Israel and Hamas have moved closer to agreement on a 30-day ceasefire in Gaza when Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners would be released, sources told Reuters, as Israel pressed ahead with its assault on southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis.
There is no further information on this story at the moment but we will update when more details come through.
Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants Wednesday near the main hospital in Gaza’s second-largest city of Khan Younis, where medics said hundreds of patients and thousands of displaced people were unable to leave because of the fighting, reports Associated Press (AP).
Reporting from Rafah, an AP journalist said Israel had ordered people to leave a swath of downtown Khan Younis that includes Nasser and two smaller hospitals as it pushed ahead with its offensive against Hamas. The UN humanitarian office said the area was home to 88,000 Palestinians and was hosting another 425,000 displaced by fighting elsewhere.
The aid group Doctors Without Borders said its staff were trapped inside Nasser hospital with about 850 patients and thousands of displaced people because the surrounding roads were inaccessible or too dangerous. Nasser hospital is one of only two hospitals in southern Gaza that can still treat critically ill patients, the group said. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry also said the hospital had been isolated.
The Israeli military said its forces were battling militants inside Khan Younis after completing their encirclement of the city the day before. It stated that aircraft were striking targets as part of the operations there and it had also targeted suspected militants in central and northern Gaza.
Thousands of people fled south from Khan Younis on Tuesday toward the town of Rafah, say AP. The UN says about 1.5 million people – around two-thirds of Gaza’s population – are crowded into shelters and tent camps in and around Rafah, which is on the border with Egypt.
Even there, Palestinians have found little safety, with Israel regularly carrying out strikes in and around the town. Palestinian witnesses told AP that in recent days Israeli soldiers and tanks had pushed into parts of Muwasi, a sandy area along the coast that Israel had declared a safe zone, where tens of thousands of people were living in tents without basic services.
At least eight people have been critically injured after Israeli forces targeted a school in Khan Younis that was sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians, reports Al Jazeera journalist Hani Mahmoud in Rafah.
Mahmoud writes:
We heard from paramedics and first responders that it was difficult to transfer those injured inside the school to Nasser hospital … despite the fact it was a very short distance.
The intensity of the bombing prevented the ambulance and paramedics from getting to the school … this is what we have been seeing since the early hours of this morning.”
Strikes by the US on Iraqi military positions will lead to “irresponsible escalation” and violate the country’s sovereignty, the prime minister’s office said in a statement on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
The US carried out strikes against three facilities linked to Iran-backed militia on Tuesday, the Pentagon said. Iraq will consider these operations as “aggressive actions” that undermine years of cooperation, the Iraqi government statement added.
Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi will arrive in Turkey to meet Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday for twice-delayed talks aimed at ironing out past differences and trying to halt the spread of the Israel-Hamas war.
AFP reports that the rapid pace of the Middle East escalation forced Raisi to delay his visit to Ankara twice. In early January planned talks in Ankara were called off when twin blasts claimed by Islamic State group jihadists killed 89 people at the shrine of assassinated Iranian Revolutionary Guards general Qassem Suleimani.
A trip Raisi had planned for November was cancelled because of conflicting schedules of diplomats involved in consultations over the Gaza war.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency said Raisi would be leading a “high-ranking political and economic delegation” on his first official visit to Turkey since his election in 2021.
The Turkish presidency said the two leaders would appear at a press conference after holdings talks and chairing a meeting of their top ministers during the one-day visit.
Analysts believe the Gaza war has force the two leaders to seek a joint approach to the Middle East and postpone regional disputes.
“Relations between Turkey and Iran have always been complex and multidimensional,” Hakki Uygur, director of Istanbul’s Centre for Iranian Studies told AFP. “Turkey has always able to manage it, to somehow to find a middle ground. I think a similar thing will happen now.”
“It is possible that Raisi and Erdogan might declare some symbolic measure about Palestine out of the meeting,” said Arash Azizi, a professor at Clemson University in South Carolina. “But I think their focus will be mostly on how to contain the conflict and make sure it doesn’t expand further, something that Ankara and Tehran both want.”
US forces bombed sites used by Iran-backed militants in Iraq early Wednesday after a spate of attacks targeting US personnel, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said, killing two people, reports AFP citing Iraqi officials.
The strikes came just days after US troops in western Iraq were targeted with ballistic missiles and rockets in an attack the Pentagon blamed on militants supported by Tehran.
According to Iraqi sources cited by the AFP, the US strikes targeted the Hezbollah Brigades, a group affiliated with the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation force), an alliance of Iran-backed former paramilitary groups now integrated in Iraq’s regular armed forces.
They hit sites in the Jurf al-Sakhr area, south of Baghdad, as well as in the al-Qaim area on the border with Syria where two people were killed and two wounded, an interior ministry official and a former member of the Hashed al-Shaabi said.
Israel kept up its heavy assault on the “encircled” city of Khan Younis after an outpouring of grief over the army’s deadliest single day since ground operations in the territory began, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
As the fighting raged, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA reported that Israeli forces on Tuesday had issued fresh evacuation orders for a 4 sq km (1.5 sq mile) segment of Khan Younis currently home to about 513,000 people as well as the major Nasser and al-Amal hospitals.
The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas decried the “dangerous demands” for people to head south, and warned that Israel intended to “displace the Palestinian people from their homeland, thus leading to unforeseeable consequences”, according to official news agency Wafa.
The evacuation orders came as the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that Palestinians were facing “catastrophic food insecurity”, and as the UN chief took Israel to task over its rejection of a two-state solution – seen by ally the US as the only path to a durable peace, says AFP.
The war has led to dire shortages of food, water, fuel and medicines in the besieged territory. In Gaza City, displaced resident Umm Dahud al-Kafarna told AFP the Israeli campaign had left “us with nothing to eat or drink while bombing us from the air, sea and tanks”.
“More than half a million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic food insecurity levels and the risk of famine increases each day,” said Abeer Etefa, the WFP’s senior Middle East spokesperson.
Israel and Hamas have moved closer to agreement on a 30-day ceasefire in Gaza when Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners would be released, sources told Reuters, as Israel pressed ahead with its assault on southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis.
There is no further information on this story at the moment but we will update when more details come through.
It’s 9am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and 10am in Sana’a, Yemen. We’ll be handing over to London shortly to continue our coverage of the Middle East crisis, but first, here are some of the latest developments:
The US military has carried out two more strikes in Yemen which they say have destroyed two Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed at the Red Sea. The US says the Houthis were preparing to launch the missiles. US central command (Centcom) has posted on X that “US forces identified the missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and determined that they presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the US Navy ships in the region.”
The US has carried out strikes in Iraq against targets linked to Iran-backed militia. Associated Press is reporting that three facilities in Iraq were hit by the US military. Defence secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes were in retaliation for missile and drone attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria over the past several days. The US strikes hit militia facilities in Jurf al-Sakhar, which is south of Baghdad, al-Qaim and another unnamed site in western Iraq, two US officials told AP.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, on Tuesday said the “clear and repeated rejection of the two-state solution at the highest levels of the Israeli government is unacceptable”, as he appealed for more aid access throughout the Gaza Strip. “The entire population of Gaza is enduring destruction at a scale and speed without parallel in recent history,” Guterres told the UN security council. “Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
He told the council that the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave was “appalling” and that “the people of Gaza not only risk being killed or injured by relentless bombardments, they also run a growing chance of contracting infectious diseases like hepatitis A, dysentery, cholera.” Guterres again appealed for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to ensure aid gets to where it is needed, to facilitate the release of hostages and to lower the tensions throughout the Middle East.
The Israeli envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, faced a walkout by some Arab ambassadors as he started by saying the world was trying to treat cancer with an aspirin, and said those advocating a ceasefire needed to realise it only meant the terror group Hamas would “remain in power, they would regroup and rearm, and soon Israel would face another attempted holocaust.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that the US was opposed to any permanent change to Gaza’s territory, but kept the door open to possible support for any “transitional arrangements” to resolve the conflict with Israel. “If there needs to be transitional arrangements to enable that to happen, that’s one thing. But when it comes to the permanent status of Gaza going forward, we’ve been clear, we remain clear about not encroaching on its territory,” Blinken told reporters in Abuja, Nigeria.
British foreign secretary David Cameron will travel to Israel on Wednesday where he is expected to raise concerns over the high number of Palestinians killed and push for a “sustainable” ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi is expected to fly to Turkey on Wednesday for twice-delayed talks aimed at ironing out past differences and trying to halt the spread of the Israel-Hamas war.
The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on X pictures of a visit to an IDF base where he told cadets “My main expectation is nothing less than total victory. There is no substitute for victory”.
US President Joe Biden has been heckled by protesters at a campaign event in Virginia. Multiple interruptions forced Biden to pause or try to speak over shouts of “Ceasefire now,” and “Genocide Joe” over his support for Israel and its war in Gaza, the Reuters news agency reports.
The US has asked China to urge Iran to rein in the Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen over their attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea. The Financial Times is reporting that the US has seen little sign of help from Beijing, citing US officials.
The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha) has released their latest update where they are highlighting what’s happening in Khan Younis specifically as fighting intensifies there “Hostilities were particularly intense in Khan Younis, with Israeli forces reported to having surrounded and launched a large-scale operation in the city. Heavy fighting is reported in proximity to hospitals in Khan Younis, including Al Aqsa, Nasser and Al Amal, with reports of Palestinians trying to flee to the southern town of Rafah.”
The United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha) has outlined some of the violence happening in the West Bank in its latest update. It describes the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank in 2023 as “the highest” since Ocha started recording casualties in 2005.
It also says “the number of Israelis killed in the West Bank and Israel in 2023 in attacks perpetrated by Palestinians from the West Bank was the highest” in the same time frame.
Here’s some of that update on Palestinians killed in the West Bank:
Since 7 October 2023 and as of 23 January 2024, 360 Palestinians have been killed, including 92 children, across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Additionally, two Palestinians from the West Bank were killed while carrying out an attack in Israel on 30 November. Of these 360 fatalities, 350 were killed by Israeli forces, eight by Israeli settlers and two by either Israeli forces or settlers.
The number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 2023 (507) marks the highest number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since OCHA started recording casualties in 2005. So far in 2024 (as of 23 January), 51 Palestinians, including at least 11 children, have been killed.
On the deaths of Israelis Ocha says:
Since 7 October 2023 and as of 23 January 2024, five Israelis, including four members of Israeli forces, have been killed in Palestinian-perpetrated attacks in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
In addition, four Israelis were killed in an attack carried out by Palestinians from the West Bank in West Jerusalem (one of the four was killed by Israeli forces who misidentified him) on 30 November 2023. Another Israeli woman was killed in another attack perpetrated by Palestinians in Israel on 15 January 2024.
The number of Israelis killed in the West Bank and Israel in 2023 in attacks perpetrated by Palestinians from the West Bank (36) was the highest since OCHA started recording casualties in 2005.
The United States has asked China to urge Iran to rein in the Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen over their attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The Financial Times is reporting that the US has seen little sign of help from Beijing, citing US officials.
The US has repeatedly raised the matter with top Chinese officials in the past three months, the report said.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy, Jon Finer, discussed the issue in meetings this month in Washington with Liu Jianchao, head of the international liaison department of China’s Communist party, the newspaper said.
The US secretary of state Antony Blinken also raised the issue with his Chinese counterpart, the report said, adding US officials believe there was little evidence that China had put any pressure on Iran to restrain Yemen’s Houthis, beyond a mild statement that Beijing issued last week.
The reports come as the US military carried out strikes in Yemen, destroying two Houthi anti-ship missiles that the US said were aimed at the Red Sea and were preparing to launch.
US President Joe Biden has been heckled by protesters at a campaign event in Virginia.
Multiple interruptions forced Biden to pause or try to speak over shouts of “Ceasefire now,” and “Genocide Joe” over his support for Israel and its war in Gaza, the Reuters news agency reports.
Biden’s support of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is costing him support among young voters and other opponents of the war who could play a critical role in the 2024 election, especially in swing states such as Michigan, says Reuters.
“They feel deeply,” Biden said after some of the initial protesters were ushered out of the auditorium.
As the heckling continued from other participants, Biden kept speaking, and warned the audience that the constant interruptions would continue and had clearly been planned. Supporters in the crowd shouted “Four More Years!” to drown out the heckling.
David Cameron will return to the Middle East on Wednesday to press for an immediate humanitarian pause in the fighting.
Downing Street said Cameron was expected to raise “the importance of a two-state solution”.
The foreign secretary, who said the situation in Gaza is desperate, is due to visit Qatar, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey.
Lord Cameron, on his second visit to the region since returning to government, will continue to insist no permanent ceasefire can be agreed unless Hamas releases all the remaining hostages, is incapable of firing rockets at Israel, and an agreement exists that allows the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza and provide services.
His visit comes as Qatar continues to try to mediate between Israel and Hamas on a plan for a two-month ceasefire that would see the release of all hostages and a large number of Palestinian political prisoners.
Some mediators believe that if such a long humanitarian pause was agreed neither side would want to return to war.
Read the rest of our diplomatic editor’s piece on David Cameron’s planned visit here:
There may have been criticism of Israel from the UN chief and other delegates at the security council meeting, but the Israeli prime minister is signalling he is pushing on with the war in Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu posted on X pictures of a visit to an IDF base where he told cadets “My main expectation is nothing less than total victory. There is no substitute for victory”.
Along with those latest strikes by the US on Houthi anti-ship missile sites in Yemen, the US launched strikes in Iraq on Tuesday.
“US military forces conducted necessary and proportionate strikes on three facilities used by the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia group and other Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq,” the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said in a statement.
“These precision strikes are in direct response to a series of escalatory attacks against US and Coalition personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias,” Austin added.
On Saturday, four US personnel suffered traumatic brain injuries after Iraq’s Ain al-Asad airbase was hit by multiple ballistic missiles and rockets fired by Iranian-backed militants from inside Iraq.
Sources speaking to the Reuters news agency said Tuesday’s strikes in Iraq killed at least two militants, and that four people were wounded.
A reminder of what’s been taking place over the last day – we’ve seen some strong words on Tuesday at the UN security council debate on Gaza.
Patrick Wintour, our diplomatic editor writes:
Israel’s “clear and repeated rejection of the two-state solution” is unacceptable, and could only prolong the conflict in Gaza, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said, at the launch of a highly charged security council debate focusing on aid shipments to Gaza.
Gutteres told the meeting in New York on Monday that the denial of a Palestinian state will only embolden extremists everywhere and indefinitely extend the conflict.
“Last week’s clear and repeated rejection of the two-state solution at the highest levels of the Israeli government is unacceptable,” Guterres told the council.
“This refusal, and the denial of the right to statehood to the Palestinian people, would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and security,” he said.
Multiple speakers from around the globe also had their say, and Patrick sums up their views here:
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is expected to fly to Turkey on Wednesday for twice-delayed talks aimed at ironing out past differences and trying to halt the spread of the Israel-Hamas war.
Raisi’s visit to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan comes with the war in Gaza starting to inflame tensions and escalate fighting across the Middle East, says Agence France Presse.
The rapid pace of the Middle East escalation forced Raisi to delay his visit to Ankara twice. His planned talks in Ankara in early January were called off when twin blasts claimed by Islamic State killed 89 people at the shrine of assassinated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general Qassem Suleimani.
A trip he had planned for November was cancelled because of conflicting schedules of diplomats involved in consultations over the Gaza war.
The US military has carried out two more strikes in Yemen which they say have destroyed two Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed at the Red Sea. The US says the Houthis were preparing to launch the missiles.
US central command (Centcom) has posted on X that “U.S. forces identified the missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and determined that they presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the U.S. Navy ships in the region.”
Centcom describes the strikes as “self-defence”. These are the latest strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis over its targeting of Red Sea shipping. There was also a larger round of strikes late Monday.
The Houthis, who control the most populous parts of Yemen, have said their attacks on ships are in solidarity with Palestinians as Israel strikes Gaza. The attacks have disrupted global shipping and deepened concern that fallout from the Israel-Hamas war could destabilise the Middle East.
It’s 6:41am in Sana’a, Yemen and 5:41am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. Welcome to our latest blog on the Middle East crisis. I’m Reged Ahmad and I’ll be with you for the next while.
The US says it has carried out new strikes against two Houthi anti-ship missiles in Yemen. US central command (Centcom) has posted on X that “forces conducted strikes against two Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed into the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch.”
More on that in a moment but first, here’s a summary of the latest events:
The United States has carried out strikes in Iraq against targets linked to Iran-backed militia. Associated Press is reporting that three facilities in Iraq were hit by the US military. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes were in retaliation for missile and drone attacks on American troops in Iraq and Syria over the past several days. The US strikes hit militia facilities in Jurf al-Sakhar, which is south of Baghdad, al-Qaim and another unnamed site in western Iraq, two US officials told AP.
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, on Tuesday said the “clear and repeated rejection of the two-state solution at the highest levels of the Israeli government is unacceptable”, as he appealed for more aid access throughout the Gaza Strip. “The entire population of Gaza is enduring destruction at a scale and speed without parallel in recent history,” Guterres told the UN security council. “Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
He told the council that the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave was “appalling” and that “the people of Gaza not only risk being killed or injured by relentless bombardments, they also run a growing chance of contracting infectious diseases like hepatitis A, dysentery, cholera.” Guterres again appealed for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to ensure aid gets to where it is needed, to facilitate the release of hostages and to lower the tensions throughout the Middle East.
Speaker after speaker from around the globe but especially the Middle East has lined up to call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and rapid pathway move to a two state solution, writes our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour.
The Israeli envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, faced a walkout by some Arab ambassadors as he started by saying the world was trying to treat cancer with an aspirin, and said those advocating a ceasefire needed to realise it only meant the terror group Hamas would “remain in power, they would regroup and rearm, and soon Israel would face another attempted holocaust.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that the United States was opposed to any permanent change to Gaza’s territory, but kept the door open to possible support for any “transitional arrangements” to resolve the conflict with Israel. “If there needs to be transitional arrangements to enable that to happen, that’s one thing. But when it comes to the permanent status of Gaza going forward, we’ve been clear, we remain clear about not encroaching on its territory,” Blinken told reporters in Abuja, Nigeria.
British foreign secretary David Cameron will travel to Israel on Wednesday where he is expected to raise concerns over the high number of Palestinians killed and push for a “sustainable” ceasefire in the Gaza war.
The United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha) has released their latest update where they are highlighting what’s happening in Khan Younis specifically as fighting intensifies there “Hostilities were particularly intense in Khan Younis, with Israeli forces reported to having surrounded and launched a large-scale operation in the city. Heavy fighting is reported in proximity to hospitals in Khan Younis, including Al Aqsa, Nasser and Al Amal, with reports of Palestinians trying to flee to the southern town of Rafah.”
Whatever the future of a post-Gaza war looks like, it cannot include the leaders of Hamas, the US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said. In a press briefing at the White House, Kirby also said the US was involved in “active conversations” on the release of more hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, Reuters reports.
The United States would support another “pause” – temporary ceasefire – in Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, such as a 30, 60 or 90-day period, the White House has just said. The US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, is briefing right now in the west wing at the regular media press conference with him and the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre.
Aid trucks continue to have difficulty reaching people in southern Gaza, from Egypt and, via multiple aid agency reports, are not able to get to many parts of central and northern Gaza at all. Trucks are blocked for security checks and become severely backed up prior to reaching inside Gaza.
The United States has destroyed or degraded over 25 Houthi missile launch facilities and more than 20 missiles in Yemen since it started strikes in the country earlier this month, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
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2024-01-24 07:23:38Z
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