South Africa urges ICJ to consider Rafah intervention

Country says Israel’s decision to extend operations could mean a further breach of rights of Palestinians

The UN humanitarian office has not received any communication from Israel of a plan to evacuate Gaza's Rafah area either alone or jointly and would not participate in any forced evacuation even if it did, a spokesperson told Reuters on Tuesday.

"We have not received any official communication from Israeli officials," Jens Laerke, spokesperson for OCHA said in response to Reuters questions about Rafah plans. "Regardless, the UN does not participate in forced, non-voluntary evacuations. There is no plan at this time to facilitate the evacuation of civilians," he said.

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Officials say progress being made on Gaza ceasefire talks

US national security spokesperson says talks in Cairo ‘constructive and moving in right direction’

Israel and Hamas are making progress towards a deal that would bring about a ceasefire and free hostages held in the Gaza Strip, officials with knowledge of the talks have said.

The US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, speaking as negotiations were held in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, said: “They’ve been constructive and moving in the right direction.”

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Labour withdraws support for Rochdale candidate after Israel-Gaza remarks

Party no longer campaigning for Azhar Ali, who suggested Israel had allowed 7 October attack to happen

Labour has withdrawn its support for Azhar Ali, its candidate for the Rochdale byelection, just days before voters go to the polls in a key test for Keir Starmer’s party.

Senior Labour MPs and members had urged the leadership to confirm Ali would be disciplined if he won the byelection as comments he had made soon after the 7 October attacks surfaced over the weekend. In them, he suggested Israel had deliberately relaxed security after warnings of an imminent threat.

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Biden joins international calls for Israel to halt planned Rafah offensive

Politicians say Palestinians sheltering in the southern city in Gaza have nowhere else to go

Joe Biden has added his voice to growing international calls for Israel to drop plans for an all-out military assault on the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, after a ferocious hostage rescue operation that killed dozens of Palestinians.

Speaking after talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House on Monday, the US president said: “A major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than 1 million people sheltering there.

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Open letter criticising PEN America’s stance on Israel-Gaza war reaches 500 signatories

Writers including Roxane Gay have called on the organisation to ‘wake up from its silent, tepid, self-congratulatory middle of the road and take a stand’

An open letter from writers and literary professionals to PEN America calling on the organisation to take a stronger stance on the Israel-Gaza war has reached more than 500 signatories, including writers Roxane Gay, Maaza Mengiste and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

The letter, dated 3 February but still open to signatures, condemns PEN America for being “silent” about “Palestinian journalists, writers, and poets murdered by Israel” outside of “press releases buried on its website”.

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Thin, pale, but happy: freed Israeli hostages reunited with family

Fernando Simon Marman and Louis Har’s family say they did not know about rescue before being told to go to hospital to see them

Emerging from captivity in Gaza after 129 days, Fernando Simon Marman and Louis Har appeared thin and pale but with happiness and relief in their eyes.

Their family said the two men are overjoyed at being reunited with their loved ones as they try to make sense of their four-month ordeal.

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UK places sanctions on Israeli settlers for ‘forcing’ Palestinians from their land

David Cameron says ‘extremist’ settlers responsible for human rights abuses against West Bank residents

The UK has imposed sanctions against four Israeli nationals, saying they were “extremist settlers” who had violently attacked Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The measures impose strict financial and travel restrictions on the four individuals, who Britain said were involved in “egregious abuses of human rights”.

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Two Israeli hostages freed in Rafah, says IDF, as Palestinians report dozens of deaths

Israel’s defence forces say hostages were freed during a special raid in Rafah as residents say two mosques and several houses were bombed

At least 37 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Rafah, according to Gaza health officials, as the Israeli military said it had freed two hostages during a raid by special forces on the city.

The bodies of 20 Palestinians were at the Kuwaiti hospital, 12 at the European hospital, and five at the Abu Youssef Al-Najar hospital, officials at the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza told Reuters. Residents said two mosques and several houses were bombed.

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Middle East crisis: international concern grows over looming Rafah offensive as death toll from airstrike reportedly rises

This live blog is now closed. For the latest on Israel-Gaza, read our most recent report:

Hospital officials in Rafah say at least 50 people have been killed in the Israeli airstrikes that accompanied a hostage rescue operation, according to Associated Press.

Dr Marwan al-Hams, director of the Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital, said Monday the dead included women and children. An Associated Press journalist also counted the bodies brought to hospital.

The Israeli military said it rescued two hostages held in the territory in a raid that was backed up by Israeli strikes.

This is a developing story and we will bring you more when we have it

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Australia warns Israel’s plans for Rafah ground offensive could have ‘devastating consequences’

Failure to ensure special care for more than 1 million civilians in the area would ‘cause serious harm to Israel’s own interests’, foreign minister, Penny Wong, says

The Australian government has warned that Israel’s plans for a military offensive on the southern Gaza town of Rafah could have “devastating consequences” for Palestinian civilians sheltering there.

The foreign minister, Penny Wong, also suggested on Monday that a failure to ensure special care for more than 1 million civilians in the area, many in makeshift tents, would “cause serious harm to Israel’s own interests”.

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Biden warns Netanyahu against Rafah operation without ‘credible’ safety plan

UN officials and Biden have said an offensive in city, where about 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering, would lead to a ‘bloodbath’

In a call Sunday with Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden told the Israeli prime minister that Israel should not launch a military operation in Rafah “without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there”.

The call between the US president and Netanyahu was the first between the two leaders since Biden on Thursday used the phrase “over the top” to describe Israel’s military strikes in Gaza in response to the 7 October attack by Hamas.

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Cousin of Hind Rajab, 6, haunted by her last call after family car shot at in Gaza

Mohammed Hamada says he is devastated by death of Palestinian girl and relatives, whose bodies have now been recovered

The cousin of a six-year-old Palestinian girl who died in Gaza after her family’s car appeared to come under fire from Israeli tanks has told how he spoke to her as she waited to be rescued and said he was haunted by her last words.

Hind Rajab’s body was recovered on Saturday, alongside those of six of her relatives, and two Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics, Yusuf Al-Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, sent to find her in Gaza City.

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Middle East crisis live: ‘Enough’ hostages alive to warrant war, says Netanyahu – as it happened

Israeli prime minister says country ‘will do our best to get all those who are alive back,’ ahead of expected ground invasion of Rafah

Israeli forces have discovered a tunnel network hundreds of metres long and running partly under the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine’s (UNRWA) Gaza headquarters, the military claimed, calling it new evidence of Hamas exploitation of the main relief agency for Palestinians.

In late January, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland joined the US, Australia and Canada in pausing funding after UNRWA revealed an investigation had been launched into 12 members of staff who allegedly took part in the 7 October attack led by Hamas that killed 1,140 people.

Reporters on the closely escorted trip entered a shaft next to a school on the periphery of the UN compound, descending to the concrete-lined tunnel.

Twenty minutes of walking through the stifling hot, narrow and occasionally winding passage brought them underneath UNRWA headquarters, an army lieutenant-colonel leading the tour said.

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Netanyahu reiterates intent to press on with ground offensive on Rafah

Israeli PM brushes aside warnings that assault on Gaza’s southernmost town would be a ‘human catastrophe’

Benjamin Netanyahu appears determined to push ahead with a ground offensive against Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah but has claimed Israel will provide safe passage to the 1.3 million displaced Palestinians sheltering there.

Despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that an assault on Rafah would be a catastrophe, Netanyahu has reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military operation against Hamas. Hamas stated that a new advance into Rafah would “blow up” ongoing negotiations to return hostages in return for a ceasefire.

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‘Hamas have held my son hostage for nine years’: father of detained Israeli Bedouin speaks out

Sha’ban al-Sayed, whose mentally ill civilian son entered Gaza in 2015, says he has found allyship among families of kidnapped Israelis

In Israel it’s impossible to miss the faces of the 130 or so Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas: they are plastered across walls, hung from balconies, and digital versions are now screensavers on passport reading machines at the airport. “Bring them home now!” the posters say. The families’ rallying cry is repeated everywhere, chanted at demonstrations and printed on restaurant receipts and the shells of supermarket eggs.

The fate of the captives seized on 7 October has gripped Israeli society. One face that does not appear among the rows of missing people is that of Hisham al-Sayed, a 36-year-old Israeli Bedouin held by Hamas almost completely incommunicado for the last nine years.

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Middle East crisis: UN agency says Israel blocking food aid to Gaza as starvation fears grow – as it happened

This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Israel-Gaza war coverage here

Children are going without food for days and some people are resorting to grinding animal feed into flour to survive, says the BBC who spoke to people living in north Gaza. People also described digging down into the soil to access water pipes, for drinking and washing.

International charity ActionAid has said that food is becoming so scarce in Gaza that people are resorting to eating grass. “Every single person in Gaza is now hungry, and people have just 1.5 to 2 litres of unsafe water per day to meet all their needs,” said ActionAid in a statement published that warned intensifying attacks in Rafah would have “disastrous consequences”.

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‘I’m so scared, please come’: Hind Rajab, six, found dead in Gaza 12 days after cry for help

Girl who pleaded with Red Crescent to rescue her found dead along with several relatives and two paramedics who tried to save her

“I’m so scared, please come,” were some of the last words six-year-old Hind Rajab said in a telephone call to rescuers after her family’s car came under fire in Gaza City.

Trapped in the vehicle and surrounded by her dead relatives, for three hours she pleaded with the Red Crescent to save her.

But the aid agency lost contact with the ambulance dispatched to her aid on 29 January and its crew and Hind remained missing.

Now Hind’s family has said that she was found dead inside the car in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City on Saturday morning.

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Dozens killed in Rafah airstrikes as full-scale Israeli ground offensive looms

More than a million civilians sheltering in Gaza’s last place of relative safety brace for all-out assault

Airstrikes on the Gaza Strip’s southernmost town of Rafah have killed at least 44 people as more than a million civilians sheltering in the area brace for the possibility of a full-scale Israeli ground offensive on the territory’s last place of relative safety.

As Israeli forces have expanded ground operations steadily southwards in their war against Hamas over the past four months, Rafah – situated on the border with Egypt, and home before the war to about 280,000 people – has become the last refuge for more than half of the strip’s population of 2.3 million.

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Biden urged to include politicians in sanctions on violent Israeli settlers

Human rights groups also want to see executive order used to stop US groups from donating millions of dollars each year to settlers

There are growing calls for Joe Biden to use his new executive order sanctioning violent Israeli settlers to also target political leaders, including government ministers, responsible for driving attacks against Palestinians.

Pro-Israel groups and others in the US say the order is potentially a severe blow to the settlement movement in the West Bank, in part because financial sanctions could block even Israeli banks from doing business in parts of the occupied territories.

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Israel appears to be in breach of ICJ orders on Gaza, senior UN official says

Special rapporteur cites lack of medical supplies, food and clean water, and continued demolition of infrastructure

Israel appears to be in breach of the orders issued a fortnight ago by the international court of justice requiring it to take immediate steps to protect Palestinians’ rights and cease all activities that could constitute genocide, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, has said.

The Israeli government was given until 23 February to report to the ICJ on what it has done to comply with six orders the court issued, including one relating to ending incitement to genocide and another requiring immediate steps to improve the supply of humanitarian aid.

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