Israel-Hamas war live: Netanyahu again rules out ceasefire until Hamas returns hostages; death toll in Gaza rises to 9,770 | Israel-Hamas war

Hamas said that Israel carried out “intense bombing” on Sunday evening around several hospitals in the north of Gaza, shortly after telecommunications were cut for a third time since October 7.

“For more than an hour, intense bombings have been taking place around hospitals,” said Hamas spokespeson Salama Marouf, Agence France-Presse reports.

She added that the area around Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital saw particularly heavy strikes.

Hezbollah said it fired multiple grad rockets at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona on Sunday in retaliation for an Israeli strike in south Lebanon that it said had killed a woman and three children, Reuters.

In a statement, the Lebanese militant faction said its attack came in response to Israel’s “heinous and brutal crime.”

Reuters has released video of Anadolu photojournalist Mohammad Al-Aloul who lost his children, four of his brothers and their children in an Israeli strike on the Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza:

(Warning: Graphic content)

“I found out my four children had been martyred. My only daughter was martyred. My son Ahmed, the kind one, may God have mercy upon him. Kenan, may God have mercy upon him. Qais, may God have mercy upon him. What can I tell you?

My nephews were martyred, may God have mercy upon them. My brother was martyred with his children Aboud, Abdelrahim and Layan. All my brothers were martyred, except one, Mahmoud, who was injured when the walls fell on his back. My wife is in a critical condition,” Al-Aloul said in tears.

UN official: average Palestinian in Gaza living on two pieces of bread a day

Palestinian telecoms firm: Internet, phone lines cut again in Gaza

Three children and their grandmother were killed in an Israeli strike on a car in southern Lebanon on Sunday, a Hezbollah lawmaker from the area said, calling the attack “a dangerous development” that would have repercussions, Reuters reports.

“The enemy will pay the price for its crimes against civilians,” lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah told Reuters, adding that the children were aged between 8 and 15.

The children’s mother were wounded in the attack as it was moving between the villages of Aynata and Aitaroun, according to Fadlallah.

According to an Israeli army spokesperson, the army would be releasing a statement later on Sunday about a strike in Lebanon, Reuters reports.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned against the rising disinformation being spread globally amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

In a tweet on Sunday, the secretary general wrote:

“Polarization and dehumanization are being fueled by a tsunami of disinformation. We must stand up to the forces of antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and all forms of hate.”

World Food Programme: Aid ‘nowhere near enough’ to meet Gaza’s humanitarian needs

Three people were killed in an Israeli strike on a car in southern Lebanon on Sunday, Reuters reports four security sources in Lebanon saying.

According to Lebanon’s state-owned National News Agency, the Israeli strike hit the car between the villages of Aianata and Aitaroun near the border with Israel.

Since the war broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7, Israel’s military and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have exchanged frequent fire across the border.

The European Commission has issued a statement on the rising number of antisemitic incidents in Europe, warning:

“The spike of antisemitic incidents across Europe has reached extraordinary levels in the last few days, reminiscent of some of the darkest times in history. European Jews today are again living in fear.”

It added:

“We have seen a resurgence of antisemitic incidents and rhetoric in the European Union and worldwide: Molotov cocktails thrown on a synagogue in Germany, stars of David sprayed on residential buildings in France, a Jewish cemetery desecrated in Austria, Jewish stores and synagogues attacked in Spain, demonstrators chanting hate slogans against Jews.

In these difficult times the EU stands by its Jewish communities.”

The statement made only two mentions of the equally rising Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments across Europe, saying:

“We have to push back against this rise in antisemitism, as well as the rise in anti-Muslim hatred that we have been witnessing over the past weeks – which has no place in Europe … In parallel, we are stepping up the enforcement of relevant legislation to ensure online platforms react swiftly and effectively to antisemitic or anti-Muslim content online, be it terrorist content, hate speech or disinformation.”

Crowds have tried to storm an airbase housing US troops in Turkey during a pro-Palestinian rally on Sunday.

Police fired teargas and used water cannon to disperse crowds as many waved Turkish and Palestinian flags, Reuters reports. Protesters also toppled barricades and clashed with police in riot gear, as well as threw plastic chairs and rocks at police.

Bulent Yildirim, the president of the Islamist Turkish aid agency IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, addressed crowds in Adana and urged them to refrain from attacking police.

“Friends, it is wrong to throw rocks or do similar things because both the police and soldiers would want to go to Gaza and fight and they will go when the time comes,” Reuters reports him saying.

“Our rage is huge. We cannot hold it in. But Turkey is doing what it can,” he added. IHH ended its rally earlier than planned due to the clashes with police.

Turkish has recalled its ambassador from Israel on Saturday, citing Israel’s refusal of calls for a ceasefire and the growing death toll in Gaza, where over 9,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Meanwhile, last month, Israel withdrew its diplomats from Turkey after the Turkish president, Recep Erdoğan, called Israel an “occupier” at a pro-Palestinian rally.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has met with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, in West Bank after his visit with other Arab leaders in the region.

“Met with President Abbas and affirmed our commitment to delivery of humanitarian assistance and restoration of essential services in Gaza. Made clear that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must end and reiterated our support for a two state solution,” Blinken said.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has met with the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, according to Iranian state media.

Reuters reports:

Iranian state media said Haniyeh, who has resided between Qatar and Turkey since 2019, “briefed Khamenei on the latest developments in the Gaza Strip and the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza, as well as the developments in the West Bank”.

The Islamic Republic says it supports Hamas but did not play any role in the militants’ surprise attack on Israel last month.

“Ayatollah Khamenei praised the steadfastness and resilience of the people of Gaza and expressed strong regret over the crimes of the Zionist regime, supported directly by Washington and some Western countries,” Iran’s state TV said.

Without elaborating when the meeting took place, Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the country’s top authority Khamenei “emphasized Tehran’s consistent policy of supporting the Palestinian resistance forces against the Zionist occupiers.”

Iran’s clerical establishment has warned Israel, which it refuses to recognise, of “harsh consequences” if attacks continue on the Gaza Strip.

It has just gone 5pm in Gaza City and in Tel Aviv. Here are the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war …

• Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, again rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza until all of the more than 240 hostages captured by Hamas during its 7 October attack are returned. “There will be no ceasefire without the return of our hostages, we say this to both our enemies and our friends. We will continue until we beat them,” Netanyahu told air and ground crews at the Ramon air force base in southern Israel, Reuters reports.

• US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made an unannounced visit to meet the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah after meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan. A spokesperson for Abbas said after the meeting that the Palestinian president had called for an immediate ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Small protests took place against the visit.

• The US said Blinken reaffirmed the US commitment to the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance and resumption of essential services in Gaza and made clear that Palestinians must not be forcibly displaced. It has refused to back calls for a ceasefire, arguing that it would allow Hamas to re-group.

• Blinken also visited Cyprus, where he spoke to the president, Nikos Christodoulides, about Cypriot proposals for a maritime humanitarian corridor to deliver aid to Gaza.

• Israel says that in the combined activities of its ground, air and naval forces in the Gaza Strip, “over 2,500 terror targets have been struck”. Israel launched the campaign on 7 October after the surprise Hamas attack inside Israel’s borders that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, and during which at least 240 people were abducted and taken into Gaza as hostages.

• It is reported that at least 9,770 Palestinians, including 4,008 children, have been killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip since 7 October. In addition, the Palestinian Authority health ministry in the Israeli-occupied West Bank says that 152 Palestinians have been killed and 2,100 wounded since 7 October. The claims have not been independently verified.

• IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari has demanded that Hamas stop using hospital facilities in Gaza, saying “we will not accept Hamas’s cynical use of hospitals to hide their terror infrastructures”. In a Sunday afternoon briefing in English, Hagari presented what Israel claimed was evidence that the Indonesia hospital in Bait Lahia was built over existing Hamas infrastructure that Israel had photographed in 2010.

• Evacuations for civilians and heavily wounded Palestinians from Gaza have been suspended since Saturday, according to Egyptian security and medical sources said, after an Israeli strike on ambulances near the entrance to Gaza City’s main Dar al-Shifa hospital. Israel later claimed Hamas was using an ambulance to move its fighters. The health ministry in Gaza has appealed to Egypt to allow Egyptian ambulances into the Gaza Strip to treat the wounded.

• The head of the World Food Programme (WFP), Cindy McCain, said on Sunday that the aid entering Gaza was “nowhere near” enough to meet the needs of people there, which she added were growing exponentially. “We need to continue to work together to get safe and sustained access to Gaza at a scale that aligns with the catastrophic conditions facing families there,” McCain said in a statement after visiting the Rafah border crossing.

• More than 300 US citizens have left Gaza, but there are still those who remain in the besieged Gaza Strip, White House official Jonathan Finer told the CBS show Face the Nation. In the UK, the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, said that more than 100 Britons had been evacuated from Gaza and the government hopes more will be able to leave.

• The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said on Sunday there had been “false” reports on negotiations to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Qatar’s foreign ministry said efforts to secure the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza required a “period of calm”, and that leaks from the negotiations were “harmful” and made it difficult for mediators to do their jobs.

That is it from me, Martin Belam, for today. I will be back with you from London again tomorrow. My colleague Maya Yang will be here shortly to take you through the next few hours of our live coverage from our US office.

Netanyahu again rules out ceasefire until Hamas returns hostages from Gaza