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Comments from Martin Griffiths came after Israeli prime minister vowed to proceed with the attack regardless of how ceasefire talks progress
Overnight Israel’s military has said that it again struck inside southern Lebanon, claiming to have targeted “Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure and a military structure in the area of Blida in southern Lebanon, as well as terrorist infrastructure and observation posts in the areas of Odaisseh and Meiss El Jabal.”
Israel and anti-Israeli forces have had near constant fire between them since 7 October. About 60,000 Israelis have been evacuated from their homes in northern Israel as a result of the skirmishing, while about 90,000 people in southern Lebanon have been forced from their homes by the fighting.
The UK’s deputy foreign secretary, Andrew Mitchell, has told lawmakers in London that in the present circumstances, it was “not easy to see” how an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip could be “compliant with international humanitarian law”.
António Guterres has said there has been “incremental progress” toward averting “an entirely preventable, human-made famine” in the northern half of Gaza, but much more is urgently needed. He specifically called on Israel to follow through on a promise to open “two crossing points between Israel and northern Gaza, so that aid can be brought from Ashdod port and Jordan.”
The top UN court has rejected a request by Nicaragua to order Germany to halt military and other aid to Israel and to renew funding to the UN aid agency in Gaza. The International Court of Justice said that legal conditions for making such an order weren’t met. However, it did not throw out the case entirely, as Germany had requested. The court said it remained deeply concerned about conditions in Gaza.
More than 34,535 Palestinians have been killed and 77,704 have been wounded during the Israeli military offensive in Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. The Gaza Civil Emergency Service has estimated that the bodies of a further 10,000 Palestinians were under the rubble of hundreds of destroyed buildings. It said those figures had not been included in the updated health ministry death toll, which only registers bodies that are taken to hospitals.
Unrwa commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini has said that Unrwa staff who have been interrogated by Israeli security forces are being “pressured to state that the agency is politically affiliated”.
The UK said it was not ready to restore funding to the Palestinian relief agency Unrwa. Foreign secretary, David Cameron, said no UK decision on restoring funding will be made until the outcome of a UN internal investigation into Israeli allegations that 12 Unrwa staff took part in the Hamas assault on Israel on 7 October.
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