Hundreds of children and women have been killed in Gaza following days of Israeli airstrikes, say Palestinian officials.
At least 447 children and 248 women were among the estimated 1,417 people who have died in the bombardment, according to the health ministry, adding more than 6,000 have been injured.
Israel has said it is targeting Hamas after the militant group carried out a wave of attacks in Israel at the weekend as gunmen stormed the border and killed hundreds in their homes as well as 260 others at a music festival.
Israel says a total of 1,300 of its people have died since Saturday’s raid as its troops continue to mass along the barbed wire fence ahead of a possible ground offensive on Gaza, with 300,000 reservists called up.
Among today’s key developments:
• UN warns of ‘dire situation’ in Gaza Strip • UK navy to send ships and begin surveillance flights over Israel • Blinken tells Netanyahu the US will always be by Israel’s side • Palestinians accuse Israel of killing civilians • Israeli PM says Hamas beheaded soldiers and raped women • Israeli military admits it failed to protect its citizens in Hamas attack • US secretary of state pledges support for Israel in Netanyahu meeting
Hamas has said 18 Palestinians died in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the heart of Gaza following one of the latest Israeli retaliatory raids.
Some 340,000 Palestinians have fled their homes seeking refuge in schools, according to the United Nations.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned crucial supplies were running dangerously low in the Gaza Strip after Israel imposed a total blockade on the territory.
“It’s a dire situation in the Gaza Strip that we’re seeing evolve with food and water being in limited supply and quickly running out,” said Brian Lander, the deputy head of emergencies at WFP.
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Bombardment at dawn in Gaza City
Israel has insisted it is giving prior warning of its strikes, though they are now hitting entire neighbourhoods as opposed to individual buildings.
Meanwhile, the chief of staff for Israel’s military, Herzi Halevi, admitted it failed to protect its civilians from Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Saturday.
“The IDF is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens, and on Saturday morning in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, we did not,” Mr Halevi said. “We will learn, we will investigate, but now is the time for war.”
The overnight retaliatory strikes targeted Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces, including command centres used by the fighters who attacked Israel, and the home of a senior Hamas operative where unspecified weapons were stored, the Israeli military said.
Elsewhere, Israeli airstrikes have struck the international airports of the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, damaging their runways and putting them out of service, said Syrian state media.
An unnamed military official was quoted by the state news agency Sana as saying no one was hurt in the attacks. The Israeli military declined to comment.
Israel’s siege of Gaza has left Palestinians stricken as supplies of food, water, electricity and medicine have dwindled.
The death toll in Gaza is expected to rise as 650,000 people have been affected by the shortages, and hospitals are on the verge of collapse with diminishing power supplies.
IDF troops assemble
Troops from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are building up near the Gaza border as an imminent ground invasion is possible – though no political decision on this has yet been announced, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht said.
Israel has also evacuated tens of thousands of residents from nearby communities.
Should the ground offensive go ahead it would be the first since the 50-day Gaza war in 2014, which left thousands of Palestinians and dozens of IDF troops dead.
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Hamas attack ‘the equivalent of 10 9/11s’, Blinken says
Meanwhile, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said during a visit to Israel today that the country’s government had shared photographs and videos in meetings which showed victims of attacks by Hamas.
He said the images included a baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded, and young people burned alive in their cars or hideaways
“It’s simply depravity in the worst imaginable way,” Mr Blinken told a news briefing in Tel Aviv.
“Images are worth a thousand words. These images may be worth a million.”
He added: “If you look at (the incursion) in proportion to the size of Israel’s population, this is the equivalent of 10 9/11s.
“That’s how big and how devastating the attack has been.”
Mr Blinken also said the US is “working as hard as it can” to ensure the conflict does not open on a second front with involvement from Iran-backed Hezbollah, based in Lebanon.
“[Joe Biden] has been very clear that no one state or non-state actor should try to take advantage of this moment,” he said.
Following his trip to Israel, Mr Blinken will head to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, before travelling on to meet with leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Qatar.
The US secretary of state said he will be “pressing countries to help prevent the conflict from spreading”.
Mr Blinken had earlier met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv today, where said the US would “always be there by [Israel’s] side”.
“You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourselves, but as long as America exists you will never have to,” Mr Blinken said.
Mr Netanyahu announced a unity government on Wednesday and vowed to “crush and destroy” Hamas.
“Every Hamas member is a dead man,” Mr Netanyahu said in a televised address. He has also called Hamas an “enemy of civilisation”.
Israel estimates 1,500 Hamas militants have been killed on its soil following their infiltration of the border.
The IDF, which along with Western powers, considers Hamas as “terrorists”.
Mr Netanyahu said that militants beheaded soldiers and raped women in its attack on Saturday.
Hamas is also believed to be holding around 150 hostages in Gaza, including soldiers, men, women, children and older adults, since the surprise weekend raid.
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Families appeal for hostages’ release
Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, said the blockade would remain until the captives were released.
“Not a single electricity switch will be flipped on, not a single faucet will be turned on, and not a single fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home,” he said on social media.
The US has stepped in by sending Israel a team of technical experts to assist with the recovery as it believes some of the captives are Americans.
A Gaza deal is “on the brink”, President Joe Biden has said in his final foreign policy address.
The outgoing US leader said it would include a hostage release deal and a “surge” of aid to Palestinians.
“So many innocent people have been killed, so many communities have been destroyed. Palestinian people deserve peace,” he said.
“The deal would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel, and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians who suffered terribly in this war that Hamas started.”
The US president also hailed Washington’s support for Israel during two Iranian attacks in 2024.
“All told, Iran is weaker than it’s been in decades,” he said.
Mr Biden was delivering his final foreign policy address before he leaves office next week.
Monday’s address will be the penultimate time he speaks to the country before the end of his presidency. He is due to give a farewell address on Wednesday.
US and Arab mediators made significant progress overnight toward brokering a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and the release of scores of hostages held in the Gaza Strip – but a deal has not been reached yet, officials said.
A round of ceasefire talks will be held in Doha on Tuesday to finalise remaining details related to a ceasefire deal in Gaza – including over the release of up to 33 hostages – officials added.
Mr Biden went on to claim America’s adversaries were weaker than when he took office four years ago and that the US was “winning the worldwide competition”.
“Compared to four years ago, America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker,” he said.
“We have not gone to war to make these things happen.”
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has admitted to a “serious offence” after a Sky News investigation analysed CCTV footage showing the moment an 80-year-old Palestinian grandmother was shot in the West Bank.
Halima Abu Leil was shot during a raid in Nablus. The grandmother died soon after.
During the course of the investigation, we noted that a blue vehicle marked as an ambulance and with a red light on its roof was used by IDF troops to enter the West Bank.
Our investigation stated: “Figures who appear to be Israeli military forces exit the ambulance in the foreground. They are equipped with helmets, backpacks, rifles, and other gear.”
The use of a marked medical vehicle for a security operation could be a contravention of the Geneva Convention and a war crime – as well as Halima’s killing.
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CCTV shows Palestinian grandmother shot in IDF raid
The IDF has subsequently told Sky News: “On December 19, 2024, soldiers from the ‘Duvdevan’ unit took part in an operational mission to detain terrorists in Nablus.
“During the operation, an ambulance-like vehicle was used for operational purposes, without authorisation and without the relevant commanders’ approval.”
It added: “The use of the ambulance-like vehicle during the operation was a serious offence, exceeding authority, and a violation of existing orders and procedures.”
It also said the commander of the ‘Duvdevan’ unit was “reprimanded”.
However, it gave no update into the death of Halima, saying “the circumstances of the incident are being examined”.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese watched the CCTV video and told Sky News her death could be a “war crime”.
She said: “When I look at the footage, what emerges prima facie is that there were no precautions taken – within these operations whose legality is debatable – to avoid or spare civilian life.
“No principle of proportionality because there was wildfire directed at the identified target and ultimately no respect for the principle of distinction.
“So this was a murder in cold blood and could be a war crime as an extrajudicial killing.”
According to the United Nations Office Of Human Rights in occupied Palestinian territory, Israeli security forces and settlers have killed at least 813 mostly unarmed Palestinians, including 15 women and 177 children, since 7 October 2023.
“In addition to the first captured soldiers from North Korea, there will undoubtedly be more. It’s only a matter of time before our troops manage to capture others,” he said in a video posted on X.
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His video also included an offer of help to officials in California fighting the ongoing fires there.
It is the first time Ukraine has announced the capture of North Korean soldiers since their entry into the nearly three-year-old war last autumn.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say that some 11,000 troops from Russia‘s ally North Korea have been deployed in the Kursk region to support Moscow’s forces, although Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
Mr Zelenskyy has said Russian and North Korean forces had suffered heavy losses.
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“Ukraine is ready to hand over Kim Jong Un’s soldiers to him if he can organise their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia,” Mr Zelenskyy added.
He posted a short video showing the interrogation of two men, presented as North Korean soldiers.
One of them is lying on a bed with bandaged hands, the other is sitting with a bandage on his jaw.
One of the men said through an interpreter that he did not know he was fighting against Ukraine and had been told he was on a training exercise. He said he hid in a shelter during the offensive and was found a couple of days later.
He said that if he was ordered to return to North Korea, he would, but he was ready to stay in Ukraine if given the chance.
“One of them (soldiers) expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine, the other to return to Korea,” said Mr Zelenskyy, adding that for North Korean soldiers who did not wish to return home, there may be other options available.