UN says agency in Gaza ‘practically out of business’ – as it happened | Israel-Hamas war

This is where we’ll wrap up this blog – we’ll continue our rolling live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war on a new blog here. Thanks for joining us.

Here’s a look at where things stand at it approaches 7am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv.

• At least 15 people were killed and 60 injured after an Israeli strike on a convoy of ambulances near the beseiged territory’s biggest hospital, al-Shifa, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said. Israeli forces on Friday targeted the convoy “transporting the wounded” from Gaza City towards Rafah in the south, according to the Hamas government in Gaza. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its ambulance was struck by a missile fired by Israeli forces. The Israel Defense Forces said it carried out an airstrike on an ambulance it said was being used by Hamas, and that “a number of Hamas terrorist operatives” were killed. The World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “utterly shocked” by reports of attacks on ambulances evacuating patients.

• Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed at least 9,227 Palestinians, including 3,826 children, since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said on Friday. The Israeli offensive on Gaza followed attacks launched by Hamas into Israel on 7 October which killed 1,400 people.

• The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned it cannot provide safety to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians “sheltering under a UN flag”. More than 50 UN facilities have been “impacted” by the conflict – including “five direct hits” – and 38 people had died in UN shelters, Thomas White, the director of UNRWA affairs, said on Friday. “Let’s be very clear, there is no place that is safe in Gaza right now.”

• UNRWA “is practically out of business”, the UN’s humanitarian chief said on Friday, as he paid tribute to at least 72 UNRWA staff killed in Gaza since 7 October. Martin Griffiths told UN member states in New York that what had unfolded over the past 26 days of conflict “is nothing short of … a blight on our collective conscience”.

• The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah has said his powerful militia is engaged in cross-border fighting with Israel and has threatened further “realistic escalation”. Hassan Nasrallah stopped short of announcing that Hezbollah had fully joined the Israel-Hamas war but warned that fighting on the Lebanon-Israel border would not be limited to the scale seen so far. The White House said Hezbollah should not try to take advantage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

• Talks are being held on a “very significant” pause in the Israel-Hamas war to win the release of hostages taken by Hamas, Agence France-Presse quoted a senior US official as saying. “It is something that is under a very serious and active discussion. But there is no agreement as of yet to actually get this done,” the official said on Friday. Reuters quoted a US official saying there was “indirect engagement” aimed at finding a way to get the hostages out and “it’s something we’re working on extremely hard”, but there was “absolutely no guarantee” it would happen. An estimated 240 Israeli and foreign hostages were kidnapped by Hamas during its 7 October assault.

• Israel will continue its offensive in Gaza “with full force” and refuse any temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of the hostages held by Hamas, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said, rejecting US calls for a pause in the fighting. “I made clear that we are continuing full force and that Israel refuses a temporary ceasefire which does not include the release of our hostages,” he said on Friday.

• Israeli forces have surrounded Gaza City and are attacking Hamas infrastructure and destroying tunnels used by militants to launch attacks, the Israeli military said on Friday. Airstrikes continued alongside the intensifying ground offensive in what Netanyahu described as the second stage of the war.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, flew into Israel on Friday to urge Netanyahu to temporarily stop Israel’s military offensive to allow aid into the territory. The US’s top diplomat applied the greatest pressure yet on the Israeli government to rethink its strategy in Gaza, calling for localised humanitarian pauses and insisting Israel cannot achieve long-term security solely through military means.

• Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, saying “crimes against humanity” are being committed in Gaza. “There is no concept that could explain or excuse the brutality that we have witnessed since 7 October,” Erdogan said during a summit of Turkic states in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

• France has reacted with “astonishment” and “incomprehension” after it said that an Israeli airstrike had hit the Institut Français in Gaza, and that the Gaza office of Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency was also hit. AFP said its Gaza City office was significantly damaged by a strike on the building on Thursday. No injuries have been reported.

• Israeli forces on Friday killed six Palestinians in raids across the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, as violence surged in the occupied territory in tandem with the Gaza war. The Israeli army said its forces were “operating against Hamas” across the West Bank, with operations in Jenin and the northern city of Nablus.

• The US has confirmed for the first time that it has been flying unarmed surveillance drones over Gaza. The flights were “in support of hostage recovery efforts”, the Pentagon said.

• The first people in a group of about 100 Britons due to leave Gaza on Friday have made the crossing into Egypt, amid concerns about whether individuals in the north of the Palestinian territory will be able to make it to the southern Rafah crossing. By Friday, there were 127 people on the UK list to be evacuated into Egypt since the crossing opened on Wednesday. The parents-in-law of Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, were among the Britons able to leave Gaza. It is understood hundreds of British nationals remain trapped in Gaza.

• The White House has said 100 American citizens and family members left Gaza on Thursday. Another large group of Americans were expected to leave the territory on Friday, it said.

• Thirty-four French citizens were evacuated from the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to the French foreign ministry.

• Doctors and aid workers in Gaza say they have been abandoned by the international community to a “humanitarian tragedy” as they “fight to survive” after almost four weeks of war.

• Thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were stranded in Israel when war broke out last month have been deported back to the war-torn strip after being expelled by the Israeli government. The UN Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” about the expulsions.

• Rishi Sunak has described pro-Palestinian protests planned for London on Armistice Day as “provocative and disrespectful”. The UK prime minister’s intervention on Friday came as two women pictured at a pro-Palestinian march in London carrying photos of paragliders have been charged with terrorism offences.

• Five people have been arrested during a pro-Palestinian sit-in at King’s Cross station in London after the demonstration was banned. On Friday evening, scores of people could still be seen outside King’s Cross station on social media.

Beneath the surface of the war between Israel and Hamas, another conflict rages. In this clash, the battle lines are drawn in a very different place, and the alliances and enmities take unexpected shapes. We got a glimpse of it this week – and when the current violence subsides, we shall see it even more starkly.

Right now, that moment – what diplomats and others refer to as “the day after” – seems a long way off, though the visit to Israel on Friday of the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, suggests that Washington is already looking at its watch: proof that even some of Israel’s staunchest allies are alarmed by the mounting loss of life in Gaza.

It goes to the poisonous, often-overlooked dynamic that has been present in the Israel-Palestine conflict for decades, and which will matter again when the current chapter ends. For then we’ll see that the contest that matters most is the battle of hardliners v moderates, or, to be more specific, maximalists v partitionists: those who insist on having the whole land for themselves v those who are ready to share it.

To read the full analysis on how it could play out, click here.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has condemned the targeting of a convoy of ambulances in Gaza by Israeli forces on Friday, which it says killed 15 people and wounded more than 60 others.

The PRCS said in a statement early on Saturday that one of its ambulances was struck “by a missile fired by the Israeli forces” about two metres from the entrance to the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Agence France-Presse reports.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 15 civilians and wounded 60 other people, the PRCS said, mirroring figures released earlier by the Hamas-run health ministry.

Another ambulance, belonging to the health ministry, was “directly targeted” by a missile about a kilometre from the hospital, causing injuries and damage, it said.

The PRCS, part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, added that deliberately targeting medical teams constituted “a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions, a war crime”.

Israel’s military said it had launched an air strike on “an ambulance that was identified by forces as being used by a Hamas terrorist cell in close proximity to their position in the battle zone”.

“A number of Hamas terrorist operatives were killed in the strike,” a military statement said.

An AFP journalist at the scene of the attack saw multiple bodies beside the damaged ambulance outside the hospital, which is overcrowded with civilians seeking shelter from Israeli bombing as well as those wounded.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken is to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Saturday after leaving Israel empty-handed in his efforts to secure humanitarian pauses in its war to destroy Hamas, Agence France-Presse reports.

Blinken arrived late on Friday in Amman, where he will also join a meeting of foreign ministers of five Arab countries which will be attended by a representative of the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by president Mahmud Abbas, a rival of Hamas.

In Israel, Blinken discussed with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu the idea of “humanitarian pauses” to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas and to allow aid to be distributed to the Gaza Strip population.

But after meeting Blinken on Friday, Netanyahu said there could be no “temporary truce” in Gaza unless Hamas released the hostages it held.

Talks are being held on a “very significant” pause in the Israel-Hamas war to win the release of hostages taken Hamas, Agence France-Presse is quoting a senior US official as saying.

“It is something that is under a very serious and active discussion. But there is no agreement as of yet to actually get this done,” the official said on Friday.

Reuters quoted a US official saying there was “indirect engagement” aimed at finding a way to get the hostages out but that the work was extremely difficult.

It’s something we’re working on extremely hard.

An estimated 240 Israeli and foreign hostages were kidnapped by Hamas during its 7 October assault that killed more than 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials.

A US official said “nobody knows” the exact number of hostages, adding that it was “well over 100 and maybe over 200”. To get that many people out “is going to require a fairly significant pause in hostilities”.

But the official warned:

There’s absolutely no guarantee a) that is going to happen or b) when it’s going to happen.

Israel and the US have both previously ruled out a blanket ceasefire, which they say would allow Hamas to regroup and resupply, but US president Joe Biden has backed “temporary, localised” pauses.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there can be no “temporary truce” in Gaza unless Hamas releases the hostages.

The Israeli air strike on an ambulance being used to evacuate the wounded from besieged northern Gaza on Friday killed 15 and injured 60, the Hamas-controlled territory’s health ministry said.

Reuters reports Israel’s military said it had identified and hit an ambulance “being used by a Hamas terrorist cell”. It said Hamas fighters were killed in the strike, and accused the group of transferring militants and weapons in ambulances.

Hamas official Izzat El Reshiq said allegations its fighters were present were “baseless”.

Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesperson for Gaza’s health ministry, said the ambulance was part of a convoy that Israel targeted near Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

Qidra said Israel had targeted the convoy of ambulances in more than one location, including at al-Shifa Hospital gate and at Ansar Square a kilometre (0.6 miles) away.

In a statement on the incident, Israel’s military gave no evidence to support its assertion that the ambulance was linked to Hamas but said it intended to release additional information.

It’s 2am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s where we stand:

• Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed at least 9,227 Palestinians, including 3,826 children, since 7 October, the Hamas-run health ministry said on Friday. The Israeli offensive on Gaza followed terrorist attacks launched by Hamas into Israel on 7 October which killed 1,400 people.

• At least 15 people were killed and 60 injured after an Israeli strike on a convoy of ambulances near the beseiged territory’s biggest hospital, al-Shifa, Gaza’s health ministry said. The Hamas government in Gaza said Israeli forces on Friday targeted “a convoy of ambulances which was transporting the wounded” from Gaza City towards Rafah in the south. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PCRS) said its ambulance, carrying an injured 35-year-old, was struck by a missile fired by Israeli forces. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it carried out an airstrike on an ambulance which it said was being used by Hamas, adding that “a number of Hamas terrorist operatives” were killed in the strike. It gave no evidence to support its assertion. The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said he was “utterly shocked” by reports of attacks on ambulances evacuating patients close to al-Shifa hospital.

• The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned that they cannot provide safety to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians “sheltering under a UN flag”. More than 50 UN facilities have been “impacted” by the conflict, including “five direct hits” and 38 people had died in UN shelters, Thomas White, director of UNRWA affairs, said on Friday, adding: “Let’s be very clear, there is no place that is safe in Gaza right now.”

• UNRWA “is practically out of business”, the UN’s humanitarian chief said on Friday, as he paid tribute to at least 72 UNRWA staff who have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October. In a briefing to UN member states in New York, Martin Griffiths said that what has unfolded over the last 26 days of conflict “is nothing short of … a blight on our collective conscience”.

• Israeli forces have surrounded Gaza City and are attacking Hamas infrastructure and destroying tunnels used by militants to launch attacks, the Israeli military said on Friday. Airstrikes continued alongside the intensifying ground offensive in what Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described as the second stage of the war.

• Israel will continue its offensive in Gaza “with full force” and will refuse any temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of more than 240 hostages held by Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu has said, rejecting US calls for a pause in the fighting. “I made clear that we are continuing full force and that Israel refuses a temporary ceasefire which does not include the release of our hostages,” the Israeli prime minister said on Friday.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, flew into Israel on Friday to urge the Israeli prime minister to temporarily stop its military offensive to allow aid into the territory. The US’s top diplomat applied the greatest pressure yet on the Israeli government to rethink its strategy in Gaza, calling for localised humanitarian pauses and insisting Israel cannot achieve long-term security solely through military means.

• Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, saying “crimes against humanity” are being committed in Gaza. “There is no concept that could explain or excuse the brutality that we have witnessed since 7 October,” Erdogan said during a summit of Turkic states in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

• France has reacted with “astonishment” and “incomprehension” after it said that an Israeli airstrike had hit the Institut Français in Gaza, and that the Gaza office of Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency was also hit. AFP said its Gaza City office was significantly damaged by a strike on the building on Thursday. No injuries have been reported.

• The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah has said his powerful militia is engaged in cross-border fighting with Israel and has threatened further “realistic escalation”. Hassan Nasrallah stopped short of announcing that Hezbollah had fully joined the Israel-Hamas war but warned that fighting on the Lebanon-Israel border would not be limited to the scale seen so far. Hezbollah should not try to take advantage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the White House said.

• Israeli forces on Friday killed six Palestinians in raids across the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, as violence surged in the occupied territory in tandem with the Gaza war. The Israeli army said its forces were “operating against Hamas” across the West Bank, with operations in Jenin and the northern city of Nablus.

• The US has confirmed for the first time that it has been flying unarmed surveillance drones over Gaza. “In support of hostage recovery efforts, the US is conducting unarmed UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) flights over Gaza, as well as providing advice and assistance to support our Israeli partner as they work on their hostage recovery efforts,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig Gen Pat Ryder said on Friday.

• The first people in a group of about 100 Britons due to leave Gaza on Friday have made the crossing into Egypt, amid concerns about whether individuals in the north of the Palestinian territory will be able to make it to the southern Rafah crossing. By Friday, there were 127 people on the UK list to be evacuated into Egypt since the crossing opened on Wednesday. The parents-in-law of Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, were among the Britons able to leave Gaza. It is understood hundreds of British nationals remain trapped in Gaza.

• The White House has said 100 American citizens and family members left Gaza on Thursday. Another large group of Americans are expected to leave Gaza on Friday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters.

• Thirty-four French citizens were evacuated from the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to the French foreign ministry.

• Doctors and aid workers in Gaza say they have been abandoned by the international community to a “humanitarian tragedy” as they “fight to survive” after almost four weeks of war between Israel and Hamas.

• Thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were stranded in Israel when war broke out last month have been deported back to the war-torn strip after being expelled by the Israeli government. The UN Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” about the expulsions.

• Rishi Sunak has described pro-Palestinian protests planned for London on Armistice Day as “provocative and disrespectful”. The UK prime minister’s intervention on Friday came as two women pictured at a pro-Palestinian march in London carrying photos of paragliders have been charged with terrorism offences.

• Five people have been arrested during a pro-Palestinian sit-in at King’s Cross station in London after the demonstration was banned. On Friday evening, scores of people could still be seen outside King’s Cross station on social media.

• Jewish people in Britain have experienced the worst wave of hate incidents in modern times with more than 1,000 recorded after the Hamas massacres in Israel, experts in countering antisemitism have said.

The US has confirmed for the first time that it has been flying unarmed surveillance drones over Gaza.

In a statement on Friday, Pentagon spokesperson Brig Gen Pat Ryder said:

In support of hostage recovery efforts, the US is conducting unarmed UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) flights over Gaza, as well as providing advice and assistance to support our Israeli partner as they work on their hostage recovery efforts.

The US began flying UAV flights after the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel, he added.