Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Israeli attacks kill 25 overnight in Gaza

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We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a recap of recent developments on the 101st day of Israel’s war on Gaza:

• Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it attacked the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad in Erbil, in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. It also claims responsibility for an attack on Syria.
• Israeli attacks on Gaza killed 25 people on Monday night, the Wafa news agency reports.
• Settlers torch and vandalise property in towns across the occupied West Bank, including at a nursery tree farm.
• UN agencies issue a joint appeal for “faster, safer aid access” to avoid the spread of hunger and disease in Gaza.
• Houthi spokesperson says the Yemeni rebel group hit an American ship in the Gulf of Aden, causing minor damage and no injuries.

Israel’s military says it has fired at “suspects” attempting to cross the border from Egypt.

It said it believed the individuals were attempting to smuggle drugs. Israel and Egypt entered a peace treaty in 1979 and together enforced a blockade on Gaza.

“Approximately 20 suspects, including several that were armed, arrived from Egyptian territory toward the area of the border with Israel,” the military said.

“Soldiers who operated in the area opened fire toward the armed individuals, and hits were identified.”

It is clear this is an escalation. Iran proxy forces in the region have been operating against Iran’s enemies.

Those proxies would claim responsibility for the attacks, either in Iraq or in Syria or elsewhere in the region. But now, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is claiming responsibility for the attack.

This is all part of the spillover of the conflict in Gaza. Because these Iran-aligned armed groups, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, blame the United States for, as they say, standing as a major supporter of Israel’s war on Gaza.

They are now demanding not only to stop supporting Israel [in] its war in Gaza but the removal of all foreign troops from Iraq including coalition and US troops.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said that missile attacks had been launched against the “perpetrators of terrorist operations in the Islamic Republic. Particularly ISIL [ISIS]” in Syria, state media reported.

“The Guards identified and destroyed gathering places of their commanders and key elements with a series of ballistic missiles in response to the recent terrorist atrocities in Iran,” the statement said.

ISIL (ISIS) claimed responsibility for an attack in Iran’s southeastern city of Kerman earlier this month, which killed nearly 100 people.

In a post on X, Israel’s military said the video shows a strike on Hezbollah operational territory near Maroun El Ras in southern Lebanon.

It added that interceptors had also been launched at several “suspicious aerial targets” in Lebanese territory in the areas of Yaroun and Rmeish in the south.

The joint statement by the World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF, the World Health Organization and UNRWA said the quantities of aid reaching residents of the enclave “fall far short of what is needed to prevent a deadly combination of hunger, malnutrition, and disease”.

The appeal comes after a UN analysis confirmed that the entire population of Gaza is facing at least crisis levels of food insecurity.

The agencies called on Israel to use the Port of Ashdod, which is roughly 40km (35 miles) to the north of Gaza, to let in more aid. It also called on authorities to open more crossings into the enclave and let in commercial traffic.

“People in Gaza are suffering from a lack of food, water, medicines and adequate healthcare. Famine will make an already terrible situation catastrophic because sick people are more likely to succumb to starvation and starving people are more vulnerable to disease”, said WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus.

“We need unimpeded, safe access to deliver aid and a humanitarian ceasefire to prevent further death and suffering.”

“Just another day as a Muslim MP”.

That’s how Zarah Sultana described a recent back-and-forth with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and another Tory MP.

Sultana, speaking in parliament today, had called for “de-escalation in the Middle East and for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza”.

In response, Sunak “said I should ‘call on Hamas and the Houthis to de-escalate the situation'”, she wrote on X.

“This is an Islamophobic trope – as if by being Muslim, I am responsible for Hamas and the Houthis,” Sultana wrote.

She also condemned Tory MP Andrew Percy for implying she had “given a free pass to Hamas”.

This “again is an Islamophobic trope: without any grounds, suggesting I am supportive of Hamas,” she wrote.

Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief has become a well-known figure around the world for his reporting and his steadfastness in continuing to work despite the immense personal suffering that he has faced in the past three months.

Israeli attacks have killed Dahdouh’s wife, two of his sons, a daughter and a grandson as well as his camerman, Al Jazeera’s Samer Abudaqa. Dahdouh himself was injured in the attack that killed Abudaqa.

“The cost is very high, but at the end of the day, we ask ourselves, ‘What is the other option?'” he told Ayman Mohyeldin with US-based NBC News in an interview. “We sit in our homes, waiting for missiles to land. Leave this job, give up this humanitarian message that we delivered? This is definitely not an option.”

“They got used to that, and they suffered. This is a very big sacrifice they made, and they made that sacrifice to enable me to continue my job,” he said. “So when the time comes and their blood sheds and their lives are sacrificed, I should leave them and give up this job? Never.”

Dahdouh added that journalists in Gaza feel let down at the lack of support they have received, considering the high death toll among those working in the enclave.

“Many Palestinian journalists feel that we were let down, left alone to face this massacre and this carnage and the world did not look at the bigger picture, did not really stand by us as we would have liked,” he said. “We feel that we are being killed twice: once by the bombs and once by this silence, this shy way of expressing support.”

Tania Hary, executive director at Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, says Israeli authorities are limiting the kinds of goods that go into the besieged coastal enclave, where they can go, the party shipping said goods and the party’s location.

Her post on X came in response to a statement by Israeli authorities claiming: “There is no limit to the amount of humanitarian aid that can be transferred to the people of Gaza”.

She adds that Israel is “not engaging in real deconfliction with humanitarian actors distributing aid”, which, all in all and “in practice”, means it is limiting the amount of aid entering the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has been careful when generally communicating with the world and calculated when it talks to the Israeli public.

They hope to put more pressure on the Israeli government and bring it to the negotiating table with Egypt to secure a deal for a ceasefire or the release of more captives.

That comes as there have been protests in Tel Aviv pushing for the release of the captives and to put more pressure on the government.

What seems to be the message is if Israel does not come to the table, its relentless air strikes that continue to pound the Gaza Strip will likely kill more captives.

• Israeli settlers torched several agricultural vehicles and vandalised property in a nursery tree farm in the village of Deir Sharaf, west of Nablus, owner Maher al-Jneidi says.
• Settlers also attacked Palestinian cars at a juncture west of Deir Sharaf, and they closed the route leading to Tulkarem, local media sources said.
• Backed by Israeli forces, settlers hurled rocks at the moving cars of Palestinians near Kafr Laqif, east of Qalqilia.
• Settlers also tried to torch a house on the outskirts of Turmus Ayya, near Ramallah.

According to local journalists, a military raid is ongoing in Bani Naim, near Hebron, from which the two assailants suspected of carrying out an attack near Tel Aviv hail.

Local media sources told Al Jazeera that soldiers raided the home of Ahmed and Mohammed Zeidat, who they accuse of carrying out a car ramming and stabbing attack in Raanana, killing one and injuring at least 14 others.

“The army is now interrogating and searching the homes of relatives of the two young men. The army also took down measurements of the two men’s houses in preparation for their demolition at a later time,” the media sources said.

Ahmed Jibril, who heads emergency and ambulance services for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Nablus, told Al Jazeera that there are injuries in various raids on other towns and cities, namely:

• Beita, south of Nablus, where a Palestinian was injured by Israeli soldiers
• Nablus city, where four were injured, and a young man was detained
• Occupied East Jerusalem, where one person was injured when forces raided the vicinity of the Qalandiya checkpoint
• Near the Enab military checkpoint between the cities of Nablus and Tulkarem, where one person was injured
• Qaffin, north of Tulkarem, where a man was injured during an incursion into the village

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Marco Forgione, the director general at The Institute of Export & International Trade, said the strikes carried out by US and UK forces on Houthi positions “haven’t prevented or stopped the Houthi attacks”.

That was underscored today by an attack on a US-flagged commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden, “which in itself was an escalation beyond the Red Sea,” he said.

“And in recent weeks, it was also the attack on a ship off the coast of India,” he said. “And last week, the Iranian forces took a ship in the Strait of Hormuz and took that into Iranian waters.

“There’s a very real risk of this escalating.”

Military spokesperson Daniel Hagari says that the families of Itay Svirsky and another unnamed captive have been informed of serious concerns for their lives.

A video released by Qassam Brigades appears to show Svirsky and fellow captive Yossi Sharabi dead after what the video said were Israeli air attacks.

Hagari, however, denied that Israel had killed Svirsky.