Middle East crisis live: Egypt ‘setting up contingency area’ in case of Rafah exodus | Israel-Gaza war

Palestinian ambassador to UK says eight relatives killed in Israeli strikes in Rafah

Emine Sinmaz

My colleague, Emine Sinmaz in Jerusalem has written the following news story on Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, who said eight of his relatives were killed in Israeli strikes in Rafah. Zomlot also identified a girl in a distressing photo that has been widely shared online as his wife’s seven-year-old cousin Sidra Hassouna:

The Palestinian ambassador to the UK has said that eight of his relatives who were sheltering in the southern Gaza town of Rafah have been killed in an Israeli strike.

Husam Zomlot identified a girl in a distressing photo that has been widely shared online as his wife’s seven-year-old cousin Sidra Hassouna. In the image that has been posted on social media, Sidra’s body can be seen dangling from the ruins of a building after the attacks on Rafah on Monday.

Sharing a blurred version of the image, alongside pictures of his other relatives, Zomlot posted on X on Wednesday: “This is seven-year-old Sidra, the cousin of my wife. The impact of the Israeli missile was so powerful it flung her out, leaving her mutilated body dangling from the ruins of the destroyed building in Rafah 48 hours ago.”

He said that Sidra’s twin, Suzan, had also been killed, as had their 15-month-old sibling, Malik; their parents, Karam and Amouna; their grandparents, Suzan and Fouzy; and uncle, Muhammad.

The UN’s high commissioner for refugees said on Friday that a spillover of refugees from Gaza’s Rafah into Egypt’s Sinai would be a disaster and that Egyptian authorities had made clear that Palestinians should be assisted in the enclave.

“It would be a disaster for the Palestinians … a disaster for Egypt and a disaster for the future of peace,” Filippo Grandi told news agnecy Reuters on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering in the southern German city.

When asked whether Egyptian authorities had contacted the UNHCR about possible contingency plans he said: “The Egyptians said that people should be assisted inside Gaza and we are working on that.”

Israeli forces said on Friday it had taken into custody more than “20 terrorists” suspected of involvement in the 7 October Hamas attack, during its raid of Nasser hospital yesterday, reports news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).

On Thursday IDF spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said there was “credible intelligence” to suggest hostages seized by Hamas in the 7 October attack had been held at the hospital, and that bodies of some of the captives may still be inside.

But the military said later it had “not yet found any evidence of this”, although forces had found “weapons, grenades and mortar bombs” at the hospital complex.

A witness who declined to be named out of fear for their safety told AFP the army had shot “at anyone who moved inside the hospital”.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry also raised fears over the fate of six other patients in the intensive care unit and three children, saying it held Israel “responsible for the lives of patients and staff considering that the complex is now under its full control”.

The latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said 112 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes and 157 were injured in the past 24 hours.

According to the statement, at least 28,775 Palestinians have been killed and 68,552 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October.

The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

The hunger crisis in Gaza has reached “unprecedented levels, as people run out of even animal feed to eat” said development charity ActionAid on Friday.

“An unprecedented and totally avoidable hunger crisis” has led to “every single person in the territory now experiencing extreme levels of hunger”, it said, warning that “as grim as the picture is, things will get substantially worse” if Israel proceeds with its plans for a full military operation in Rafah.

“It is appalling to watch the world standing by as the people of Gaza slowly starve in what is a completely avoidable catastrophe,” said Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at ActionAid Palestine. She said the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling “clearly stated that the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza must be facilitated yet instead, people have grown hungrier by the day”.

Jafari said the situation is most bleak in the north of Gaza, where about 300,000 people are almost completely cut off from humanitarian assistance: “People who were so desperate that they were resorting to grinding up animal feed to use as flour are now finding that even this poor substitute is completely running out.”

She added:

As grim as the picture is, things will get substantially worse if Israel proceeds with its plans for a full military operation in Rafah, which is the main centre of aid distribution for the entire strip. Aid operations will grind to a complete halt, denying a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of people.

The consequences are unimaginable. Governments around the world must do everything in their power to prevent a further onslaught in Rafah and push for a permanent and immediate ceasefire. It’s the only way to stop the indiscriminate killing of civilians, allow aid to enter Gaza and be distributed safely at scale to prevent famine and deadly disease outbreaks.”

ActionAid said that as well as a dwindling and inconsistent supply of food for people to buy, prices are also very high. Heba, a displaced mother who is now staying in the classroom of a school shelter with her family, told the charity:

The prices are expensive. If you buy a kilo of lentils it costs 20 shekels [£4.33]. It was originally 10 shekels [£2.16]. Yeast costs 35 shekels [£7.58]. With difficulty, they bring us [food] vouchers but it is not enough … It gives us just a can of beans and a can of chickpeas for a family of seven.”

A lack of fuel and cooking gas means families are burning anything they can find to cook what little food they have, says ActionAid, with potentially dangerous health consequences. Sohad, a 23-year-old displaced mother who is staying on a beach in a tent with her family, told the charity: “We live on sand and now we burn plastic to cook with. We have not found anything to eat. We have not found anything to feed our children.”

According to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is now classified as facing either crisis, emergency or catastrophic levels of food insecurity. ActionAid say the amount of aid being allowed into Gaza each day “is shamefully insufficient” and needs to “be scaled up immediately”.

Pressure builds on Israel to ditch Rafah offensive as ministers gather in Munich

Patrick Wintour

US secretary of state and foreign ministers from UK, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan join Israel at security conference, writes the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour:

Western leaders are hoping a round of meetings at a security conference in Munich will put overwhelming pressure on Israel not to press ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah.

Almost all the key figures, save the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, will be present in Munich on Friday, including foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan. The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, and foreign minister, Israel Katz, will also attend along with three freed hostages, Raz Ben Ami, Adi Shoham and Aviva Siegel. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, is flying in too.

The pressure on Israel to avoid a ground offensive is coming from almost all quarters, including allies such as the US, UK, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The shadow of a return to the international court of justice and a further Algerian-sponsored UN security council resolution is looming over Israel.

Negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza appear to have stalled, with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday pushing back hard against the US vision for after the war – particularly its calls for the creation of a Palestinian state, reports AP.

After speaking overnight with president Joe Biden, Netanyahu wrote on X that Israel will not accept “international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians”.

He said that if other countries unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state, it would give a “reward to terrorism”. Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected creation of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive and expand it to the Gaza city of Rafah, near Egypt, until Hamas is destroyed and scores of hostages taken during the militants’ 7 October attack are freed.

In their phone call, Biden again cautioned Netanyahu against moving forward with a military operation in Rafah before coming up with a “credible and executable plan” to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians, the White House said.

With the war showing no sign of ending, the risk of a broader conflict grew as Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group had deadliest exchange of fire along the border since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, says AP.

Israel launched airstrikes into southern Lebanon for a second day on Thursday after killing 10 civilians and three Hezbollah fighters on Wednesday in response to a rocket attack that killed an Israeli soldier and wounded several others.

The storming by Israeli troops of southern Gaza’s main hospital brought chaos to hundreds of staff and patients inside, writes The Associated Press (AP). It says health officials said on Friday that four people in intensive care had died after their oxygen cut off.

Israeli military said its special forces were searching the facility, where it believes the remains of hostages abducted by Hamas might be located.

The raid came after troops had besieged Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis for nearly a week, with staff, patients and others inside struggling under heavy fire and dwindling supplies, including food and water. Hours before troops seized the hospital on Thursday, Israeli fire killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex, staff said.

Egypt is preparing an area at the Gaza border which could accommodate Palestinians in case an Israeli offensive into Rafah prompts an exodus across the frontier, four sources told news agency Reuters, in what they described as a contingency move by Cairo.

Egypt, which denied making any such preparations, has repeatedly raised the alarm over the possibility that Israel’s devastating Gaza offensive could displace Palestinians into Sinai – something Cairo says would be completely unacceptable – echoing warnings from Arab states such as Jordan.

One of the sources said Egypt was optimistic talks to clinch a ceasefire can avoid any such scenario, but is establishing the area at the border as a temporary and precautionary measure.

Three security sources told Reuters that Egypt had begun preparing a desert area with some basic facilities which could be used to shelter Palestinians, emphasising this was a contingency step. The sources Reuters spoke to for this story declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Israel has said its army is drawing up a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah to other parts of the Gaza Strip. But UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Thursday it was an “illusion” to think people in Gaza could evacuate to a safe place and warned of the possibility of Palestinians spilling into Egypt if Israel launches a military operation in Rafah. He called this scenario “a sort of Egyptian nightmare”.

Egypt has framed its opposition to the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza as part of wider Arab rejection of any repeat of the “Nakba”, or “catastrophe”, when about 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

The first source said construction of the camp began three or four days ago and it would offer temporary shelter in any scenario of people crossing the frontier “until a resolution is reached”.

Asked by Reuters about the accounts by the sources, the head of Egypt’s state information service said: “This has no basis in truth. Our Palestinian brothers have said and Egypt has said that there is no preparation for this possibility.”

US President Joe Biden has issued a fresh warning to Israel over its plans for an offensive in Rafah.

The area had formerly been declared a ‘safe zone’ for Palestinians fleeing the fighting and Israeli bombardments in other parts of Gaza. Since then its population has swelled in numbers.

Biden told Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he should not proceed with military action in Rafah without a credible and executable plan to protect Palestinian civilians, the White House said.

The call between the two leaders on Thursday was the second time in less than a week that Biden warned Netanyahu about moving into the southern part of the Gaza Strip without a plan to ensure the safety of about 1 million people sheltering there.

They also spoke about ongoing hostage negotiations and Biden pledged to continue to work around the clock to help free the hostages, who have spent 132 days in Hamas captivity, according to the White House read out of the call.

This round of negotiations in Cairo, aimed at a lengthy ceasefire and a second further exchange of hostages and prisoners after a successful week-long truce at the end of November, is expected to last until Friday.

Western leaders are also hoping a round of meetings at a security conference in Munich will put overwhelming pressure on Israel not to press ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah. The White House has announced that the US vice-president Kamala Harris is set to meet with Israeli president Isaac Herzog and Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani at the conference on Friday, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the Egyptian non-governmental organisation Sinai Foundation for Human Rights reported that construction work had begun on creating a “high-security gated and isolated area” near the border with Gaza “in the case of the mass exodus of the citizens of Gaza Strip”.

It has gone 9.30am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and this is our latest Guardian blog on the Middle East crisis.

US President Joe Biden has again told Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he should not proceed with military action in Rafah without a credible and executable plan to protect Palestinian civilians, the White House said.

The population of the city has swelled since the Israel-Gaza war began after the 7 October attacks by Hamas.

The call between the two leaders on Thursday was the second time in less than a week that Biden warned Netanyahu about moving into the southern part of the Gaza Strip without a plan to ensure the safety of about 1 million people sheltering there, reports Reuters.

It comes as the round of ceasefire and hostage release negotiations are expected to finish on Friday. Israel is also expected to come under pressure at the Munich security conference over its plans for Rafah.

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

• International medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported a “chaotic situation” at Nasser hospital and said its medical staff “have had to flee the hospital, leaving patients behind”. It also said one of its colleagues remained unaccounted for after Israeli forces shelled the hospital in the early hours of Thursday and another colleagues was detained at a checkpoint that Israeli Forces had set up “to screen people leaving the compound”. MSF said “we call for his safety and the protection of his dignity” and urged Israeli forces to stop “this attack”.

• Israeli military confirmed its special forces were inside Nasser hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Thursday, saying it had “credible intelligence” that the bodies of hostages taken on 7 October may be in the facility.

• IDF spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari, said forces were conducting a “precise and limited” operation in Nasser hospital and would not forcibly evacuate medics or patients but Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said Israel had launched a “massive incursion” with heavy shooting that injured many of the displaced people who had sheltered there. He said the military had ordered medics to move all patients into an older building that was not properly equipped for their treatment. “Many cannot evacuate, such as those with lower limb amputations, severe burns, or the elderly,” he said in an interview with the Al Jazeera network.

• Videos that Reuters verified on Thursday as having been filmed inside Nasser hospital, though it could not verify when, reportedly showed scenes of chaos and terror. Men walked through dark corridors using the lights from their phones, with plaster dust swirling around and debris lying in the corridors, at one point wheeling a bed through a damaged area. At one point in a video gunshots rang out and a doctor shouted “Is there anyone still inside? There is gunfire, there is gunfire – heads down”.

• Israeli forces fired into the main hospital in southern Gaza early on Thursday, killing a patient and wounding six others, according to medics. Dr Khaled Alserr, one of the remaining surgeons at Nasser hospital, told the Associated Press that the seven patients struck early on Thursday were already being treated for past wounds. On Wednesday, a doctor was lightly wounded when a drone opened fire on the upper stories of the hospital, he said, adding that “the situation is escalating every hour and every minute”.

• Cashflows at the UN agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) will turn negative next month and its financial problems will accelerate in April if funding suspended by a number of countries does not resume, the head of the agency said on Thursday before a meeting in Dublin with the country’s foreign minister.

• More Israeli strikes were reported in south Lebanon on Thursday as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati condemned the escalation. Government institutions, schools and Lebanese University were to close on Thursday in protest of the airstrikes.

• Israeli military said Thursday’s strikes in Lebanon targeted Hezbollah infrastructure and launch posts. Spokesperson Avi Hyman from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said: “Our message to Hezbollah has and always will be: Don’t try us”. Senior Hezbollah official Sheikh Nabil Kaouk said at an event on Thursday in southern Lebanon that the militant group was “prepared for the possibility of expanding the war”.

• Senior Hezbollah official and member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah said on Thursday that Israel would face reprisal after two sets of strikes on southern Lebanon the previous day killed 10 civilians, half of them children. “The enemy [Israel] will pay the price for these crimes,” Fadlallah told Reuters when asked about the armed group’s reaction.

• The UN peacekeeping force deployed along the Lebanon-Israel border, known as Unifil, expressed concerns over the latest “exchanges of fire,” and urged all sides involved to halt hostilities to prevent further escalation. “Attacks targeting civilians are violations of international law and constitute war crimes,” Unifil’s spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said in a statement. “The devastation, loss of life, and injuries witnessed are deeply concerning.”

• Israel’s vow to push ahead with a “powerful” operation in Gaza’s Rafah was met with a growing chorus of international condemnation on Thursday, with leaders warning against catastrophic consequences for the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped there. Australia, Canada and New Zealand warned Israel “not to go down this path”, issuing a rare joint statement in the latest urgent appeal seeking to avert further mass civilian casualties. “An expanded military operation would be devastating,” they said. “There is simply nowhere else for civilians to go.”

• Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich has rejected plans for an establishment of a Palestinian state, writing on X that Israel “won’t agree in any way” to it. Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir also posted on X. He wrote: “1,400 are murdered and the world wants to give them a state. Not going to happen. The establishment of a Palestinian state means the establishment of a Hamas state.”

• The 22 Arab countries at the UN are urging the security council to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and unhindered humanitarian assistance, and to prevent any transfer of Palestinians out of the territory. The Arab Group chair this month, Tunisia’s UN ambassador Tarek Ladeb, told UN reporters on Wednesday that about 1.5 million Palestinians who sought safety in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah face a “catastrophic scenario” if Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes ahead with a potential evacuation of civilians and military offensive in the area bordering Egypt.