Thousands evacuate northern Gaza after resurgence of Hamas

Thousands of Palestinian civilians have been filmed fleeing northern Gaza amid fierce fighting and a resurgence of Hamas activity.
Footage shows hundreds of Gazans moving through the rubble of a destroyed street as an Israeli armoured vehicle watches on from the side.
Another video shows women and children forming a long line to receive water from Israeli soldiers.
The Israel Defence Forces said it was allowing civilians to evacuate via organised routes as it continued to battle “terrorists and terrorist structures” near Jabalia, where Israel has been conducting an offensive since early October.
According to Israeli media, Israeli troops are battling Hamas fighters in parts of Jabalia that they have not operated in until now. Hamas has released several propaganda videos in recent days of its attacks on Israeli troops and tanks in the area.
It comes as Israel announced the death of one of its highest ranking soldiers killed since the war began.
Colonel Ehsan Daxa, 41, commanded an armoured brigade and was reported to have been killed by a booby trap in Jabalia on Sunday as he left his tank to walk to an observation post.
The UN estimates over 300,000 Palestinian civilians remain trapped in the Jabalia area, which was once a sprawling refugee camp, amid the escalating violence. 
Today’s live coverage has ended. Here is a roundup of the main headlines: 
The Israel Defence Forces has said “fierce” fighting continues in and around Jabalia, northern Gaza, as it evacuates large numbers of civilians from the area.
It said its 162nd Division was carrying out a joint operation with the security services and that dozens of “saboteurs” had been killed over the past 24 hours. 
The army and the Israeli internal security service have arrested a number of suspected terrorists, it added. 
The IDF also said it was cooperating with local authorities to maintain stockpiles of medical supplies, as well as evacuating wounded. 
One person has been killed in a “guided missile attack” on a car in the Mazzeh area of Damascus, Syria, according to Syrian state media. 
Footage posted on social media shows a car in flames in the middle of an urban street as onlookers take photographs. 
It is unclear who carried out the strike, but Israel is understood to have hit Iran-linked targets in the Mazzeh area several times in recent months. 
In April, an Israeli strike on an Iran’s consulate building in Mazzeh killed a reported 16 people, including seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 
Earlier this month, Syria accused Israel of killing seven civilians in a strike on an apartment building in the Mazzeh neighbourhood. 
Lebanon said an Israeli strike on the main eastern city of Baalbek on Monday killed six people including a child, with state media reporting that the explosive hit a building in a densely-packed residential area.
“The Israeli enemy strike… in Baalbek killed six people, including a child,” the Lebanese health ministry said. The state-run National News Agency reported that all six were from the same family.
Take-offs at Ben Gurion Airport are back to normal after IDF aircraft intercepted and destroyed five drones over the Mediterranean Sea.
The drones were shot down before they entered Israeli airspace.
Take-offs at the international airport had been briefly suspended on Monday afternoon.
Israel has restricted take-offs from Ben Gurion airport based on instructions from the country’s security apparatus, Israeli media reported.
Landings are unaffected by the order, according to Ynet news.
It is unclear why the restriction has been imposed.
Lebanese police stormed an abandoned building in Beirut’s commercial district, Hamra, to evict hundreds of people displaced by Israel’s war with Hezbollah on Monday.
With refugee shelters full, the people had been squatting there for weeks.
Scuffles broke between police and many of the displaced who refused to leave. An ambulance arrived to remove a person who passed out. A woman threatened to jump off the balcony if she was forced to leave, yelling that she refused to go to overcrowded government shelters.
Lebanon’s interior ministry said it will not allow trespassing on private property despite the displacement crisis.
Lebanese authorities have prepared hundreds of shelters to accommodate the displaced. But as their numbers climbed to nearly 20 per cent of the population, or an estimated 1.2 million people, official shelters have not been able to cope.
A British emergency aid appeal for Gaza and Lebanon has raised £13.5 million in its first four days. 
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) acts as an umbrella for 15 of the UK’s leading aid charities at times of humanitarian crisis overseas. 
The UK Government is matching public donations pound-for-pound up to £10 million. In Gaza, 90 per cent of people have had to leave their homes as food and clean water are desperately scarce. 
In Lebanon, more than a million people have had to leave their homes in recent weeks. 
Shelters are overwhelmed, and hospitals are struggling to treat the thousands of people who have been injured.
Hezbollah operatives have fired 60 rockets into northern Israel over the course of Monday, according to the IDF.
A 40-year-old man was treated in hospital after he was struck by shrapnel in the Upper Galilee region. 
Over thirty missiles were fired across the border in the afternoon following two dozen such attacks in the morning.
Israeli authorities are still preventing humanitarian missions from reaching areas of northern Gaza with critical supplies, including medicine and food for people under siege, the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Monday.
Philippe Lazzarini said on X: “Hospitals have been hit and are without power while injured people are left without care.
“UNRWA remaining shelters are so overcrowded, some displaced people are now forced to live in the toilets. According to reports, people attempting to flee are getting killed, their bodies left on the street. Missions to rescue people from under the rubble are also being denied.”
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the UNRWA statement.
Israel said it is getting large quantities of humanitarian supplies into Gaza with land deliveries, including one on Monday morning, and airdrops. It also said it has facilitated the evacuation of patients from the Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Germany on Monday demanded that Israel “clarify every incident” involving the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (Unifil), including the reported destruction of a Unifil observation tower and fence.
UN peacekeepers on Sunday said an Israeli “army bulldozer deliberately demolished” a UN observation tower and fence in southern Lebanon.
The German government expects “the Israeli side to clarify every incident” and to release “the results of the investigations into this specific incident”, said Kathrin Deschauer, a foreign ministry spokeswoman.
“The safety of an operation mandated by the United Nations Security Council and its personnel must not be endangered,” she added.
The head of Israel’s internal security agency has visited Cairo to discuss reviving Gaza cease-fire talks after the killing of  Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, officials in Cairo and Jerusalem have said.
An Egyptian official said Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, held an hours-long meeting Sunday with Hassan Mahmoud Rashad, Egypt’s newly appointed intelligence chief.
The men reportedly discussed the possibility of reviving the negotiations after the death of Sinwar.
The official said that Egypt is still opposed to any Israeli presence in a strip of land running the length of the Gaza side of the territory’s border with Egypt, and that Hamas is unlikely to lift its demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas has said its demands for Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners in return for dozens of hostages held in Gaza have not changed following Sinwar’s death.
Amos Hochstein, a US envoy who was in Beirut on Monday, said the United Nations resolution 1701 is “no longer enough” and a new mechanism must be put in place to ensure it is implemented “fairly, accurately, transparently”.
“1701 was successful at ending the war in 2006, but we must be honest that nobody did anything to implement it,” Mr Hochstein said in a news conference after meeting with Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament and an ally of Hezbollah.
“The lack of implementation over those years contributed to the conflict that we are in today,” he added.
UN resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, called for Hezbollah to withdraw from the border and for UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army to control southern Lebanon, without any Hezbollah or Israeli presence.
For a year, Hezbollah has been firing rockets across the border at northern Israel.
Mr Hochstein also said: “Tying Lebanon’s future to other conflicts in the region was not and is not in the interest of the Lebanese people.” 
Hezbollah has insisted that it will only stop firing rockets into northern Israel once a Gaza truce has been agreed.
The Israeli military apologised Monday for a strike that killed three Lebanese soldiers in southern Lebanon, saying it is not battling the country’s military and its troops believed that they were targeting a vehicle belonging to Hezbollah.
The IDF said it was “not operating against the Lebanese Army and apologises for these unwanted circumstances”.
Eight Lebanese soldiers have been killed since Israel started its ground offensive in the south of the country close to a month ago.
Israeli forces blew up homes and besieged schools and shelters for displaced people on Monday as part of their ground operations in the town of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Reuters.
Medics at a nearby hospital told the news agency that Israeli troops stormed a school and detained the men before setting the facility ablaze. The fire reached the hospital generators and caused a power outage, they added.
Health officials said they refused orders by the Israeli army to evacuate the three hospitals in the area or leave the patients unattended.
“The army is burning the schools next to the hospital, and no one can enter or leave the hospital,” said one nurse at the Indonesian Hospital, who asked not to be named.
Palestinian health officials said 18 people had been killed in Jabalia and eight elsewhere in Gaza in Israeli strikes.
The death of Col Ehsan Daxa, the commander of the 401st Armoured Brigade and the highest ranking officer to be killed in Gaza during the war, is adding to the feeling of war fatigue amongst parts of the Israeli public.
With Israel’s defence establishment repeatedly saying that Hamas as a military no longer exists, many are wondering why the government is not declaring the war in Gaza over. 
Despite immense military losses, Hamas still manages to kill Israeli soldiers across Gaza, because of their continued “pockets of resistance”.
It is unclear how much longer the Israeli public is willing to sacrifice soldiers’ lives in Gaza in an endless pursuit for every living Hamas member. 
At least 355 soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the IDF launched its ground invasion last year. 
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, will depart for the Middle East on Monday, the State Department said, as Washington is pushing to kickstart ceasefire negotiations to end the Gaza war following the death of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas.
“Throughout the region, Secretary Blinken will discuss the importance of bringing the war in Gaza to an end, securing the release of all hostages, and alleviating the suffering of the Palestinian people,” the State Department said in a statement.
“He will continue discussions on post-conflict period planning and emphasise the need to chart a new path forward that enables Palestinians to rebuild their lives,” it said.
The top diplomat’s trip will start with Israel, the State Department said, but did not provide the other exact destinations.
Iran has written to the UN nuclear watchdog to complain about Israeli threats to strike its atomic energy sites, its foreign ministry spokesman said at a weekly news conference on Monday.
Esmaeil Baghaei said: “Threats to attack nuclear sites are against UN resolutions… and are condemned… We have sent a letter about it to… the UN nuclear watchdog.”
Mr Baghaei, responding to a question about the possibility of Iran changing its official nuclear doctrine, said “weapons of mass destruction have no place in our policy”.
Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly told US president Joe Biden’s administration that Israel would strike Iranian military targets, not nuclear or oil sites.
The Israeli military has released footage of air strikes carried out in southern Lebanon on Monday morning.
The strikes, carried out by fighter jets, “hit 15 missile launchers that were aimed toward Israeli civilians, including the launchers from which projectiles were fired toward the Western Galilee, and terrorist infrastructure used by the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in several areas in southern Lebanon,” the Israeli military stated.
The Israeli military has released video footage from one of its bombing raids that shows the targeting of a bank branch.
Another video shows a building collapsing in a district of Beirut after an Israeli airstrike.
Iran denied on Monday that it was meddling in Lebanese internal affairs after Lebanon’s prime minister accused it of “an attempt to establish an unacceptable guardianship”.
“Iran has never had any intention or [taken any] action that could be suspected of interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon,” Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, said during a weekly news conference.
“We hold discussions with any country that has an initiative and a proposal to end the crimes and aggression against Lebanon and the genocide in Gaza,” said Mr Baghaei.
Last week, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, an Iranian politician, was quoted as saying that his government was ready to negotiate the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which is seen as a precondition for a ceasefire in the ongoing war.
This remark led Najib Mikati, the Lebanese prime minister, to accuse Tehran of meddling. 
Mr Mikati said that the comments were a “blatant interference in Lebanese affairs and an attempt to establish an unacceptable guardianship over Lebanon”.
As part of its campaign of air strikes against Hezbollah-linked banks overnight, Israel struck a bank branch close to Beirut’s international airport, according to a report by NNA, the Lebanese state news agency.
Flights had been running normally. The arrival of a flight from Dubai was delayed by 17 minutes.
Israeli military authorities have said that Hezbollah has shot 25 rockets into the north of the country this morning.
The rockets were fired towards communities in the Galilee region in the north of the country, setting off sirens in Ma’alot-Tarshiha, Sakhnin and Karmiel, as well as in other towns.
Some of the rockets were intercepted while others passed by air defence systems and made impact. No injuries have been reported.
Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, commented on the Middle East conflict during a visit to Ukraine this morning.
Mr Austin told reporters: “It’s hard to say exactly what [Israel’s strike against Iran] will look like.
“At the end of the day, that’s an Israeli decision, and whether or not the Israelis believe it’s proportional and how the Iranians perceive it, I mean those may be two different things.
He added: “We’re going to do – continue to do – everything we can… to dial down the tensions and hopefully get both parties to begin to de-escalate. So, we’ll see what happens.”
Israeli airstrikes hit and destroyed banks linked to Hezbollah in several regions of the country overnight.
Amos Hochstein, a US envoy, will hold talks with Lebanese officials in Beirut on Monday on conditions for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Mr Hochstein is set to meet Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s prime minister, and Nabih Berri, the Lebanese speaker of parliament, on Monday.
Mr Berri told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic news television channel, that Mr Hochstein’s visit was “the last chance before the US elections” to reach a truce. He said he would reject any amendments to United Nations resolution 1701, which ended the last conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.
Israel has reportedly demanded that its forces be allowed to engage in “active enforcement” to make sure Hezbollah does not rearm and rebuild its military infrastructure close to the border, according to a report by Axios, the American news website.
A US official said it was highly unlikely that Lebanon and the international community would agree to Israel’s conditions.
Israeli war planes overnight attacked dozens of sites in Beirut and southern Lebanon, which are used by Hezbollah to finance its operations.
An Israeli military spokesman said earlier in a statement posted on X that it “will begin attacking infrastructure belonging to the Hezbollah Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association – get away from it immediately”.
News agencies have reported at least 10 blasts in Beirut suburbs.
Eyewitnesses said a building located in the Chiyah neighbourhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut was reduced to rubble and the few people in the area had fled ahead of the explosion, resulting in no casualties.
Al-Qard al-Hassan – which the US has said is used by Iran-backed Hezbollah to manage its finances – has more than 30 branches across Lebanon including 15 in densely populated parts of central Beirut and its suburbs.
The US military has rushed its advanced anti-missile system to Israel and it is now “in place”, Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, said on Monday.
“The THAAD system [the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system] is in place,” he told reporters before his arrival in Ukraine on Monday.
Mr Austin declined to say whether it was operational, but added: “We have the ability to put it into operation very quickly and we’re on pace with our expectations.”
The US announced that it would deploy the system, plus 100 soldiers to operate it, in the wake of Iran’s missile attack on Israel at the start of the month.
THAAD is a critical part of the US military’s layered air defence systems and adds to Israel’s already formidable anti-missile defences.