Israel-Hamas war updates: Israel says its forces surround Gaza City

This live page is now closed. Please follow along with the latest updates in the Israel-Gaza war on our new page, here.

For some more context on recent events, read more about the increase in fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border – which comes ahead of a speech tomorrow by Hezbollah’s leader – here.

Also, read more about why UN experts are calling for a ceasefire – and say Gaza is “running out of time” – here.

We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a look at of some today’s major developments.

• Israeli has said its military has completed the “encirclement” of Gaza City, with a spokesman saying a ceasefire “is not on the table at all”.
• That comes as US Secretary of State Blinken heads to Israel, where he is expected to push for temporary pauses in the fighting to allow for captive negotiations and aid deliveries.
• Our correspondents in Gaza say that thousands of civilians remain in Gaza City, with some trying to flee south even as Israeli forces press into the city, making the journey out of Gaza’s largest city dangerous.
• A doctor at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City has described the situation there as “beyond catastrophic”. The Palestinian Health Ministry says 16 out of 35 hospitals in Gaza are out of service.
• An Israeli military official said that fuel could be allowed into the besieged enclave, but the prime minister’s office has responded that there is no plan being discussed.
• Meanwhile, fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border has intensified amid a highly-anticipated speech tomorrow by Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah.
• In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces fatally shot two Palestinians in the latest raid in Jenin.
• Meanwhile, a Palestinian border official has said a new group of dual nationals has departed Gaza via the Rafah crossing into Egypt. The Palestine Red Crescent Society says 102 trucks with humanitarian aid entered through the crossing today.
• Underscoring shifting attitudes in Washington, the first US senator has said he supports a ceasefire in the fighting. The vast majority of the US Congress still supports Israel’s operation.

Isabel Schnabel, a European Central Bank board member, says that the body’s analysis doesn’t show any major impact from the conflict.

“Our preliminary analysis at this point shows that given that Israel in the end is relatively small, as long as the conflict remains contained, the impact on energy prices should be relatively limited,” Schnabel said.

“If, of course, the conflict widened – in particular, if Iran was involved – the situation could change quickly,” she added.

Amnesty International’s Donatella Rovera says that investigations into four incidents on October 10, 11, 16 and 17 in Gaza and Lebanon have shown that Israel used white phosphorus as a weapon in civilian areas.

“The incidents that happened raise concern because white phosphorus has been used by Israeli forces in the past with devastating consequences for the civilian population,” Rovera said.

“This is something that should never be used in areas where there are civilians. It is not a banned weapon – it can be used on the battlefield and forces do use it lawfully – but it should not be used where there are civilians,” she told Al Jazeera.

“We’ve seen that it has been used in Gaza and Lebanon and it shouldn’t happen again.”

Lawrence Korb, a former assistant US secretary of defence, says the US is prepared for a wider escalation in the region but is trying to stop that from happening.

“That’s why it sent two carrier battle groups – not just one, but two – plus several hundred planes and a couple thousand troops as a deterrent,” Korb told Al Jazeera.

He added that if Hezbollah “really steps up” its cross-border attacks against Israel, “some response from the carrier battle groups” could be expected.

IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish-American advocacy group, says activists have shut down a highway in the North Carolina city of Durham to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.

“What’s happening to the people of Gaza cannot be allowed to continue,” the group wrote on X, urging Biden to “stop the bombs”.

The group also said a sit-in is taking place at the largest train station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

“The violence against the people of Gaza has to end, the hostages must be released, and we need a political solution. More death will solve nothing,” IfNotNow said in a separate social media post.

A second Palestinian man has been killed by Israeli forces in Jenin, the Health Ministry says.

He has been identified as 26-year-old Jehad Ibrahim Naghnaghieh.

Four other people were also injured, the ministry said.

A ground operation in the Gaza Strip was something the Israeli military had been saying was always going to happen from the beginning of the war.

This is now the deepest that Israeli forces have been inside Gaza since 2005.

Israeli officials have said they’ve completely encircled Gaza City. They say this is Hamas’s main stronghold. The military is also saying they are looking for weapons, military posts, and any other type of Hamas infrastructure they are looking to destroy.

The Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the country has a unique approach to how they are going to combat the tunnel system.

The Israeli security cabinet’s statement comes as Palestinian families and rights groups have called for information on the whereabouts of thousands of people from Gaza who had been working in Israel when the war broke out but have since gone missing.

“Those workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day of the outbreak of the war will be returned to Gaza,” the cabinet said, without providing more detail on the workers’s identities or how many will be sent back.

Rights groups and trade unions have said some of the workers were illegally detained in military facilities in the occupied West Bank, but the Israeli authorities have so far refused to release the names of those they are holding.

Read more about the unfolding situation here.

Francesca Albanese, the UN expert on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, says there has been “a lot of dehumanisation” when it comes to the events unfolding in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“I would say the most extreme is what we see in action, propelled by Israeli political and military leaders – and then it … trickles down on the level of individuals,” she said, referring to the “unprecedented” rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

She said the dehumanisation of Palestinians is also prevalent in Europe and the US.

“I’ve seen myself the doxing of students, the threats and the violent climate. The anti-Palestinian racism, the Islamophobia that is on the rise – and it’s often condoned by local political leaders.”

The Israeli government’s security cabinet made the decision “to deduct all funds designated for the Gaza Strip” from the tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

“Israel is severing all contact with Gaza,” the government said in a statement.

The transfers have come under renewed scrutiny after far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich this week announced he would not release the funds, accusing the PA of supporting the Hamas attack on October 7.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said yesterday that the transfers should continue, however, in an effort to help “stabilise” the situation in the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli forces and settlers have increased amid the Gaza war.

President Biden has threatened to veto the House bill, accusing Republicans of staging a political stunt.

Biden wants the US Congress to pass legislation that would provide additional funding to both Israel and Ukraine, but several GOP lawmakers want to separate the two issues.

The bill that just passed in the House would provide Israel with $14.3bn, but take the funding from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Some top members of the US Senate, controlled by Democrats, also have raised objections to the House proposal.

Read more about the political showdown here.

The armed drone was shot down at the base, which hosts US personnel, two security sources told the Reuters news agency.

The sources said it was not clear if the incident caused any damage or casualties.

Yesterday, the Pentagon said that bases housing US personnel in Iraq and Syria had been targeted 27 times since October 17.

The US last week struck sites in Syria it said were used by Iran proxies to launch attacks, and the Biden administration has promised to respond to further targeting of US personnel in the region.

The sirens are ringing out amid Israel’s continued bombardment of the territory.

The hum of Israeli military drones can also be heard over Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum says he was reporting alongside Mohammed Abu Hatab, a correspondent for Palestine TV who was killed in an Israeli attack a short while ago, for most of the day.

But Abu Hatab went to his house in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in order to check on his family members, Abu Azzoum said.

He was meant to return to the field and continue reporting. “But this time, he was the target and his family also were the targets [of] the ongoing Israeli bombardment,” Abu Azzoum said.

“Mohammed … was reporting the truth and reality on the ground to the world.”

Samir Geagea, the head of the Lebanese Forces party, has said that the country’s Shia militia Hezbollah should withdraw from the country’s south, as the threat of all-out war with Israel rises.

“It would be better if Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah withdrew from the south and handed it over to the army, instead of giving his speech tomorrow, and his promotional films – ‘it’s not time for them’,” Geagea said in a post on social media.

Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is set to give his first speech tomorrow since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. With cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and Israel intensifying and the death toll rising, there is a chance that Nasrallah may announce a new phase in the conflict with Israel.

Geagea, a Christian, is a former militia commander who fought in the Lebanese Civil War against Hezbollah and Palestinian groups.

For the past two days and today, the confrontations have been very, very violent. The bombardment from the land, from the air, from the sea, has been ongoing at all times. They really intensify during the night hours.

Israel has encircled Gaza City and the northern part of the Gaza Strip from northwest Gaza, where the al-Shati refugee camp is, and the southwest, where the Al-Quds Hospital is.

Now most of the bombardments are in those two areas, as well as in  Salah al-Din Street [one of two major roads to the south] where Israeli tanks … and the Israeli war bots are always shooting at the cars that try to come to that area.

No one is passing through Salah al-Din for days now, but the tanks are approaching trying to get to al-Rasheed Street [the other major road to the south]. Many civilian cars have been shot at as they’re trying to evacuate from the north of Gaza or from Gaza City to the south.

There are thousands of people who had returned to the northern Strip and to Gaza City itself, and there are thousands that did not evacuate.

We saw at the Jabalia camp, as it has been bombarded over three days, how many people were still in their homes. We’re talking about huge numbers.

Medical Aid for Palestinians shared the testimonial by Dr Marwan Abusada at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City:

“The corridors are full of injured people. The ER rooms are beyond full. We have zero capacity to treat all the injured people,” Abusada told the humanitarian aid group.

“The high number of displaced people are no longer sheltering in the courtyard of the hospital but are now inside the hospital, including in the corridors. There is a high chance of infectious diseases spreading between patients and those displaced.”

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi will make the demand in a meeting with the US secretary of state in a meeting in Amman on Saturday, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said.

Safadi and Blinken will discuss the “catastrophic situation unfolding in the Gaza Strip”, the ministry said in a statement.

Safadi also will reiterate the urgent need to “stop the war on the [Gaza] Strip” and deliver urgent humanitarian aid, it said.