Middle East crisis live: Hamas warns Israeli ground offensive in Rafah will ‘blow up’ hostage talks | Israel-Gaza war

Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip during the past 96 hours have killed two Israeli hostages and seriously injured eight others, Hamas’ armed-wing Al Qassam Brigades wrote on Telegram.

“Their conditions are becoming more dangerous in light of the inability to provide them with appropriate treatment. (Israel) bears full responsibility for the lives of those injured in light of their continued bombing,” the statement said. These claims are yet to be independently verified.

There are reportedly about 130 or so Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas.

Israeli forces have discovered a tunnel network hundreds of metres long and running partly under the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine’s (UNRWA) Gaza headquarters, the military claimed, calling it new evidence of Hamas exploitation of the main relief agency for Palestinians.

In late January, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland joined the US, Australia and Canada in pausing funding after UNRWA revealed an investigation had been launched into 12 members of staff who allegedly took part in the 7 October attack led by Hamas that killed 1,140 people.

The Palestinians have accused Israel of falsifying information to tarnish UNRWA, which employs 13,000 people in the Gaza Strip and has been a lifeline for the population for years.

Reuters reports:

Reporters on the closely escorted trip entered a shaft next to a school on the periphery of the UN compound, descending to the concrete-lined tunnel.

Twenty minutes of walking through the stifling hot, narrow and occasionally winding passage brought them underneath UNRWA headquarters, an army lieutenant-colonel leading the tour said.

The tunnel, which the military said was 700 metres long and 18 metres deep, bifurcated at times, revealing side-rooms. There was an office space, with steel safes that had been opened and emptied.

There was a tiled toilet. One large chamber was packed with computer servers, another with industrial battery stacks.

“Everything is conducted from here. All the energy for the tunnels, which you walked through them are powered from here,” said the lieutenant-colonel, who gave only his first name, Ido.

“This is one of the central commands of the intelligence. This place is one of the Hamas intelligence units, where they commanded most of the combat.”

But Ido said Hamas appeared to have evacuated in the face of the Israeli advance, preemptively cutting off communications cables that, in an above-ground part of the tour, he showed running through the floor of the UNRWA headquarters’ basement…

In a statement, UNRWA said it had not been officially informed of the tunnel by Israeli authorities and had vacated the headquarters on 12 October, five days after the war began. It was therefore “unable to confirm or otherwise comment” on the Israeli finding…

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dimissed the Israeli statements about the tunnel as “lies”. He told Reuters that Israel aimed to undermine the work of UNRWA and was “covering up to that decision by making these allegations”.

Any Israeli ground offensive in Rafah on the Gaza border will “blow up” the hostage exchange negotiations, Hamas-run Aqsa television channel quoted a senior Hamas leader as saying on Sunday.

The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said it ordered the military to develop a plan to evacuate Rafah and destroy four Hamas battalions it says are deployed there.

As Israeli forces have expanded ground operations in the war in Gaza over the past four months, Rafah – situated on the border with Egypt, and home before the war to about 280,000 people – has become the last refuge for more than half of the strip’s population of 2.3 million.

Israel’s military ordered civilians to flee south before previous assaults on Gaza’s cities, but now there is no obvious place to go and aid agencies have said many more people could die.

Netanyahu this week flatly rejected the terms of a Hamas proposal for a ceasefire and exchange of hostages and prisoners after the success of a week-long truce in late November. He has also rebuffed US pressure, saying there could be no solution to Israel’s security issues except “absolute victory”.

He said at televised press conference that “surrendering to Hamas’s delusional conditions”, which include a call for a 135-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of the remaining 130 or so hostages, “would lead to another massacre, and to a great tragedy on Israel that no one would be willing to accept”.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Israeli forces have prevented oxygen from reaching the al-Amal hospital for over a week, resulting in the deaths of three patients.

The PRCS said Israel has also not provided medical equipment, and continues to block the delivery of fuel for the hospital’s electricity generators, despite the fuel supply running out in two days, risking a shutdown.

In a post on X, the PRCS wrote:

The Israeli occupation forces claim to have delivered oxygen cylinders to al-Amal hospital, but in reality, they have prevented oxygen from reaching the hospital for over a week, resulting in the deaths of three patients, despite continuous coordination efforts with international organisations.

Two days ago, after significant pressure, we obtained approval to bring oxygen to the hospital. The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance transported 25 oxygen cylinders from Nasser Hospital.

However, the occupation authorities demanded that the cylinders be placed closest to the hospital, promising to deliver them. The following day, only 21 oxygen cylinders were placed in front of the hospital building by the occupation forces.

A total of 28,176 Palestinian people have been killed and 67,784 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

An estimated 112 Palestinians were killed and 173 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

Most of the casualties have been women and children, the ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across Gaza.

The threat of an Israeli incursion into Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah persisted on Sunday, with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, promising “safe passage” to civilians displaced there, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Despite criticism, Netanyahu reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military operation to the city. In an interview airing Sunday on ABC News, Netanyahu said: “We’re going to do it”.

He said he agreed “with the Americans” that the offensive would need to first plan for the impact on civilians.

“We’re going to do it while providing safe passage for the civilian population so they can leave,” he said, according to published extracts of the interview and reported by AFP.

But it is unclear where such a large number of people, who are pressed up against the border with Egypt and sheltering in makeshift tents, can go.

Israel has carried out airstrikes in Rafah almost daily, even after telling civilians in recent weeks to seek shelter there from fierce ground combat in Khan Younis, just to the north.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said on Friday that a major Israeli offensive in Rafah “can only lead to an additional layer of endless tragedy”.

Netanyahu’s office has said four Hamas battalions were in Rafah and Israel could not achieve its stated goal of eliminating the militant group while they remained there.

We are restarting our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military offensive to Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, despite international condemnation with more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people crammed into the area.

In an interview airing on Sunday, Netanyahu promised “safe passage” to civilians displaced there.

More on that story shortly. Here is an overview of some of the other latest key developments:

• Airstrikes on the Gaza Strip’s southernmost town of Rafah have killed at least 28 people. Each strike killed multiple members of three families, including 10 children, the youngest just three months old, the Associated Press reported.

• Hamas on Saturday warned that there could be “tens of thousands” of dead and injured if the Israeli military attacked Rafah. In a statement, Hamas said that any military action would have catastrophic repercussion. AFP said witnesses reported new strikes on Rafah early on Saturday, raising fears among Palestinians of a looming ground invasion.

• Israel’s plans for a military offensive on Rafah in the Gaza Strip are “alarming”, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borell, said.

• Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said any Israeli ground offensive on Rafah would have “disastrous consequences,” and asserted that Israel aims to eventually force the Palestinians out of their land. Another mediator, Qatar, also warned of disaster, while Saudi Arabia spoke of “very serious repercussions”.

• German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said on X that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would be a “humanitarian catastrophe in the making”. She said, “The people in Gaza cannot disappear into thin air”.

• An Egyptian official told the Guardian that under no circumstances would fleeing Palestinians be allowed to cross the border into the Sinai peninsula, and any attempt to relocate them to Egyptian soil would collapse the peace deal between Egypt and Israel. The population of Rafah has swelled to more than 1.5 million people – roughly three-quarters of Gaza’s population – as people flee fighting elsewhere in Gaza.

• Israel appears to be in breach of the orders issued a fortnight ago by the international court of justice requiring it to take immediate steps to protect Palestinians’ rights and cease all activities that could constitute genocide, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, has said.

• A food shipment for 1.1 million Palestinians is stuck at an Israeli port due to recent restrictions from Israeli authorities, says the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as an estimated 25% of families in Gaza face catastrophic hunger. The agency said that the Israeli contractor they work with received a call from Israeli customs authorities “ordering them not to process any UNRWA goods”.

• A senior Hamas official survived an assassination attempt in Lebanon by an alleged Israeli strike, a Palestinian security source told AFP. Another source told Reuters that the person targeted was close to Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas deputy chief killed last month in a suspected Israeli strike on a suburb of Beirut. Sources said a Hezbollah member and two civilians were killed by the strike in the coastal town of Jadra, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Lebanese border.

• The Gaza health ministry on Saturday said that at least 117 people were killed in overnight bombardment, including more than 20 in strikes in Rafah. It also said 152 were injured in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours.

• A six-year-old Palestinian girl who went missing after the family’s car came under fire in Gaza has been found dead, the Hamas-run health ministry and her relatives said, accusing Israel of killing her. The last time Hind Rajab had been seen was about two weeks ago when she was surrounded by dead relatives after becoming trapped in the vehicle as they tried to flee Gaza City as Israeli forces advanced. The PPRCS had frequently posted updates on its X account pleading for updates and information on Rajab.

• The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that three children were killed in a strike in Rafah. The PCRS also said that Israeli forces raided al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s biggest city, on Friday after a weeks-long siege during which the PRCS reported “intense artillery shelling and heavy gunfire”.

• The PRCS accused Israeli forces of the ‘deliberate targeting’ of a PRCS ambulance that resulted in the death of two of its medics, Yusuf Al-Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun.

• The Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said neither Iran nor Lebanon had sought to expand hostilities in the region. “Iran and Lebanon confirm that war is not the solution, and that we absolutely never sought to expand it,” he told a press conference alongside his Lebanese counterpart in Beirut on Saturday.

• “Israel’s declared ground offensive on Rafah would be catastrophic and must not proceed,” Doctors Without Borders said in a statement. “There is no place that is safe in Gaza and no way for people to leave.”

• Israel’s army has deployed artificial intelligence-enabled military technology in combat for the first time in Gaza, raising fears about the use of autonomous weapons in modern warfare.

• Hezbollah said on Saturday it had seized an Israeli Skylark drone over Lebanese airspace “in good condition”. The Skylark is a small, unmanned aerial vehicle typically used for surveillance and produced by Israel-based weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.

• The Saudi foreign ministry cautioned against the “extremely dangerous repercussions” of Israel “storming and targeting” the city of Rafah. It said “this continued violation of international law and international humanitarian law” confirmed the necessity of convening the UN security council urgently “to prevent Israel from causing an imminent humanitarian catastrophe”.

• Israeli occupation forces continued their siege of the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis for the 20th day and reached its northern gate, reports Al Jazeera. “The occupation forces have been besieging us for 20 days and we are suffering from a shortage of food and drink,” Nahidh Abu Tamiyya, the head of the surgical department told an Al Jazeera correspondent.

• Two Palestinians have been killed by an Israeli sniper – one in front of the Nasser medical complex reception gate, and the other in the emergency department, according to Wafa news agency. It said that medical teams cannot move between the complex’s buildings due to the snipers, and that the lives of 300 health personnel, 450 patients and injured, and 10,000 displaced people inside the Nasser medical complex are threatened.

• The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarinisaid he followed “reverse due process” in sacking nine staff members accused by Israel of being involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks. Lazzarini said he did not probe Israel’s claims against the employees before dismissing them and launching an investigation.

• Three people were killed in on Israeli airstrikes that targeted a building in an upmarket area near Damascus on early Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

• Iran’s football federation said on Saturday it had asked world football’s governing body, Fifa, to suspend Israel’s football federation over the country’s war in Gaza.