Key events
Reuters has posted a video report on belongings left behind after Hamas’s attack on a music festival in southern Israel on 7 October.
The post on X (formerly Twitter) says that at a trauma centre in the Israeli city of Caesarea, “survivors reclaimed their lost possessions, while families of the dead reunited with the things their loved ones left behind”.
These are the belongings left behind after Hamas attacked a music festival in southern Israel. At a trauma center in the city of Caesarea, survivors reclaimed their lost possessions, while families of the dead reunited with the things their loved ones left behind pic.twitter.com/0VbIwRtMhZ
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 20, 2023
An Israeli police investigation into the attack on the Supernova music festival in Kibbutz Re’im on 7 October has updated the death toll to 364, according to Israeli media reports last week.
That figure would make up nearly a third of all of those killed during the onslaught in Israel on 7 October, the Times of Israel reported, citing Channel 12.
Earlier counts had placed the death count from the festival attack at 270.
The Israeli police reportedly believe that Hamas did not know about the festival before carrying out the attacks.
Here’s our explainer from last month on how the attack unfolded:
Iran’s supreme leader says Israel has suffered a “defeat” in its war against Iran-backed Hamas and that it is “a fact”.
In a speech at an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace force centre in the capital of Tehran, quoted by Agence France-Presse, Khamenei said that “the defeat of the Zionist regime [Israel] in Gaza is a fact”.
Advancing and entering hospitals or people’s homes is not a victory, because victory means defeating the other side.
Khamenei said Israel “has so far failed” in achieving its declared goal of destroying Hamas “despite the massive bombings” of Gaza.
“This incapacity reflects the inability of the United States and western countries” which back Israel, he added.
Iran, which supports Hamas financially and militarily, has called the 7 October attacks a “success” but denied any direct involvement.
We’ve just published a full report on Yemen’s Houthi rebels saying they have seized what they called an Israeli cargo ship in the Red Sea, and warning that all vessels linked to Israel “will become a legitimate target for armed forces”.
Houthi forces would “continue to carry out military operations against the Israeli enemy until the aggression against Gaza stops and the ugly crimes … against our Palestinian brothers in Gaza and the West Bank stop”, a spokesperson for the group, Yahya Saree, said on X (formerly Twitter).
Israel said the vessel was a British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo ship and described the incident as an “Iranian act of terrorism” with consequences for international maritime security.
Here’s the full report:
World must act to end humanitarian disaster in Gaza, says China
China fully supports the call for a two-state solution in Gaza by the recent Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh, the Chinese foreign minister has said in a meeting with ministers from Arab and Islamic countries in Beijing.
Wang Yi also said on Monday that the international community must act now and take effective measures to end the humanitarian disaster, Reuters reports.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, said the international community needed to shoulder responsibility to stop Israel.
Arab and Muslim ministers call for immediate Gaza ceasefire in China meeting
Arab and Muslim ministers called on Monday for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as their delegation visited Beijing on the first leg of a tour to push for an end to hostilities and to allow humanitarian aid into the territory.
Reuters reports that the delegation, which is set to meet officials representing the permanent members of the UN security council, is also piling pressure on the west to reject Israel’s justification of its actions against Palestinians as self-defence.
The officials holding meetings with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Monday are from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia, Palestine and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, among others.
The extraordinary joint Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh this month also urged the international criminal court to investigate “war crimes and crimes against humanity that Israel is committing” in the Palestinian territories.
Saudi Arabia has sought to press the US and Israel for an end to hostilities in Gaza, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, gathered Arab and Muslim leaders to reinforce that message.
Here are some recent images from the Gaza Strip, this time of the funeral of freelance journalists Hassouna Sleem and Sary Mansour.
The two were killed on Saturday in an Israeli assault on Bureij refugee camp, in the centre of the Gaza Strip, their relatives and Palestinian health officials said.
Health officials said 17 people died in the attack.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war with me, Adam Fulton.
Israel’s military has released security camera footage it says shows hostages being brought into the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on 7 October after being kidnapped during Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel.
The first clip, which appears to be time-stamped 10.53am on 7 October, shows a man in shorts and a pale blue shirt being dragged through what looks like an entrance hall by five men, at least three of whom are armed.
In the second, seemingly time-stamped 10.55am, an injured man in underwear is wheeled in on a gurney by seven men – at least four of them armed – as several men in blue hospital scrubs look on.
It was not possible to verify the footage independently. More on that soon.
In other key developments as it approaches 6.30am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv:
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Palestinian medics have evacuated 31 premature babies from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and taken them to a hospital in southern Gaza for assessment and treatment, the World Health Organisation has said. Doctors found that “all the babies are fighting serious infections due to lack of medical supplies and impossibility to continue infection control measures in al-Shifa hospital”, it said. Preparations were under way for the babies to enter Egypt, said the director general of hospitals in Gaza, Mohammed Zaqut.
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Israel and Hamas appear to be edging towards a deal that would see the release of a significant number of hostages, possibly in return for a limited ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Senior US and Israeli officials, as well as the Qatari prime minister, all suggested an agreement was close on Sunday, although observers have cautioned that public statements during such negotiations are often misleading and any potential deal could easily collapse.
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A senior Israeli source and a senior member of Hamas rejected a report quoting an unnamed Hamas source as saying an agreement was reached on Sunday to start a ceasefire on Monday and release a number of hostages, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.
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Japan’s top government spokesperson says the country is appealing to Yemen’s Houthis who have captured a cargo ship in the southern Red Sea and is seeking the help of Saudi, Omani and Iranian authorities to work towards the swift release of the vessel and its crew. Twenty-two crew were onboard, including Bulgarians and Filipinos, Japan’s Nikkei newspaper said.
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The Israel military has published video footage it says shows the first solid evidence of a sophisticated Hamas tunnel network underneath the al-Shifa hospital complex. It said on Sunday that its troops “exposed a 55-metre-long terror tunnel 10 metres deep” under the hospital complex. Hamas dismissed Israel’s claim, while the director of the Gaza health ministry, Mounir el-Boursh, reportedly called it “pure lie”.
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At least 13,000 Palestinians have been killed and 30,000 injured by Israeli strikes across Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday. Nearly 884,000 internally displaced persons were sheltering in 154 installations in Gaza run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the agency said.
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France will send a warship to provide medical aid to Gaza, President Emmanuel Macron has said.
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The head of a prominent media institution in the Gaza Strip and two other journalists were killed over the weekend in Israel’s offensive in the territory, their relatives have said. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the weekend deaths raised to 48 the number of journalists and media workers it had confirmed killed in the region since 7 October.
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The World Health Organisation, which led a second assessment visit to al-Shifa hospital on Sunday, commended the healthcare personnel working at the facility, which the WHO declared to be a “death zone”.