Israel-Hamas war: Israel launches strikes on Hezbollah-linked sites in Lebanon – as it happened | Israel-Hamas war

The UN security council is now discussing Malta’s resolution as filed. Vanessa Frazier, the country’s ambassador to the UN, says: “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.”

Her country’s proposal for a humanitarian pause in fighting “would facilitate the continuous sufficient and unhindered provision of essential goods and services important to the well being of civilians, especially children”, she says.

“Children are suffering disproportionately in this conflict. We cannot close a blind eye to their suffering … I urge all council members to support this draft resolution.”

Members of the United Nations security council have just begun their meeting in New York to discuss and vote on a draft resolution from Malta calling for humanitarian pauses to the fighting in Gaza, and a stepping up of efforts to allow aid into the war-torn territory.

Moments before the meeting was called to order, Riyad Mansour, permanent observer of Palestine to the UN, issued a scathing two-page letter accusing Israel of “a grave breach of international humanitarian law” by raiding the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

In his letter, addressed to security council president Zhang Jun of China, Mansour wrote:

We witnessed today a horrific attack by Israeli occupying forces … Violating all norms, Israeli soldiers violently attacked al-Shifa, terrorizing the thousands of civilians who had sheltered there, alongside patients and medical staff.

Israeli soldiers raided the hospital premises, ransacking rooms and destroying equipment, beating medical staff and forcing them to leave their patients and duty stations to be interrogated at gunpoint, and chasing patients staff and displaced civilians out of the hospital, expelling them outside to the dangers of Israeli snipers, bombs, and drones firing nonstop at them.

We remind that health workers, humanitarians, patients and civilians who may be sheltering at hospitals are protected persons under international law.

Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Israeli soldiers are now harassing, seizing and detaining Palestinian civilians fleeing south. There are reports of Israeli soldiers beating and stripping civilians and perpetrating other acts of violence and dehumanization against them.

Mansour asked that the letter be distributed to all security council nations before this afternoon’s vote.

Israel faced an unprecedented wave of international condemnation after its troops entered the Shifa hospital complex in Gaza, while the UN and aid agencies expressed concern about the impact of the raid on staff and patients.

The scale and virulence of the global condemnation from Arab and western governments raised questions about how much longer Israel can continue with its offensive in the face of waning international support.

The US also distanced itself from the military takeover of the hospital, saying it had not authorised the Israeli decision to raid the hospital.

The UN spoke of carnage in Gaza and as the pressure rose during the day, Israel relented by announcing it would allow an unlimited number of aid convoys through the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border. Aid convoys have been limited to as little as 30 trucks a day when the UN said it needed hundreds to relieve starvation.

The sense of crisis engendered by the hospital takeover also led to a breakthrough at the UN in New York, with the US lifting its threat to veto a new resolution prepared by Malta calling for extensive and urgent humanitarian pauses and corridors for a sufficient number of days to allow humanitarian aid to get to civilians in Gaza.

Up against what one Palestinian diplomat described as one million citizen journalists in Gaza, Israel is under pressure internationally to produce convincing evidence that the basement of the hospital was being used as a Hamas headquarters, as it has claimed.

The US did not sign off on Israel’s raid on al-Shifa hospital on Wednesday, the White House has said.

The US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, answering questions from reporters in San Francisco today, said:

We did not give an OK to their military operations around the hospital. We don’t expect the Israelis to inform us.

On Tuesday, Kirby said the US has its own intelligence that supported Israel’s conclusions that Hamas used al-Shifa as a command centre and used tunnels beneath the complex to conceal military operations and possibly hold some of the more than 240 hostages seized during last month’s attack into Israel.

He suggested the timing of his announcement was a coincidence, adding that his delivery of some “downgraded” intelligence information “had nothing to do with operational timing”.

It’s 9pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s what we’ve been following today in the Israel-Hamas conflict:

• Military equipment including grenades, automatic weapons, ammunition and communications technology was reportedly found during a raid by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Wednesday on the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. The IDF said it conducted a “precise and targeted operation” against Hamas in “a specified area” of the medical complex, and that the findings confirmed Hamas had operated a command operations center beneath the hospital.

• Hamas denied the claim, which it said in a statement was “nothing but a continuation of the lies and cheap propaganda, through which [Israel] is trying to give justification for its crime aimed at destroying the health sector in Gaza”.

• Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of the al-Shifa hospital, said that water, electricity and medical oxygen supplies were completely cut off within the facility, and that he was unable to communicate with doctors. “We cannot reach the pharmacy to treat patients as the occupation shoots everyone who moves. The smell of death wafts everywhere,” he told Al Jazeera.

• The US navy warship Thomas Hudner shot down a drone that emanated from Yemen in the Red Sea early on Wednesday. It was only the second time the US had brought down projectiles near its warships since the Israel-Hamas conflict began last month.

• Israel’s former deputy prime minister Gideon Sa’ar told the UK publication Jewish News that his country will agree to a temporary ceasefire in Gaza to facilitate the release of hostages held by Hamas. “It will be achieved. We will see a temporary ceasefire,” he said. His words contradict those of Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has frequently and vociferously ruled out a ceasefire.

• The United Nations security council will vote Wednesday on a draft resolution proposed by Malta calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days to enable aid access”. Some diplomats told Reuters they expected the 15-member council to adopt the resolution, though some countries were likely to abstain.

• A senior official with Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry called for the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to secure a safe corridor for patients, medical staff and displaced families trapped in the facility to leave.

• The UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said “Hamas must not, should not, use a place like a hospital as a shield for their presence”, but said the agencies’ chief concern was “protecting the people of Gaza from what’s being visited upon them”.

• Gaza’s two main telecommunications companies warned of a “complete telecom blackout in the coming hours” in the Gaza Strip. “Main data centres and switches are gradually shutting down due to fuel depletion,” the companies said in a joint statement.

• The UN children’s agency says its top official visited children and their families in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in the south of the territory. “What I saw and heard was devastating. They have endured repeated bombardment, loss and displacement,” Unicef’s executive director, Catherine Russell, said in a statement. “Inside the strip, there is nowhere safe for Gaza’s one million children to turn.”

• Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNWRA, has said: “Our entire operation is now on the verge of collapse,” and that “by the end of today, around 70% of the population in Gaza won’t have access to clean water”.

• Thomas White, the director of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), has said that water pumps and sewage treatment in the south of the Gaza Strip have stopped due to lack of fuel.

• Egypt’s state-run al-Qahera television station reported on Wednesday that the first fuel truck to enter the Gaza Strip since the war started on 7 October had crossed the Egyptian gate of the Rafah crossing. It is reported to be carrying 24,000 litres. “This is not enough for anything – not for hospitals, not even for aid deliveries,” an international source familiar with the operation told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

• Qatari mediators were on Wednesday seeking to negotiate a deal between Hamas and Israel that includes the release of about 50 civilian hostages from Gaza in exchange for a three-day ceasefire, an official briefed on the negotiations told Reuters. The deal would also involve Israel releasing some Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails and increase the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza. Hamas has to date released four of the estimated 240 hostages seized from inside Israel’s borders on 7 October.

• The family and friends of some of the 240 hostages believed to have been seized by Hamas on 7 October from inside Israel have begun the second day of their protest march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The trip is expected to last five days and will finish at Netanyahu’s office. The families have been critical of Netanyahu’s government for not doing enough to secure the release of the hostages.

• Israel’s military has said that it is again firing across the UN-drawn blue line that marks the boundary between Israel and Lebanon after “a number of launches toward Israeli territory”. It claims to have struck “a Hezbollah observation post in Lebanon”. Earlier, the Israeli minister Benny Gantz threatened anti-Israeli forces in Lebanon, saying: “What we are doing effectively in the south, can work even better in the north.”

• The IDF has also claimed that during its operations in Gaza it has “secured an outpost of the Hamas terrorist organisation” in the north of the territory.

• Israel’s Knesset has passed a law granting honorary citizenship to people killed by Hamas on 7 October who were not Israeli citizens at the time of their deaths.

• Protesters have been removed from the House of Commons public gallery in the UK parliament in London after holding up “ceasefire now” signs.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) found “weapons and technological equipment” belonging to Hamas during Wednesday’s raid on the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

The newspaper published a photograph credited to the IDF showing grenades, ammunition, communications equipment and other items purportedly at the hospital.

Israeli military spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said the IDF was continuing to search the complex, and had also recovered automatic weapons and flak jackets.

Israel claims Hamas has been operating a command center from beneath the hospital, and promised earlier Wednesday to produce evidence of what it found during what it described as a “precise and targeted operation”.

Further details are expected shortly.