Key events
Summary of the day …
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Hundreds of Palestinians were fleeing Khan Younis in southern Gaza after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) once again bombarded the largely ruined city and ordered a mass evacuation of residents. Witnesses reported strikes on Tuesday in and around the city, where eight people were killed and more than 30 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and a medical source, Agence France-Presse said
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The attacks came after a rare rocket barrage on Monday claimed by the militant group Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas. The Israeli military said about “20 projectiles were identified crossing from the area of Khan Younis”, most of which were intercepted. It reported no casualties and said artillery was “striking the sources of the fire”
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In the last 24 hours Israel has announced three more soldiers have been killed during its Gaza operation, bringing the total number of casualties for the IDF inside Gaza to 320. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict
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Far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has protested about an Israeli decision to increase the electricity supply to Gaza. Defense minister Yoav Gallant has described the work, which will enable a desalination plant in Gaza to produce more water, as “a basic humanitarian need” but Smotrich has called it a “folly”, asking prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene
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The mother of rescued hostage Noa Argamani has died in Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv, Israeli media reports. Liora Argamani, who was 61, had been terminally ill, and was reunited with her daughter last month
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Lebanon’s national news agency reports that an Israeli drone strike has hit an electrical transformer in the town of Taybeh in the south of the country
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Gaza.
Far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who recently said it was his life’s mission to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state, and who has called for Israel to fully annex the currently occupied West Bank, has protested about an Israeli decision to increase the electricity supply to Gaza.
Defense minister Yoav Gallant has described the work, which will enable a desalination plant in Gaza to produce more water, as “a basic humanitarian need” but Smotrich has called it a “folly”, asking prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene.
“We’ve lost it completely. We are rebuilding Gaza ourselves, before it has been demilitarized,” Smotrich said.
In October 2023, after the 7 October Hamas attack inside southern Israel, Gallant said “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Israel has announced that two more of its soldiers have been killed.
In the announcement it said that both “fell during combat in the central Gaza Strip”, and that in the incident that killed them two more soldiers were seriously wounded. They, the IDF says, have been evacuated from Gaza to hospital.
The IDF now says 320 troops have been killed during ground operations in the Gaza Strip since 7 October.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Julian Borger
Julian Borger reports from Washington for the Guardian
Israel risks going to war against Hezbollah to ensure Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival, but it would be a miscalculation that could lead to mass civilian deaths in both Lebanon and Israel, a former US military intelligence analyst has warned.
Harrison Mann, a major in the Defence Intelligence Agency who left the military last month over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, also told the Guardian that such a disastrous new war would pull the US into a regional conflict.
Despite an announcement in June by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that planning for a Lebanon offensive had been completed, and increasingly bellicose rhetoric from Israeli politicians, US officials have been saying privately that Netanyahu’s government is aware how dangerous a war with Hezbollah would be and is not seeking a fight.
Mann, the most senior US military officer to have quit over Gaza to date, said that assessment was optimistic and that there was a high risk of Israel going to war on its northern border for internal political reasons, led by a prime minister whose continuing hold on power and consequent insulation from corruption charges, depends largely on the nation being at war.
“We know specifically that the Israeli prime minister must continue to be a wartime leader if he wants to prolong his political career and stay out of court, so that motivation is there,” Mann said in an interview. He added that any Israeli government would be sensitive to political pressure from tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the border area because of Hezbollah rocket and artillery attacks.
On top of that, the Israeli military establishment is convinced that the heavily armed, Iranian-backed Shia militia will have to be confronted sooner rather than later, as it grows in strength, Mann said, but he argued the Israelis have miscalculated the costs of a new war in Lebanon.
Read more here: Israel risking disastrous war against Hezbollah for political reasons, says former US official
Lebanon’s national news agency reports that an Israeli drone strike has hit an electrical transformer in the town of Taybeh in the south of the country.
Eight Palestinians killed by continued Israeli attacks on Khan Younis and Rafah – reports
Eight Palestinians have been killed and dozens more wounded after Israeli forces again bombarded several areas of Khan Younis and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Reuters reports health officials in the territory have said.
Reuters have spoken via a chat app to a 55-year-old in Gaza, who told the news agency he had been displaced six times since 7 October by Israeli attacks and evacuation orders.
“Where will we go?” he said. “Every time people go back to their homes and begin to rebuild some of their lives even on the rubble of their houses, the occupation sends the tanks back to destroy what is left.”
Here are some more images of the forced displacement overnight of Palestinians within the Gaza Strip after Israel’s military issued instructions for people to move, ahead of another anticipated ground assault on Khan Younis.
Israel’s military has issued two operational updates on its official Telegram channel during the morning, claiming to struck targets in Khan Younis from where fire emerged yesterday, and to be continuing operations in Shejaiya, Rafah and central Gaza.
On Monday, it said “approximately 20 projectiles were launched from the area of Khan Younis toward Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip”. The IDF says that as a consequence it “struck terror targets in the area from which the projectiles were fired, including a weapons storage facility, operational centres, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites.”
Yesterday the Al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibity for volley of fire, saying “We bombed the settlements along the Gaza Strip with a missile barrage in response to the crimes of the Zionist enemy against our Palestinian people.”
The claims have not been independently verified.
Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir al-Balah for Al Jazeera says that it has been “quite difficult for residents” in the eastern area of Khan Younis over the last 24 hours. He writes:
A new wave of enforced displacement is pushing residents from the eastern parts of Khan Younis into the central and western parts of the city, including the al-Mawasi “evacuation zone”, that has been largely unsafe as it was repeatedly bombed. The lack of fuel means what people are doing right now is either walking for miles or using animals to pull carts to leave.
The mother of rescued hostage Noa Argamani has died in Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv, Israeli media reports. Liora Argamani had been terminally ill, and was reunited with her daughter last month.
Argamani, 25, was abducted from the Nova music festival on 7 October. She was returned to Israel after a military operation early in June. Three other hostages – Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40 – were rescued at the same time.
The hostages and missing families forum said in a statement:
Liora struggled with cancer for a long time and while Noa was in captivity she said that her last wish was to see her daughter before she died. In the last few days she had the privilege of being with her daughter Noa and other family members.
Liora Argamani was 61.
Here are some of the images sent overnight across the news wires from Khan Younis in Gaza which has been bombarded again by Israel, with reports saying people have been killed and injured in the Israeli attack.
Overnight Israel confirmed the death of another soldier during its operation inside the Gaza Strip. It takes the official casualty tally to 318 dead since ground operations began.
Israel reports that 4,021 of its troops have been wounded since 7 October. 250 IDF members are currently in hospital, with 31 of those considered to be in a serious condition.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Palestinian news agency Wafa has reported that “a number of Palestinians were killed and others were injured Monday night” by Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip without giving specific numbers.
Al Jazeera reports that verified video shows “the arrival of the three bodies and six injured people at Nasser hospital”. It reports that the wounded suffered an additional delay to their treatment as they were unable to use the European hospital closest to them due to Israeli evacuation orders.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider crisis in the Middle East.
Israel has carried out fresh strikes in and around Khan Younis after ordering a mass evacuation of much of the scity. Eight people were killed and more than 30 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and a medical source, reported Agence France-Presse.
The strikes came after a rare rocket barrage on Monday claimed by the militant group Islamic Jihad.
The Israeli military said artillery had “struck the sources of the fire” and that about “20 projectiles were identified crossing from the area of Khan Younis”, most of which were intercepted. It reported no casualties.
The latest news on the ground came after the evacuation order spurred UN secretary general António Guterres to say “no place is safe in Gaza” for Palestinian civilians.
“It’s another stop in this deadly circular movement that the population in Gaza has to undergo on a regular basis,” Guterres said in a statement calling for a ceasefire.
Much of Khan Younis was destroyed in a long assault earlier this year, but large numbers of Palestinians had moved back to escape another Israeli offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah.
The order suggests Khan Younis will be the latest target of Israel’s raids into parts of Gaza it had previously invaded in the war, as it pursues regrouping Hamas militants.
As night fell, streams of civilians left on foot alongside a steady flow of vehicles as people began making their way out of the evacuation zone.
More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
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The head of the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital has accused Israel of torturing him and other detainees, after his release following seven months in Israeli prisons and detention facilities. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, was among dozens of Palestinians freed and returned to Gaza on Monday, according to Israeli authorities. The doctor, who had been held by Israel without charge since his arrest at his workplace in November, said he and other prisoners were subjected to “almost daily torture” while in detention in Israel.
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The release of Abu Salmiya prompted a political row in Israel, with the country’s most senior officials denying prior knowledge of the move. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, who controls the police and prison service, said the release of Abu Salmiya and others constituted “security negligence” and blamed the defence ministry, which denied responsibility. The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said Abu Salmiya’s release was another sign of the government’s “lawlessness and dysfunction”.
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Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon after criticised the release as a “serious mistake”. Netanyahu said he had ordered the Shin Bet intelligence agency to conduct an investigation into the release and provide him with the results by Tuesday. The decision was made “without the knowledge of the political echelon”, he added.
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Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency said it had decided on the release with the Israeli military “to free up places in detention centres”. The agency said it “opposed the release of terrorists” who had taken part in attacks on Israeli civilians “so it was decided to free several Gaza detainees who represent a lesser danger”.
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The Israel Broadcasting Authority has quoted the country’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as saying the Israeli army needs 10,000 additional soldiers immediately. According to Al Jazeera, Gallant told the foreign affairs and defence committee that 4,800 of those required can be recruited from Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, which makes up about 13% of people in Israel.
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The Palestinian health authority said a woman and a child were killed by Israeli security forces during a raid into Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinian news agency Wafa named those killed as Muhammad Ali Sarhan, 15, and Nisreen Khaled Damiri, 47.
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Yemen’s Houthis said that they conducted four military operations targeting four ships in the Red, Arabian and Mediterranean Seas as well as the Indian Ocean “linked to the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel.” The Guardian was not immediately able to verify the claims.