Key events
We’ve published a full report on the Israeli military releasing video footage it says shows hostages being taken into Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital on 7 October, the day Hamas launched its devastating attacks on Israel.
The CCTV video aired by an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson appeared to show a group of men frog-marching an individual into a hospital, to the surprise of medical staff. A second clip showed an injured man on a gurney. Another man nearby, in civilian clothes, had an assault rifle.
Separately, the IDF claimed one hostage, a 19-year-old Israeli army conscript named Noa Marciano, had been killed by Hamas at the hospital.
Hamas has previously blamed an Israeli airstrike for her death.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said it was not able to confirm the authenticity of the footage of the two hostages aired by the IDF, according to the BBC. Hamas’ leadership did not immediately comment on the claims. It has previously said it took some hostages to hospitals for treatment.
Our full report is here:
Israel ‘expanding’ operation in Gaza, says military
The Israeli military said it was “expanding” its operation in the Gaza Strip, Agence France-Presse is reporting.
Israel warned residents of Gaza’s largest refugee camp, Jabalia, and a nearby coastal camp to evacuate, while the military said on Sunday it was “expanding its operational activities in additional neighbourhoods” of Gaza.
After intense bombardment, an AFP journalist in the territory saw columns of smoke rising from Jabalia, in northern Gaza, on Sunday.
A Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed in twin strikes on Jabalia on Saturday, including on a UN school sheltering displaced people.
Social media videos verified by AFP showed bodies covered in blood and dust on the floor of a building, where mattresses had been wedged under school tables.
Israel’s military has said Jabalia is among the areas of focus as troops “target terrorists and strike Hamas infrastructure”.
Without mentioning the strikes, the Israeli army said that “an incident in the Jabalia region” was under review.
The UN rights chief, Volker Turk, on Sunday condemned the purported strike on the school as “horrifying”, adding that “the horrendous events of the past 48 hours in Gaza beggar belief”.
On Monday, Palestinian news agency Wafa said the Indonesian hospital near Jabalia had also come under shelling.
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 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 the assault:
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 urgently to end ‘humanitarian disaster’ in Gaza, says China
The international community must take urgent action to stop the “humanitarian disaster” unfolding in Gaza, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has told visiting diplomats from Arab and Muslim-majority nations.
“Let us work together to quickly cool down the situation in Gaza and restore peace in the Middle East as soon as possible,” Wang told foreign ministers in opening remarks in Beijing on Monday, Agence France-Presse reports.
“A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Gaza,” Wang told the delegates, including the secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
A delegation of foreign ministers of the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are in Beijing this week for talks aimed at a “de-escalation” of the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Wang said:
The situation in Gaza affects all countries around the world, questioning the human sense of right and wrong and humanity’s bottom line.
Wang also said China fully supported the call for a two-state solution in Gaza by the recent Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh.
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 at 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”.
