Middle East crisis live: Israeli army launches operation around Gaza’s largest hospital

Israel is provoking famine in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war, the EU’s foreign policy Chief Josep Borrell said on Monday.

“In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people,” Reuters reports Borrell said at the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels.

“This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.”

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza due to Israeli military action has risen to at least 31,726, according to officials there. 73,792 people have been injured since 7 October.

Reuters reports the Hamas-led ministry said 81 Palestinians were killed and 116 injured in the past 24 hours.

It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify casualty figures being issued in the conflict.

Reuters has spoken to a witness of events at the al-Shifa hospital complex via a chat app. It reports:

“Suddenly, we started to hear sounds of explosions, several bombings, and soon tanks started to roll, they came from the western road and headed toward Al Shifa, then sounds of gunfire and explosions increased,” Mohammad Ali, 32, who lives around one kilometre from the hospital, told Reuters via a chat app.

“We don’t know what is happening, but it looked as if it was a re-invasion of the Gaza City,” he added, saying that the military activities began at about 1am.

Israeli media is reporting that Israel’s military claims to have arrested 80 people during its raid on the al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City.

More details soon …

In an operational briefing at just after 9am local time, Israel’s military released a video of what it claimed was “terrorist fire toward them from a number of hospital buildings”.

In the statement, the IDF said it was “continuing to conduct precise operational activity to thwart terrorism in the area of the al-Shifa hospital”.

It added “Over the past few hours, the troops identified terrorist fire toward them from a number of hospital buildings. The forces engaged the terrorists and identified several hits.”

The claims have not been independently verified.

Israel has used its Arabic language military spokesperson to issue an instruction for civilians to evacuate if they are in the vicinity of the al-Shifa hospital. It has instructed them to move south.

During its five month military campaign against the Gaza Strip, Israel has repeatedly carried out airstrikes on the south of the territory, where huge numbers of people are being forced to live in makeshift tent camps.

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The Israeli army has launched an operation around Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, saying in a statement that it is “based on intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists”. The IDF also described the operation as “precise”.

In the wake of the raid, Palestinian health authorities say there is now a fierce fire burning in one of the buildings.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says the blaze broke out at the entrance of the complex, causing cases of suffocation among displaced women and children in the hospital. It said communication had been cut off, with people trapped inside the surgery and emergency units of one of the buildings.

“There are casualties, including deaths and injuries, and it’s impossible to rescue anyone due to the intensity of the fire and targeting of anyone approaching the windows,” the ministry said, accusing Israeli forces of “another crime against health institutions”.

The Israeli military says soldiers entering the compound were fired on, according to Reuters. “The troops responded with live fire and hits were identified. Our troops are continuing to operate in the area of the hospital.”

Neither the IDF’s nor the Hamas claims could immediately be verified.

It has just gone 9am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I am Martin Belam and I’ll be with you for the next while.

The Israeli army has launched an operation around Gaza’s largest hospital al-Shifa, with witnesses reporting airstrikes on the devastated neighbourhood where it is located. The IDF also carried out a November operation in al-Shifa, sparking an international outcry.

More on that in a moment, but first, here’s a summary of the latest developments:

• Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed on Sunday he would launch an offensive into the southern city of Rafah despite growing international concern over the fate of Palestinian civilians sheltering there. Netanyahu said “no amount of international pressure will stop us from realising all the goals of the war”.

• Netanyahu also said that civilians would be able to leave before troops enter Rafah. “Our goal in eliminating the remaining terrorist battalions in Rafah goes hand-in-hand with enabling the civilian population to leave Rafah,” Netanyahu said at a press appearance alongside visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “It’s not something that we will do while keeping the population locked in place.” But as others have done, Scholz raised the question: “Where should they go?”

• Germany’s chancellor warned that an Israeli assault on Rafah would make regional peace “very difficult”, after talks with Jordanian King Abdullah.

• Netanyahu responded to a call by Chuck Schumer, the US Senate leader and ally of Joe Biden for Israel to hold new elections. On Thursday, Schumer said he believed Netanyahu “has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel”. The Israeli prime minister responded on Sunday, saying that a pause in fighting to allow for elections to take place would paralyse the country for months. Netanyahu told CNN that he believed the Schumer intervention was “totally inappropriate”.

• White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday that Biden believed it was up to Israel to make its own decisions about internal politics. “We respect the sovereignty of the Israeli people,” Kirby told Fox News Sunday. “The president believes it’s up to the Israeli people and the Israeli government to determine if and when there’s going to be new elections.”

• Anti-poverty charity Oxfam on Monday accused Israel of intentionally preventing the delivery of aid into Gaza during its war with Hamas, in violation of international humanitarian law. The non-governmental organisation said in a report that Israel continued to “systematically and deliberately block and undermine any meaningful international humanitarian response” in the Palestinian territory.