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At the Vatican, Pope Francis recalled 2023 as a year marked by wartime suffering.

During his traditional Sunday blessing from a window overlooking St Peter’s Square, he offered prayers for “the tormented Ukrainian people and the Palestinian and Israeli populations, the Sudanese people and many others”.

At the end of the year, we will have the courage to ask ourselves how many human lives have been shattered by armed conflict, how many dead and how much destruction, how much suffering, how much poverty?

Official says intense new phase of war to last at least six more months as country also prepares for Lebanon conflict

• Israel-Gaza war – live updates

Israel is withdrawing some troops from Gaza but preparing for an intense campaign to continue there for “six months at least” as well as expanding preparations for a Lebanon war, a senior official has said.

There is growing international pressure to curb an offensive that has so far killed nearly 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. Even Israel’s staunchest ally, the US, which rejects calls for a ceasefire, has started pushing the government to scale back the ferocity of its attacks.

Heavy bombing continues, while Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has shown unparalleled ‘morality’ in its conduct in Gaza

• Israel-Gaza war – live updates

At least 100 people have been killed in Gaza in the past 24 hours, as the three-month-old conflict between Israel and Hamas rolls into the new year with no end in sight and only tentative Israeli government plans for discussing the day after the war is over.

The Hamas-run territory’s health authority said about 48 people were killed overnight on Sunday in heavy Israeli bombing of Gaza City, where pockets of fierce fighting are ongoing despite claims by the Israel Defense Forces that the north of the blockaded exclave is largely under Israeli operational control.

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US Navy helicopters sank three of four small boats used by Iranian-backed Houthi militants to attack a merchant vessel in the southern Red Sea on Sunday, US central command wrote on X.

Responding to distress calls from the Maersk Hangzhou, helicopters from the USS Eisenhower and USS Gravely were said to have returned fire on the Houthi boats in self-defence and sank three of the vessels with no survivors.

This blog is now closed. See all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here

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• See all our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war

In a statement, Israel’s military says it has been operating “in the heart of Daraj Tuffah” in Gaza City in the north of the territory.

It claims “after RPG missiles were fired from inside a building toward an IDF vehicle, IDF ground troops destroyed terrorist infrastructure located inside the building. Additionally, an anti-tank missile launch site where terrorist operatives were located was struck by the IAF with the direction of IDF ground forces, Over the last two days, IDF troops conducted operational activity in the Daraj Tuffah area and eliminated terrorists in both ground and aerial strikes.”

Head of psychiatry at Tel Aviv medical centre says hostages have undergone worst abuse she has witnessed

Many of the hostages released from detention in Gaza by Hamas in November still require intensive treatment for the trauma from their weeks in captivity, a leading Israeli psychiatrist has said.

Renana Eitan, the head of psychiatry at the Ichilov Tel Aviv medical centre, said the hostages had undergone the worst abuse and trauma she had witnessed in her career.

In today’s newsletter: The Hamas attack on Israel, and the country’s overwhelming armed response, have destabilised the region and caused unfathomable suffering

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Good morning. For more than 80 days, a bloody conflict has been raging in Israel and Gaza. On 7 October Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel, and gunmen broke through security barriers in the worst breach of the country’s defences in five decades – 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage. Harrowing reports have emerged of sexual violence against women, of torture and abuse of adults and children.

The response from Israel was swift and brutal, with the government promising a “mighty vengeance” against Hamas, vowing to destroy the militant group altogether. In the months since the attack, the Israeli military has unleashed one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in history, according to one expert. More than 20,400 people have been killed, including nearly 8,000 children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, in the two and a half months since the bombardment began. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced; entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. The UN has described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “apocalyptic” and the World Food Programme has said that there is a “catastrophic hunger crisis”. Safe drinking water is desperately scarce, raising the risk of disease outbreaks.

This blog is now closed. See all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here

Here are more details of the Egyptian plan to end the conflict, as reported by the Associated Press:

The call is for an initial ceasefire of up to two weeks during which Palestinian militants would free 40 to 50 hostages in return for the release of 120 to 150 Palestinians from Israeli prisons, the Egyptian official said.

At the same time negotiations would continue on extending the ceasefire and the release of more hostages and bodies held by Palestinian militants, he said.

Egypt and Qatar would work with all Palestinian factions, including Hamas, to agree on the establishment of a government of experts, he added.

The government would rule Gaza and the West Bank for a transitional period as Palestinian factions settled their disputes and agreed on a roadmap to hold presidential and parliamentary elections.

In the meantime, Israel and Hamas would continue to negotiate a comprehensive “all-for-all” deal, the official said. This would include the release of all remaining hostages in return for all Palestinian prisoners in Israel, as well as the Israeli military’s withdrawal from Gaza and the Palestinian militants’ halting of rocket attacks into Israel.