Summary of the day so far
It’s just past midnight in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
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The Israeli military said it has expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to refugee camps in the central part of the Palestinian territory. Israeli forces continued to bombard the densely populated Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza for a fourth day on Tuesday. WHO emergency medical teams coordinator, Sean Casey, said “100-plus patients” had been brought into Al-Aqsa hospital in the space of 30 minutes on Monday, adding that “about 100” more lifeless bodies were brought into the hospital at around the same time.
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Israel is engaged in a “multi-front war”, its defence minister Yoav Gallant has said, hinting at military operations across the Middle East as the war in Gaza showed new signs of a dangerous regional escalation. Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Gallant said Israel was “coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran”.
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Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza will probably go on for many months, the country’s military chief has said. Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff of the IDF, told a press conference on Tuesday that its forces will reach the Hamas leadership “whether it takes a week or whether it takes months”.
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Nearly 21,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday. The latest figures state that 20,915 people have been killed and 54,918 injured, including 241 Palestinians who were killed in the past 24 hours and 382 were injured.
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Israeli forces killed two Palestinian people on Tuesday in a raid on a refugee camp near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry has said. The two people – aged 17 and 31 – were shot dead in the Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron, the ministry said.
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All telecommunications and Internet services have been lost in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian phone service provider, Paltel, said on Tuesday. In a social media post, it said its services had experienced a “complete breakdown” that was “due to the ongoing offensive”.
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The UN is “gravely concerned” about the “continued bombardment” of central Gaza by Israeli forces, a UN human rights office spokesperson has said. In a statement, Seif Magango urged Israeli forces to take all measures available to protect civilians and that attacks must adhere to the principles of humanitarian international law.
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Israel Defense Forces said nine of its soldiers were wounded in an anti-tank missile fired by Lebanon’s Hezbollah group on Tuesday. The IDF soldiers were evacuating a civilian who had been injured in an earlier Hezbollah attack on a church, the army said. One of the soldiers was in a “serious condition”, it said. Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari accused Hezbollah of “committing war crimes by indiscriminately attacking places of worship”.
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Yemen’s Houthi rebel group has said that it carried out drone attacks targeting the Israeli port city of Eilat, as well as a commercial vessel in the Red Sea. A Houthi military spokesperson said the group launched an attack with missiles on a MSC United commercial ship in the Red Sea after it rejected three warning calls, as well as drone attacks on the southern Israeli city of Eilat “and other areas in occupied Palestine”.
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The Israeli army has said it arrested senior Palestinian politician Khalida Jarrar in the occupied West Bank, along with other activists of her party. Jarrar, a prominent figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), had been previously arrested by Israeli forces in October 2019 and released in September the following year, after being held without trial.
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A blast occurred near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Tuesday, authorities said. No staff members were wounded or killed during the incident, authorities said, adding that investigations into its cause were ongoing. Israel urged its citizens in India, specifically in New Delhi, to exercise caution.
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Israel will no longer grant automatic visas to United Nations employees, after accusing the global body of being “complicit partners” in Hamas’s tactics. The move comes after Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, on Monday said he had instructed his ministry not to renew the visa of a UN staff member in Israel.
Key events
France is “gravely concerned” by Israel’s announcement that it will intensify and prolong fighting against Hamas in Gaza, the French foreign ministry has said.
A statement from the ministry said France “strongly reiterates its call for an immediate truce leading to a ceasefire”, while condemning the “systematic bombing that has again left many civilian victims in recent days”.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said nine of its soldiers were wounded in an anti-tank missile fired by Lebanon’s Hezbollah group on Tuesday.
The IDF soldiers were evacuating a civilian who had been injured in an earlier Hezbollah attack on a church, the army said. One of the soldiers was in a “serious condition”, it said.
The Israeli army said that in the earlier attack, the missile had hit a Greek Orthodox church in Iqrit, referring to an abandoned Palestinian Christian village whose inhabitants were forced to leave during the 1948 war and creation of Israel, AFP reported.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari accused Hezbollah of “committing war crimes by indiscriminately attacking places of worship”.
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires of a school in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza that has suffered massive damage from Israeli attacks.
The Emir of Qatar, sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, held a phone call with the US president, Joe Biden, on Tuesday to discuss the latest developments in Gaza, according to Qatari state media.
The pair also spoke about current joint mediation efforts for calming the situation in Gaza to reach a permanent ceasefire, according to a report from the Qatari state news agency.
Israel’s military says it has expanded Gaza offensive into refugee camps
The Israeli military said it has expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to the densely populated urban refugee camps in the central part of the Palestinian territory.
As we reported earlier, people in central Gaza described a night of shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps on Tuesday. The camps are crowded with Palestinians whose families fled during the 1948 war as well as with civilians who recently fled northern Gaza in the early stages of Israel’s ground offensive.
“We have expanded the fighting to an area known as the central camps,” Israel’s military spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, told a news conference today, Associated Press reported. He added:
We will continue to adapt the operation, the method and the composition of the forces according to the operational need.
Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has said he will not extend the term of the country’s Prison Service commissioner, Katy Perry.
In a statement from his ministry, Ben-Gvir said he did not have enough faith in Perry to allow her to continue in her current position, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The Israeli minister also accused Perry of having conducted negotiations with imprisoned Hamas militants on the terms of their incarceration, the Times of Israel reported.
In response, a statement from Perry said:
An unsurprising decision by an irresponsible minister that combines unfounded and baseless claims, a detachment from reality and childishness that show his lack of understanding of the prisons service.
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity party also responded to the announcement, warning that replacing senior officials “at this time harms the functioning of the country during a time of war and is not right”.
Here’s a small update after we reported earlier that an explosion occurred near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi.
No staff members were wounded or killed during the incident, according to authorities, who added that investigations into its cause were ongoing.
Officials were still inspecting the area but it has since been reopened to the general public, Reuters reported. There was no information suggesting anyone on the street had been hurt, it said.
Israel urged its citizens in India, specifically in New Delhi, to exercise caution. The blast “may have been an attack”, Israel’s national security council said in a statement issued by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
“We can confirm that around 5:20 pm there was a blast at close proximity to the embassy,” an Israeli embassy spokesperson told Reuters, adding that local police and security teams were investigating.
Nothing had been found in the search operation three hours after the blast, an official involved in the investigation told the news agency.
Houthis claim attacks on Israeli city of Eilat and ship in Red Sea
Yemen’s Houthi rebel group has said that it carried out drone attacks targeting the Israeli port city of Eilat, as well as a commercial vessel in the Red Sea.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said the group launched an attack with missiles on a MSC United commercial ship in the Red Sea after it rejected three warning calls, Reuters reported.
The group also carried out drone attacks on the southern Israeli city of Eilat “and other areas in occupied Palestine”, he added.
Israel hands over bodies of 80 Palestinians killed in Gaza – report
Israel has returned the bodies of 80 Palestinians killed in Gaza after taking them from morgues and graves to check there were no hostages among them, AFP reported, citing sources in Gaza’s health ministry.
The bodies, which had been transported to Israel, were returned through the Red Cross to Hamas authorities who buried them in a mass grave in Gaza, it said. Their identities are not immediately known.
An AFP photographer saw a digger lowering the blue body bags into a mass grave in Rafah. No families of the dead were present, Al Jazeera reported.
The UN has announced the appointment of a coordinator to oversee humanitarian relief shipments into Gaza.
The appointment comes after the UN security council backed a resolution to boost humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory to contain the imminent threat of famine and deadly epidemics.
Sigrid Kaag of the Netherlands will “facilitate, coordinate, monitor and verify humanitarian relief consignments for Gaza,” the UN said in a statement today.
She will also establish a “mechanism” to accelerate aid into Gaza through countries not involved with the conflict, it said.
More than 100 people needed emergency hospital treatment after Maghazi refugee camp blast, says WHO
More than 100 people were hospitalised in the space of half an hour on Monday after reported blasts near Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, a World Health Organization (WHO) official has said.
WHO emergency medical teams coordinator, Sean Casey, said “100-plus patients” had been brought into Al-Aqsa hospital in the space of 30 minutes on Monday.
All of them needed urgent treatment for serious wounds, he said, adding that “about 100” more lifeless bodies were brought into the hospital at around the same time.
More than 100 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes late on Sunday in Gaza, including at least 70 in bombings that hit a residential block in the Maghazi refugee camp near Deir al-Balah, health officials in Gaza said. The Israeli military said it was reviewing the Maghazi incident.
Three refugee camps were hit, the UN human rights office spokesperson Seif Magango said in a statement. “An unknown number of people are still believed to be trapped under the rubble,” he added.
Israel will no longer grant automatic visas to United Nations employees, after accusing the global body of being “complicit partners” in Hamas’s tactics.
A spokesperson for the Israeli government, Eylon Levy, said Israeli will consider visa requests from UN employees on a case-by-case basis, the Times of Israel reported.
He accused the UN of covering up for Hamas, saying it had failed to condemn the group for allegedly operating out of hospitals and stealing aid intended for civilians in Gaza.
The move comes after Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, on Monday said he had instructed his ministry not to renew the visa of a UN staff member in Israel.
In a social media post, Cohen said the UN’s conduct since the Hamas terror attacks on 7 October had been “a disgrace to the organization and the international community.” Israel “will stop working with those who cooperate with the Hamas terrorist organization’s propaganda,” he added.
We will no longer remain silent in the face of the UN’s hypocrisy!
I instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to extend the visa of one of the organization’s employees in Israel, and to deny the visa request of another employee.
The conduct of the UN since October 7th is…
— אלי כהן | Eli Cohen (@elicoh1) December 25, 2023
Here’s more from Israel’s military chief, Herzi Halevi, who has said that he expects the war in Gaza to continue for “many more months”.
Halevi, speaking at a press conference near Gaza, was asked about a reported Israeli airstrike that killed a senior Iranian general in Syria.
Iranian officials and allied militant groups in the region have vowed revenge for the reported killing of Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guards in Syria.
Halevi declined to comment on the reported airstrike, according to Reuters. He said:
The IDF is working together with other security organisations throughout the Middle East, within the borders of the state, around the borders of the state.
He added:
We take whatever action necessary to make it very clear that we are very determined to defend the country, are willing to go far.
People in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah have been left “with nowhere to go and nothing to eat”, the World Food Programme’s representative in the Palestinian territories has said.
Samer AbdelJaber, in a post on social media, said humanitarian groups are distributing food parcels to people setting up tents “wherever they can” in Rafah but that “it’s not enough for everyone”.
In #Rafah, people are setting up tents wherever they can, after being displaced with nowhere to go and nothing to eat.@WFP & partners are distributing food parcels to people residing in these make-shift camps – but it’s not enough for everyone. Millions in #Gaza are hungry. pic.twitter.com/R3kFCOpY37
— Samer AbdelJaber (@SamerWFP) December 26, 2023
Edward Helmore
Pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration near the homes of the US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on Monday.
Near Austin’s home, they held signs calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The protesters chanted: “Austin, Austin, rise and shine – no sleep during genocide.” A crowd of protesters later adopted a similar tactic outside Sullivan’s home.
Posting on X,the People’s Forum activist group said it “woke up … Lloyd Austin as he tried to go on with his [Christmas] while arming & supporting zionist genocide against the Palestinian people. Now, we disrupt ANOTHER war criminal: [Jake Sullivan]. The people say NO XMAS AS USUAL!”
Israel army chief says Gaza war to continue for ‘many more months’
Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza will probably go on for many months, the country’s military chief has said.
Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told a press conference today that the military is expanding operations in southern and central Gaza as it is close to dismantling all of Hamas’s battalions in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, the Times of Israel reported.
The war “will continue for many more months, and we will work with different methods so that our achievements are preserved for a long time”, AFP reported that Halevi said. He added:
There are no magic solutions, there are no shortcuts when it comes to thoroughly dismantling a terrorist organisation except being stubborn and determined in the fighting.
He said the IDF will reach the Hamas leadership “whether it takes a week or whether it takes months”, adding:
We are increasing the military pressure, in different ways, powerfully and in a deceptive way. This pressure enables the realisation of the goals of the war, the dismantling of Hamas, and the return of the hostages.
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires from the Rafah border crossing in Egypt, where Palestinians are waiting after being evacuated from Gaza.
