Closing summary
Children and families are scavenging through rubbish for “scraps of food to eat” on a daily basis in the southern city of Khan Younis, Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), said. In a video posted to X, she also accused Israel of denying her agency access to landfill sites and said over 1,000 tonnes of rubbish accumulate every day in the devastated city, with disease spreading across the population.
At least 45,259 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,627 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since last October, the Gaza health ministry said earlier today. Of those, 32 Palestinians were killed and 54 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.
Israeli forces are continuing to attack and besiege the barely functioning Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, according to reports.
Turkey believes Syria’s new rulers, including the Syrian National Army (SNA) armed group which Ankara backs, will drive Kurdish YPG fighters from all territory they occupy in northeastern Syria, the country’s defence minister, Yasar Guler, said. Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, meanwhile, met with Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al Sharaa - also known as Abu Mohammed al-Golan - in Damascus.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said young Syrians will resist the new government emerging after the overthrow of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
We are closing this blog now. Thanks for following along. You can find all of our latest Middle East coverage here.
Updated
The Israeli parliament decided in late October to pass a law banning the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, from operating in the country. Unrwa said the new laws – due to come into effect within the next month – will cause the supply chain of aid to Gaza to “fall apart”, excepting an already dire humanitarian crisis, with widespread shortages of food, medicine and clean water across the Strip.
Families scavenging through trash looking for scraps of food to eat on daily basis in Khan Younis – Unrwa
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestine refugees (Unrwa), has recorded a video from the southern city of Khan Younis, in which she says families are scavenging through rubbish for “scraps of food to eat” on a daily basis.
In the video posted to X, Wateridge said:
Here in Khan Younis, there is a trash pile around 1km². Every day we see children, animals and families scavenging through the trash, looking for scraps of food to eat, or material to burn to keep warm.
Over 1000 tonnes of trash a day accumulate, and there’s nowhere for it to go. Last month, Unrwa contributed to over 60% of the total amount of waste collected, but as with everything in Gaza, it’s nowhere near enough.
Trash continues to pile up, and we are continuously denied access to landfill sites to remove it away from where families are sheltering. Piles of rubbish are higher than me. They’re between people’s tents. They’re among the shelters. And there’s insects, there’s rats, there’s rodents, all manifesting in these areas, spreading the disease, causing health issues among the population, causing health issues among children.
This is the level of desperation we have. It’s December. People have been living out exposed for over a year now. How many more ways do we need to show just how inhumane the situation is here. It’s not just the horrors of the bombs and the strikes. It’s a forced misery of 2 million people who continue to be trapped here, forced to suffer as every basic need continues to be deprived.
Updated
My colleague Caroline Davis has spoken to War Child, a charity which offers mental health services and educational help to children in Gaza. She has been told of the severe trauma Palestinian children have suffered as a result of Israel’s war on the territory. Here is an extract from her piece:
There are children such as one recently seen by Mohammed, an emergency response officer. Identified as severely traumatised, the boy was receiving one-to-one specialist counselling in the corner of a crowded shelter that was home to 3,000 people.
“He can communicate only by his drawings. He is mute. He does not have the ability to talk because of his panic from the war. He is six years old,” says Mohammed, who, like his colleagues, is speaking to the Observer via video link from Gaza and through an interpreter. “It’s very hard for anybody to imagine.”
Then there are those who have lost their parents in bombings in which children have also been injured, sometimes losing limbs. According to Unicef, 17,000 children are now unaccompanied and separated in Gaza, and vulnerable to myriad threats including physical and sexual abuse and exploitation.
Pope Francis has reiterated his condemnation of Israel’s deadly airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, denouncing their “cruelty” for the second time in as many days.
“And with pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty,” the 88-year-old pontiff said after his weekly Angelus prayer.
It comes a day after the pontiff condemned an Israeli airstrike that reportedly killed seven children from one family on Friday.
“Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” the pope told members of the government of the Holy See.
His remarks on Saturday prompted a sharp response from Israel, with an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson described Francis’s intervention as “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism - a multi-front war that was forced upon it starting on October 7.”
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people,” the spokesperson added.
Updated
A prominent Lebanese politician held talks on Sunday with the insurgent who led the overthrow of Syria’s president Bashar Assad, with both expressing hope for a new era in relations between their countries.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt was a longtime critic of Syria’s involvement in Lebanon and blamed Assad’s father, former President Hafez Assad, for the assassination of his own father decades ago. He is the most prominent Lebanese politician to visit Syria since the Assad family’s 54-year rule came to an end.
He held talks with Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who led the Sunni Islamist rebels who swept into Damascus earlier this month and forced the younger Assad from power.
“We salute the Syrian people for their great victories and we salute you for your battle that you waged to get rid of oppression and tyranny that lasted over 50 years,” said Jumblatt, a key figure in Lebanon’s Druze minority and the former leader of a leftist party. He expressed hope that Lebanese-Syrian relations “will return to normal”.
Jumblatt’s father, Kamal, was killed in 1977 in an ambush near a Syrian roadblock during Syria’s military intervention in Lebanon’s civil war. The younger Jumblatt was a critic of the Assads, though he briefly allied with them at one point to gain influence in Lebanon’s ever-shifting political alignments.
“Syria was a source of concern and disturbance, and its interference in Lebanese affairs was negative,” al-Sharaa said, referring to the Assad government. “Syria will no longer be a case of negative interference in Lebanon,” he said, pledging that it would respect Lebanese sovereignty.
Updated
Turkey's foreign minister meets Syria's de facto leader in Damascus
Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, has met with Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al Sharaa - also known as Abu Mohammed al-Golan - in Damascus, Turkey’s foreign ministry has said. No further details were provided. Fidan said yesterday that Turkey will do “whatever it takes” to ensure its security if the new Syrian administration cannot address Ankara’s concerns about US-allied Kurdish groups it views as terrorist groups (see post at 10.32 for more details). Fidan also said that the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, led by al Sharaa and which swept into Damascus to topple Assad early this month, had “excellent cooperation” with Ankara in the battle against Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the past through intelligence sharing.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the newswires from Gaza:
In an address earlier today in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said young Syrians will resist the new government emerging after the overthrow of the Assad regime. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the rebel offensive are the de facto rulers of Syria now.
Western governments are gradually opening channels to HTS and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former commander of an al Qaeda franchise in Syria, and starting to debate whether to remove the group’s terrorist designation. Iran had provided crucial support to Assad throughout Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war.
On Sunday, Khamenei, who is Iran’s highest authority, said that the “young Syrian has nothing to lose” and suffers from insecurity following Assad’s fall. “What can he do? He should stand with strong will against those who designed and those who implemented the insecurity,” Khamenei said. “God willing, he will overcome them.”
He accused the US and Israel of plotting against Assad’s government in order to seize resources, saying: “Now they feel victory, the Americans, the Zionist regime and those who accompanied them.”
Updated
Death toll from Israeli airstrikes on Gaza reaches 45,259, says health ministry
At least 45,259 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,627 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Of those, 32 Palestinians were killed and 54 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.
Gaza’s health ministry has said in the past that thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory.
As a reminder, Hamas and two other Palestinian armed groups said yesterday in a rare joint statement that an agreement to end the war was “closer than ever”.
The groups, which include Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that a truce in Gaza and hostage release deal may be within reach, provided Israel does not impose new conditions in negotiations.
Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US, were held last week in Doha, rekindling hope of a potential breakthrough after months of stalling.
As my colleague Peter Beaumont notes in this story, sticking points that torpedoed previous rounds of talks, including the presence of Israel troops in the so-called Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors inside Gaza, appear to have been sidelined for now, although a continuing issue is understood to be the ability of Palestinians in Gaza to return to their homes in the strip’s north.
Turkey says it believes Kurdish fighters will be forced out of all Syrian territory
Turkey believes Syria’s new rulers, including the Syrian National Army (SNA) armed group which Ankara backs, will drive Kurdish YPG fighters from all territory they occupy in northeastern Syria, the country’s defence minister, Yasar Guler, said.
Turkey sees the Syrian YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for decades.
The YPG spearheads an alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is backed by the US and controls territory in northeastern Syria. Since the fall of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad two weeks ago, Turkey and Syrian groups it backs have fought against the SDF, seizing the city of Manbij.
“We believe that the new leadership in Syria and the Syrian National Army, which is an important part of its army, along with the Syrian people, will free all territories occupied by terrorist organisations,” Guler was quoted by Reuters as saying.
“We will also take every necessary measure with the same determination until all terrorist elements beyond our borders are cleared,” he said.
Israeli forces have detained at least six Palestinian people, including a child, across the occupied West Bank since last night, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and the Palestinian Authority Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs said.
According to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, the detentions were carried out in Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarm and Ramallah.
These detentions were accompanied by house demolitions and the detention of several individuals without charge, Wafa reported.
It is estimated that over 12,100 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October.
Human rights groups and international organisations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the West Bank.
They have described alleged abusive and humiliating treatment, including holding blindfolded and handcuffed detainees in cramped cages as well as beatings, intimidation and harassment.
Israeli airstrikes kill at least 28 Palestinians across Gaza – official
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes overnight and early this morning have killed at least 28 Palestinian people. Civil agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an airstrike on a house in Deir al-Balah – a town in central Gaza – belonging to the Abu Samra family.
Bassal said that eight people, including four children, were killed in the attack on the Musa Bin Nusayr school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war. Bassal said an overnight Israeli airstrike killed three people in the southern city of Rafah, and a drone strike this morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people.
Updated
Israeli forces attacking northern Gaza's Kamal Adwan hospital – report
Gaza’s health ministry has said the three main hospitals in northern Gaza – of which Kamal Adwan is one – are barely functioning and have been under repeated attack since Israel sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and nearby Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in October. The Israeli military claims the aim of the renewed assault on the north is to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping there. But the IDF has attacked hospitals and shelters, with many civilians being killed by Israeli forces amid relentless attacks.
As we mentioned in the opening summary, Israeli forces have reportedly launched more attacks on the Kamal Adwan hospital. Here is a fuller report from Al Jazeera (which we have not yet been able to independently verify):
They (Israeli forces) have been using heavy artillery and detonating explosive devices that had been planted in the areas surrounding the hospital, preventing and impeding the movement of ambulances, as well as that of people seeking to take the wounded from bomb sites to the medical facility.
The most fierce attack on the hospital last night was on its laboratory.
These attacks seem to be deliberate, on purpose, just to push the facility out of service.
It started with quadcopters surrounding the facility, and telling everyone in the facility – via loudspeakers – to leave. By the way, it’s only some 60 people who remain there. They include the director of the hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the medical staff working with him in these difficult conditions and the patients.
Updated
Israeli airstrikes kill at least 17 Palestinian people across Gaza
Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and developments in the Middle East more widely.
Israeli military airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 17 Palestinian people, 8 of them at a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, medics said.
Palestinian medics said eight people, including children, were killed in the Musa Bin Nusayr school that sheltered displaced families in Gaza City.
Also in Gaza City, medics said four Palestinians were killed when an airstrike hit a car. At least five other Palestinians were killed in two separate airstrikes in Rafah and Khan Younis south of the enclave.
Here is a brief summary of what you else you need to know today:
Several people have been injured by Israeli attacks on northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, according to Al Jazeera, with Israeli forces reportedly firing directly on the facility’s ICU and maternity ward, as well as at the nearby al-Awda hospital. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital, said the army ordered staff to evacuate the hospital and move patients and injured people toward another hospital in the area. Abu Safiya said the mission was “next to impossible” because staff did not have ambulances to move the patients. “Tonight’s reports of bombardment near Kamal Adwan hospital and order to evacuate the hospital are deeply worrisome. The hospital has been in the midst of fighting for too long and the lives of patients are at risk,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in a post on X late last night.
The US military said it mistakenly shot down one of its own fighter aircraft over the Red Sea on Sunday morning, forcing both pilots to eject. Both were rescued, one with minor injuries, after the “apparent case of friendly fire,” which is being investigated, US Central Command said in a statement. The fighter was an F/A-18 Hornet flying off the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman. One of the carrier’s escort ships, the missile cruiser Gettysburg, “mistakenly fired on and hit” the plane, the statement said.
The US military carried out airstrikes against a missile storage facility and a command-and-control facility operated by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, on Saturday. The US military’s Central Command said the strikes aimed to “disrupt and degrade” Houthi operations, including attacks against US navy warships and merchant vessels in the southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden. The strike followed a similar attack last week by US aircraft against a command and control facility operated by the Houthis, who control much of Yemen. The US attack on Sana’a came the same day that a Houthi missile struck Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv, injuring 16 people in the second such airstrike in days.
Turkey has vowed to “do whatever it takes” to ensure its security if the new Syrian administration cannot address Ankara’s concerns about US-allied Kurdish groups it views as terrorist groups, the country’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said on Saturday. Turkey regards the YPG, the militant group spearheading the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years and are deemed terrorists by Ankara, Washington, and the EU.
The UN has warned that people living in makeshift shelters might not survive the winter. Nearly 2 million Palestinians have been displaced by Israel’s war on the territory and are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.
Updated
