU has sanctioned the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and added him to the group’s terrorist list. As a result, Sinouar is subject to the freezing of his funds and other financial assets in EU member states. The sanctions also prohibit EU operators from making funds or economic resources available to him.
US Central Command said in a statement on Tuesday that it had seized Iranian advanced conventional weapons bound for Yemen’s Houthis on 11 January. It was the first seizure of “lethal Iranian-supplied advanced conventional weapons” to the Houthis since Houthi attacks against merchant ships began in November, the statement added.
The Iraqi Kurdish prime minister, Masrour Barzani, has accused Iran of killing innocent civilians in its strikes on the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
A number of European states, “concerned” Arab countries and the United States are working on a concept for a unified Palestinian government that could attract reconstruction funds, Norway’s foreign minister said in an interview in Davos. Specific countries were not named.
Turkey said it had destroyed 23 targets in overnight airstrikes on Kurdish militants in northern Iraq and Syria, a further escalation of conflict south of its border.
Requiring Israel to agree to a time-bound, mandatory path to a two-state solution is key to future stability in Israel and the Palestinian territories, Qatar’s prime minister said on Tuesday during the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos.
France has accused Iran of violating Iraq’s sovereignty after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed to have struck a purported Israeli “spy headquarters” in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, Reuters reported.
Iraq condemned on Tuesday Iran’scondemned Iran’s “aggression” on Erbil that led to civilian casualties in residential areas, according to a statement by the country’s foreign ministry, after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they attacked Israel’s “spy headquarters” in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday its troops killed dozens of Palestinian militants around the town of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza and also uncovered about 100 rocket launchers. “During IDF activity in the area of Beit Lahia, the troops located approximately 100 rocket set-installations and 60 ready-to-use rockets. The troops killed dozens of terrorists during the activity,” it said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have also claimed an attack in Syria. The group said it had fired a number of ballistic missiles at “terrorist operations” in the country – including Islamic State targets – and destroyed them. A US defence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the US tracked the missiles, which hit in northern Iraq and northern Syria, and initial indications were that the strikes were “reckless and imprecise”.
A few days ago, in a wood-panelled courtroom in The Hague, men and women in robes and wigs argued over whether what is happening in Gaza is the deliberate destruction of a people. In Today in Focus, Michael Safi asks, is it genocide? The accuser was South Africa, a state that emerged just decades ago from a suffocating regime of apartheid. The accused was Israel, a nation established in the wake of the most notorious genocide in history.
Aid officials in Gaza believe that pockets of famine already exist in the territory, with parents sacrificing remaining food for their children, an apple costing $8 and fuel for cooking almost impossible to find, the Guardian’s Jason Burke reported. UN agencies have said that Gaza urgently needs more humanitarian assistance as Palestinian authorities reported that the death toll in the territory during the Israeli offensive there had risen to more than 24,000.
Egyptian authorities reportedly thwarted a drug smuggling attempt on the Egyptian-Israeli border on Monday. Two security sources told the Reuters news agency that there was an exchange of gunfire close to a crossing where aid deliveries for Gaza were being inspected. During the incident, six drug smugglers were arrested, the sources said.
A US state department spokesperson has said that an Iranian attack near Iraq’s northern city of Erbil on Monday “undermine Iraq’s stability.” “We oppose Iran’s reckless missile strikes,” Matthew Miller said, adding that the US supported “the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government’s efforts to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people.”
Come back tomorrow for more of our live coverage.
Updated
Iran destroyed two bases of Baluchi militant group Jaish al-Adl in Pakistan by launching missiles on Tuesday, Iranian state media reported.
According to Reuters, the group has previously mounted attacks on Iranian security forces in the border area with Pakistan.
Updated
