Israeli troops ‘have encircled Gaza City’

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has said that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) was at “the height of the battle” against Hamas as troops broke through the militants’ front lines of defence.

“We’ve had impressive successes and have passed the outskirts of Gaza City. We are advancing,” he said. “We’re at the height of the battle.”

He also said in a press briefing that the government had not made any decision about transferring fuel to Gaza.

Explosions and shelling could be heard in the densely-populated city, including close to the al-Quds Hospital where thousands are seeking sanctuary, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The IDF say they have been fighting off ambushes by Hamas gunmen as well as attacking terrorist targets in tunnels.

The United Nations has expressed concern over the continuing bombing of Gaza, given “the high number of civilian casualties” and scale of destruction, and said that Israel’s attacks could “amount to war crimes”.

The Hamas-run Gaza authorities claimed on Thursday that more than 9,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict that began on October 7, with thousands more said to be wounded.

President Biden called for a “pause” in Israel’s military campaign to try to secure the release of 242 hostages who have been held captive by Hamas since the group attacked Israel, killing 1,400 Israelis.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have moved, temporarily, to the country’s tourist resorts, home now to many residents of the towns and kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on October 7 all along the outside of the Gaza Strip (Richard Spencer writes).

A number of kibbutzim and towns have been evacuated.

“Until Hamas are killed, I’m afraid to go home,” said Mazal Oaknin, 60, who was walking out of a strip mall in the centre of the town of Ofakim, 15 miles from the Gaza border.

Her concern is understandable, even if Hamas are cooped up on the other side of hundreds of thousands of regular Israeli troops and reservists who have surrounded Gaza with their tanks and artillery.

France is to send a second helicopter carrier to the coast of Gaza (David Harding writes).

The country’s defence minister, Sebastien Lecornu, said the carrier would be used to help provide medical assistance to people affected by the bombings in the Strip.

He was speaking to France Info radio on Thursday in Lebanon, where he visited the French unit of the United Nations’ mission in the country.

He said messages has been passed to both Hezbollah and Israel urging them not to do anything that would make it impossible for the mission to carry out its mandate.

At least 20 people are reported to have been killed after a strike on a UN-run school in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza (David Harding writes).

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees confirmed that one of its schools had been damaged “after two days of heavy bombardments in the area”.

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, said 20 people were reported to have been killed in the strike. “How much more grief and suffering?” he demanded. “A humanitarian ceasefire is overdue for the sake of humanity.”

The Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas, gave a higher death toll. “The bodies of 27 martyrs were recovered and a large number of wounded,” spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said according to AFP news agency.

“Children under ten were simply buying from the canteen and were cut into pieces,” a woman in the schoolyard said.

The White House is exploring the idea of “pauses” in the Israel-Hamas conflict to help civilians in Gaza, the US national security spokesperson, John Kirby, has said (David Harding writes).

“What we’re trying to do is explore the idea of as many pauses as might be necessary to continue to get aid out and to continue to work to get people out safely, including hostages,” he told reporters at a briefing.

His comments came ahead of a second trip to the region by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who said on Thursday he would seek “concrete measures” from Israel to minimise harm to Gazan civilians.

President Biden has promised full support and ramped-up military aid to Israel for its retaliatory strikes in Gaza following the Hamas attacks, but in a visible shift has also voiced empathy for Palestinian suffering which has stoked anger in the Arab world.

“We will be talking about concrete steps that can and should be taken to minimise harm to men, women and children in Gaza,” Blinken told reporters.

“This is something that the United States is committed to.”

Lebanese-based Hezbollah says its carried out a simultaneous attack against 19 Israeli military posts along the country’s border with Israel on Thursday (David Harding writes).

It said the attacks, using mortars and anti-tank missiles, coincided with two suicide drones that Hezbollah used to target an Israeli post in a disputed border area.

The Israeli military later said warplanes and helicopter gunships retaliated by striking at Hezbollah’s command centres, arms depots and sites from where the rockets were fired.

The militia group’s announcement came ahead of an anticipated speech by Hezbollah leader Syed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, which some fear could further inflame tensions in the region.

More than 70 workers of the main UN aid agency in Gaza have been killed since Israeli bombing of the territory began on October 7 (David Harding writes).

“We have lost, as of now, 72 staff,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said.

He added that UN staff were “sharing” the same living conditions as ordinary Gazans.

“They’re struggling on a daily basis to find the bread, to find the water, to protect their children,” Lazzarini told CNN.

Earlier this week he visited Gaza and said “the scale of the tragedy is unprecedented”.

The United States has managed to get 74 Americans out of Gaza, President Biden has announced, one day after evacuees began crossing into Egypt (David Harding writes).

As criticism of the UK’s ability to get Britons out of the besieged territory grows, Biden announced the rescue of the Americans.

“Good news, we got out today 74 American folks, dual citizens,” he said in the Oval Office.

The opening of the Rafah border crossing on Wednesday has allowed hundreds of foreign passport holders and wounded Palestinians to leave Gaza, with more expected to leave in the following days.

The Foreign Office said that more UK citizens were able to cross into Egypt on Thursday, but declined to say how many (Katie Gibbons writes).

“We can confirm that more British nationals have been able to cross into Egypt from Gaza via the Rafah crossing today,” a statement said. “We continue to work with Egyptian and Israeli authorities to support all those seeking to leave in the coming days.”

A team of consular officials has now been deployed to Rafah to help with the medical and other needs of Britons at the crossing and Border Force agents have been sent to Cairo. British Red Cross experts are among those who will provide assistance to those fleeing the conflict.

Charles Birch, the British chief of the United Nations Mine Action Service was one of a small number of foreigners who have been able to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing, The Times can confirm (Tom Saunders writes).

A spokesman for the UN programme said that Birch, also known as “Mungo”, had arrived in Egypt and was on his way to Cairo.

Downing Street confirmed earlier that two UK aid workers were among those to make it through the Rafah crossing, which is the only gateway to Gaza not controlled by Israel.

The Foreign Office has provided the Israeli and Egyptian authorities with a list of several hundred British citizens and their dependants, prioritising them by medical vulnerability. However, very few have been able to leave so far.

Egypt said it eventually plans to help evacuate 7,000 foreigners through the Rafah crossing and a spokesman for the Palestinian side of the border post said about 100 more had been able to leave on Thursday.

Israel is talking to medical agencies about setting up field hospitals in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, where it has told Palestinian civilians to seek refuge while it fights Hamas in the north, an Israeli official said on Thursday.

Colonel Elad Goren of COGAT, an Israeli defence ministry agency that liaises with Palestinians on civilian affairs, said the idea was initially to address the general needs of the wounded, potentially moving to more specialised care later.

“Right now, we are talking about field hospitals that would provide the basic medical care required for war trauma,” Goren told Reuters.

“Field hospitals can, potentially, be equipped to provide specialised medical care, given their modular structure, but this would be further down the line. There is also the question of where to find specialised staff,” he said.

Hamas has claimed responsibility for the latest rocket attack fired from Lebanon on a northern Israeli city, which injured at least two people.

In a statement, Hamas says its Lebanon branch fired 12 rockets at the northern city of Kiryat Shmona. At least one landed in a shopping area, damaging cars and a shop.

The ambulance service said a 25-year-old is in moderate condition due to shrapnel and a 40-year-old is lightly hurt as a result of the blast.

The city has been largely evacuated amid repeated attacks by Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions in southern Lebanon.

Earlier, Hezbollah said it had launched drones filled with “a large quantity of explosives” against headquarters of the Israeli battalion in the Shebaa Farms area, and that they had hit their targets.

The Israeli army said it was striking a series of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon following a number of attacks on Israel, in post on Twitter/X.

The Israeli army claims to have launched strikes on over 12,000 targets in the Gaza Strip over the past four weeks since the Hamas attacks on October 7, (Anshel Pfeffer writes).

It has identified thousands more by using “artificial intelligence and automated tools”, according to a senior Israeli intelligence official

The IDF “target bank”, as it is known, includes anything from the rocket launchers used by Hamas and other Palestinian groups and the workshops where they are manufactured, to the homes of Hamas field commanders which Israel claims are used also as military command posts.

The targets are detailed by their location, military value and the various types of munitions needed to destroy them, as well as assessments of possible collateral damage and civilian casualties. Some of them carry a warning that a strike would first need legal approval.

“Using AI is one way of speeding up the re-validation process and not only locating new targets, but keeping those already in the target bank up to date,” one Israeli target analyst said.

The chief of Israel’s armed forces has suggested its wartime embargo on fuel for the Gaza Strip could be eased to resupply hospitals in the territory.

Israel has so far allowed in humanitarian aid but ruled out fuel imports, citing a need to starve Hamas’s power generators.

Hospitals in Gaza have been warning about dwindling power supplies, with some saying they have been forced to close.

“Note that, for more than a week now, they have been telling us that ‘tomorrow the fuel in hospitals will run out’. So far it has not run out,” Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi said during a televised appearance, in response to a reporter’s question.

“We will watch for when that day arrives. Fuel will be transferred, with monitoring, to the hospitals. We will do everything needed to ensure that it will not reach Hamas infrastructures, that it will not end up serving war aims but the real needs of treating the sick,” he said.

Halevi also signalled that Israel was willing to escalate the war, adding that the air force was currently using less than half of its capabilities.

An Israeli air strike has destroyed clusters of houses in central Gaza and 15 bodies have been pulled from the rubble, local emergency services have said.

The strike on the Bureij refugee camp, south of Gaza City, was decried as a “massacre” by local residents, although Israel did not immediately comment.

Israel’s military, the IDF, has acknowledged previous strikes in the densely-populated Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City, which it said targeted Hamas terrorists, but are claimed to have also killed dozens of civilians.

Although the IDF has told Gazans in the north to evacuate south, that part of the narrow strip has not been spared. Three Palestinians died in tank shelling near the town of Khan and an air strike killed five outside a United Nations school in Beach refugee camp, local health officials said.

The Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, claimed today that more than 9,000 Palestinians had died, including 3,760 children.

Israel has accused Hamas of exaggerating the casualty figures but the UN and other bodies have expressed concern about the rising death toll following weeks of attacks.

Israeli settlers have set fire to Palestinian shops and cars in a village in the West Bank after an Israeli man was shot dead in the same area today.

The unidentified man was killed in an apparent terror attack near the settlement of Einav, said the Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross.

The Israeli army said in a statement it “has set up roadblocks in the area and is hunting down the terrorists” behind the shooting near the Palestinian city of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.

Shortly afterwards, dozens of settlers stormed the Palestinian village of Dayr Sharaf, located about four miles from the Einav settlement, starting fires in Palestinian businesses and fields and smashing empty cars.

Separately, three Palestinians, aged 14, 19 and 24, were killed on Thursday by Israeli fire as counter-terrorism raids and clashes continued across the occupied territory.

A group of Israeli activists, including several rabbis, blocked a main road leading into the Palestinian city of Nablus in protest at what they said was the army’s refusal to lock down the city in the wake of the attack.

Police dispersed the demonstration and said three Israelis had been arrested on suspicion of arson and disturbing public order.

More than 300 aid workers, and 76 badly injured Palestinians, managed to leave Gaza on Wednesday, with more crossing today. The Palestinians will be treated for their injuries in Egyptian hospitals.

Some of the wounded have suffered the worst of Gaza’s medical shortages and the charity Médecins Sans Frontières has warned that supplies of anaesthetics are running dangerously low.

A couple from Moldova have been charged with daubing the Star of David on a building in Paris as police hunted a group that stencilled the Jewish insignia on dozens of walls around the city this week.

The pair, aged 33 and 29, were arrested after a resident reported them for painting the symbol on a block of flats in the 10th arrondissement, on the Right Bank. They are being held pending deportation.

Their alleged act was one of nearly 900 antisemitic offences recorded by French police since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. Attention has focused on a more spectacular series of blue Israeli stars that have been stencilled 80 times on the walls of apartment buildings in the left bank’s 14th arrondissement and five other districts around Paris.

The district’s council said: “This act of marking is reminiscent of what happened in the 1930s and the Second World War, which led to the murder of millions of Jews.” Jews were forced by the French state to wear yellow stars under the Nazi occupation. Over 70,000 were deported by the French authorities to their deaths in German camps.

Police are also trying to identify young men who were filmed chanting, “Screw the Jews,” and, “We’re Nazi and proud of it,” while travelling in a Paris Metro train.

Army engineers are beginning to destroy Hamas’s extensive network of tunnels and bunkers in the Gaza Strip, with the aim of turning them into a “death zone”, according to Israeli media reports.

Combat engineers are using robots and explosives to destroy the tunnels, detonate any booby traps installed by Hamas and kill terrorists, the Israeli news site Walla reported.

“We are going to collapse the entrances and the tunnels on them. It will become a death zone. They made a mistake, they chose to be in a place they cannot escape from. They will die in the tunnels,” a senior officer in the Southern Command told the site.

Hamas is thought to have constructed hundreds of miles of underground hiding places, including under hospitals and residential areas.

Israeli air strikes targeting the bunkers have also destroyed buildings above ground, with claims of spiralling civilian casualties.

Walla reported that Israeli forces have already destroyed some 100 tunnels not counting the ones hit in airstrikes.

A retired Israeli general said today that “under no circumstances” would IDF soldiers enter the tunnels as the ground offensive continues.

Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of staff, said it would be a “grave mistake” to fight underground where Hamas fighters could hide or stage ambushes.

There are no real winners in any war, the Pope said on Thursday during a visit to a Second World War military cemetery in Rome.

With conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine no doubt on his mind, he made the improvised homily during a Mass at the cemetery attended by several ambassadors from Commonwealth countries.

“Wars are always a defeat, always. There is never a total victory. One side wins over the other but behind that there is always defeat in the price that has to be paid,” he said.

The Pope has previously called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the creation of humanitarian corridors to help relieve the suffering of its inhabitants.

However, he has also said Israel has a right to defend itself from attack, and has condemned a rise in antisemitism around the world.

During the Mass for All Soul’s Day the Pope, 86, spoke of the tragedy of war.

“At the entrance, I was looking at the ages of the fallen, mostly between 20 and 30. Truncated lives, lives without a future, here.

“The same thing is happening today. So many people, young and not so young, in the wars of the world, even those closer to us, in Europe and beyond … so many dead”.

Israel has asked European countries to send hospital ships to help treat Palestinian casualties from the war in Gaza, an Israeli ambassador has said.

France said last week that it was sending a naval vessel, Tonnere, to the eastern Mediterranean on what it described as a mission to support hospitals in Gaza. This week Egypt began admitting limited numbers of wounded people across its border with Gaza.

In a Kan radio interview, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, was asked whether Israel had asked France and other European countries to send hospital ships for receiving wounded people at el-Arish, an Egyptian port close to the Rafah border crossing.

He confirmed he had submitted a request to the government in Berlin.

An official who declined to be identified by name or nationality said the Tonnere has 70 hospital beds as well as two operating theatres.

Israel also asked Italy to send a hospital ship but has yet to hear back, the official added.

Other countries including Turkey and the UAE have said they are ready to take in sick or wounded people from Gaza.

A British teacher is among thousands of foreign nationals who remain trapped in the Gaza Strip amid confusion about who is eligible to leave (Katie Gibbons writes).

Zayaynab Wandawi, 29, an English teacher from Manchester, was turned away from the border on Wednesday morning after unclear messaging led her and other British nationals to think they would be able to cross into Egypt. Her mother, Lalah Ali Faten, 52, said her daughter was “distressed” after being given false hope. “She is mentally and physically exhausted and not in a good place,” she added.

Faten, an educational consultant, said that one family in Gaza had been told by British officials that they were on the list to cross into Egypt only to be told at the border that they were not.

Wandawi travelled to Gaza with her husband and eight of his family members for a wedding two days before the conflict started on October 7. Faten, who last spoke to her daughter on Wednesday night, said: “The situation is dire. Food is scarce, they have run out of water, there’s no plumbing or electricity. But she says ‘at least I have the chance to get out, the Palestinians can’t’. She’s trying to focus on the positive.”

Downing Street has confirmed that two UK aid workers were among those to make it through the Rafah crossing on Wednesday, which is the only gateway to Gaza not controlled by Israel.

Faten criticised the UK Foreign Office for not doing more. “The two Brits who left yesterday were only able to do so because they worked for NGOs who helped them leave,” she claimed.

The Israel Defence Forces has confirmed the death of a senior officer during fighting in the Gaza Strip, meaning 18 Israeli soldiers are now confirmed to have died during the ground offensive.

Lieutenant Colonel Salman Habaka, 33, from Yanuh-Jat, was killed fighting Hamas terrorists in the northern part of Gaza.

The name of the soldier, who was the commander of a battalion of the 188th Armoured Brigade, appeared on an IDF website listing fallen soldiers, but no further details were given on the circumstances of his death.

Separately at least three soldiers were seriously wounded in overnight operations in northern Gaza.

This week the IDF released the names of other soldiers who died during the ground offensive, all aged between 19 and 25.

A total of 333 Israeli personnel have died since October 7, with the majority being killed in the initial attacks by Hamas on Israel on that day.

Hamas have been using drone attacks and tactics previously deployed in the war in Ukraine to target Israeli forces in Gaza, according to footage posted online.

A video released by Hamas’s military wing on social media appeared to show a drone dropping a grenade on a group of Israeli soldiers below, resulting in an explosion.

The latest footage has not been verified but appears to show tanks and troops in sandy terrain on the outskirts of ruined buildings, a similar context to Israeli military videos released from Gaza.

In the drone video, shot from the air, soldiers on the ground scatter as the grenade detonates, but some appear to have been hit by the explosion.

Similar tactics were used by Hamas on October 7 during the deadly attack on Israel that started the current conflict.

Hamas fighters used adapted commercial quadcopter drones to drop explosives on surveillance towers along the border fence with the Gaza Strip, before they broke through.

A British doctor trapped in Gaza is still waiting to cross over into Egypt despite being named on a list of foreign nationals who were expected to be allowed to leave (Tom Saunders writes).

Abdel Hammad, 67, a transplant surgeon from Liverpool who arrived in Gaza on October 6, the day before Hamas’s attack on Israel, said that he had managed to cross through the Palestinian side of the border on Thursday but had been waiting for the last 90 minutes for Egypt to open its side of the border.

Despite being on the list since Tuesday, Abdel was unable to pass through the border on Wednesday. His son, Salim Hammad, said the process for crossing into Egypt has been mired in confusion and that he was only made aware of his father’s eligibility to leave through social media.

“We’re finding information second hand, third hand on Facebook rather than the Foreign Office, taking control of the situation by saying, ‘right you’re going today, this is what we are going to do to try to get you out’.”

A top surgeon in the Gaza Strip has said the territory is suffering a “health disaster” with hospitals running desperately short of capacity, medicine and fuel.

Marwan Abusada, chief of surgery at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said his hospital was treating more than 800 people with critical or medium-severity injuries.

Israeli strikes have killed 130 doctors and nurses from the hospital’s medical teams, leaving surviving staff “exhausted and on the edge of collapsing”, he said.

“The situation is beyond catastrophic … the corridors are full of injured people. The ER rooms are beyond full,” he said. “We have zero capacity to treat all the injured people. Every hour we have tens of injured that come for treatment. We are facing a real catastrophe.”

The Israeli siege of Gaza has cut off supplies of fuel and heavily restricted access to food, water and electricity. Some 20,000 people have been injured in strikes on the territory, according to Médecins Sans Frontières.

As well as the injured, many civilians displaced or made homeless by the violence are seeking shelter in local hospitals, raising the risk of infectious disease.

In a statement released by Medical Aid for Palestinians, a UK based-charity, Dr Abusada said: “We are almost out of fuel. Last night, people who had some fuel left donated it to Shifa Hospital, and now we have 1,000 litres. The consumption needs are immense due to the influx of injuries and the thousands of people who are displaced and seeking refuge in the hospital.

“We are living a health disaster.”

Israeli soldiers fought off Hamas fighters “in an intense and chaotic midnight battle” in Gaza, according to local media.

According to an unsourced report on Army Radio, the Hamas gunmen tried to ambush soldiers from the Golani Infantry Brigade at midnight, emerging from tunnels and attacking them with anti-tank missiles, mortars and drones.

Hamas gunmen also tried to enter Israeli armoured personnel carriers and take control of them.

The report said that Israeli troops fought them off in bitter close-combat fighting, and called in air and artillery strikes during a battle that raged for some three hours.

It said 20 terrorists were killed and about ten managed to escape, with no Israeli fatalities.

Separately, the IDF reported the ambush on its Hebrew-language social media account but did not provide details. It also published new footage of tanks, troops and air strikes in Gaza.

More foreign passport holders have managed to leave the Gaza Strip via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt (writes Magdy Samaan, Cairo).

The Egyptian authorities are preparing to receive about 7,000 foreign citizens from more than 60 countries. Among them are said to be 200 Britons.

But officials have warned that the process could be slow and take weeks, despite the deteriorating conditions in Gaza.

Egyptian media said that more than 400 foreign and dual nationals had entered the country, with more due to arrive on Thursday morning.

Wael Abu Mohsen, a Gazan official at the crossing, said that: “Two buses carrying 100 passengers holding foreign passports” had entered the terminal during the morning.

Since Tuesday night the General Authority for Crossing and Borders in Gaza has been publishing lists of those who are allowed to leave Gaza. The latest document, said to have been agreed with Israel, Egypt and Hamas in Gaza, contains names of citizens and dual nationals from the USA, Belgium, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Italy, and a number of other countries.

No British citizens appear on the list for departure on Thursday. At least two British nationals were on the list to depart on Wednesday, but the Foreign Office has not confirmed how many Britons left the territory.

The number of hostages who have been captured by Hamas and other terrorists from Israel has increased to 242, according to the Israeli military.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman, said the families of 242 hostages had now been notified that their loved ones are being held in the Gaza Strip.

He added that the number is not final and that the military is investigating new information.

The number does not include the four hostages that have been released — the mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan, and the elderly women Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper — as well as Private Ori Megidish, an IDF soldier who was rescued from Gaza on Sunday night, meaning at least 247 people were taken hostage during Hamas’s attacks on October 7.

There are still believed to be dozens more missing people whose fates are unknown.

Israeli forces began a ground offensive last Friday and have since been slowly advancing on three main routes, according to analysts.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US research group, said one route came from Gaza’s northeast corner, towards the town of Beit Hanoun. Another, south of Gaza City, cut across the territory, reaching the main north-south highway in Juhur al-Dik.

The third, from Gaza’s northwest corner, has moved about 3 miles down the Mediterranean coast, reaching the outskirts of the Shati and Jabalia refugee camps, on the edges of Gaza City. Airstrikes on Tuesday and Wednesday destroyed apartment blocks in Jabalia, resulting in 1,000 dead and wounded, the Hamas-run government in Gaza claimed on Thursday. Israel said the strikes killed militants and demolished Hamas tunnels.

Residents have been advised to leave northern Gaza for the south, but aid agencies have said that this is impossible for some, while many have remained or refused to abandon their homes.

The United Arab Emirates has announced that it will take in 1,000 children from Gaza for medical treatment (Melanie Swan writes).

The children will be accompanied by their families, facilitated by the UAE’s Red Crescent, which is organising a nationwide aid drive with thousands of volunteers packing relief for the war-stricken population.

Though the UAE was among the first countries to open diplomatic ties with Israel under the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, the country has condemned Israel’s military ground operations in Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire to protect civilian lives.

The Tarahum for Gaza campaign has collected 1,250 tonnes of food, hygiene and medical relief materials and has prepared 58,000 relief packages for children and mothers, as well as food packages.

Since the war began, events and gatherings have been cancelled across the country in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, including the Culture Summit in Abu Dhabi and concerts from international artists including the US rapper Macklemore at Dubai’s Coca Cola Arena.

Satellite imagery shows that Israel’s troops and tanks have moved miles past the border with Gaza and into urban areas.

The Times has observed troops on the outskirts of Beit Hanoun, a town in the north of the Gaza Strip, but the images taken by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite company, show dozens of armoured vehicles in position in the west of Gaza close to the Mediterranean.

The pictures show hundreds of craters created by the airstrikes, ruined fields and destroyed apartment blocks in the northwest of Gaza. The area is one of three where Israeli tanks have moved towards Gaza City, the largest city in the occupied territory.

• Read in full: Israel’s ground offensive on Gaza in satellite images

Israel confirmed it had hit Gaza’s largest refugee camp with a second day of air strikes on Wednesday as the UN warned the bombings “could amount to war crimes”.

It followed attacks by the Israeli air force on Jabalia in northern Gaza on Tuesday. The strikes targeted and killed Hamas terrorists in underground tunnels but also destroyed residential buildings and killed dozens of civilians.

The Israel Defence Forces said that fighter jets also hit a Hamas command and control complex in Jabalia yesterday, “eliminating” two militants.

The Gaza authorities, which are run by Hamas, claimed that at least 195 people had been killed in the attacks, and more than 700 wounded.

The UN’s top human rights body – citing “the high number of civilian casualties” and scale of destruction – said it had “serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes”.

Thailand said it has held direct talks with Hamas in an effort to release 22 of the country’s citizens who are among about 240 people held hostage by the group since October 7.

Thai negotiators met Hamas officials in Tehran, the capital of Iran, on October 26 and were given a pledge that the Thai citizens would be released at the “right time”, they told reporters in Bangkok on Wednesday.

Areepen Uttarasin, who led the three-person Thai delegation, said: “I asked them to release them because they are innocent.

“They [Hamas officials] assured me that they were taking good care of them, but they couldn’t tell me the release date … They were waiting for the right time.”

Qatar and Egypt have held talks with the terror group over the fate of the hostages. So far, four captives have been released by Hamas, while an Israeli soldier was rescued by her country’s military.

Israel has said it “is making every effort to free all of the hostages”.

More than 20,000 wounded people are still trapped in the Gaza Strip, according to the charity Médecins Sans Frontières, despite initial evacuations of foreign passport holders and badly injured Palestinians across the border to Egypt.

The charity noted the evacuations of “a number of severely injured” people in a statement on Wednesday, saying that its 22 international staff members in Gaza had also been among those who left the territory via the Rafah border crossing.

“However, there are still over 20,000 injured people in Gaza with limited access to healthcare due to the siege,” it said.

The charity’s Palestinian staff were still offering care in the territory, it added, and another international team was waiting to enter the territory to replace those who left “as soon as the situation allows”.

The organisation called for a greater number of people to be evacuated, as well as for a ceasefire and for more critical aid to be allowed in.

“Those who wish to leave Gaza must be allowed to do so without further delay. They must also be allowed the right to return,” the statement said.

The Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is set to reopen again, according to border officials.

Like yesterday, a list of hundreds of names of those permitted to leave the area has been published by the local authorities.

At least 335 foreign and dual citizens left Gaza on Wednesday, along with dozens of injured Palestinians. It was the first time anyone could leave since the start of the conflict last month.

Passport holders from Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, the United Kingdom and the United States were among those evacuated.

Dozens of severely injured Gazans were also transferred into care in Egypt following a deal between Israel, Egypt and Hamas.

The news agency Reuters, quoting an unnamed diplomatic source, said some 7,500 foreign passport holders are expected to leave Gaza over the next two weeks.

The latest list produced by the General Authority for Crossings and Borders in Gaza contains names of citizens and dual nationals from USA, Belgium, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Italy and a number of other countries. No British citizens appeared to be on the document for departure today.

President Biden has called for a “pause” in Israel’s military campaign to try to secure the release of more “prisoners” being held by Hamas (writes David Charter, Washington).

He was speaking to an audience at a fundraiser in Minneapolis after an event when an audience member shouted out: “As a rabbi I need you to call for a ceasefire right now.”

Biden replied: “I think we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.”

The White House later clarified that the prisoners Biden referred to were the hostages held by Hamas. The rabbi was later identified as Jessica Rosenberg.

Biden continued: “I’m the guy that convinced Bibi [the Israeli prime minister] to call for a ceasefire to let the prisoners out. I’m the guy that talked to [Egypt’s president] Sisi to convince him to open the door.” The border with Egypt was opened to civilians yesterday for the first time since the conflict began.

The heckler was escorted out by security while chanting “ceasefire now”.

Biden went on: “I understand the emotion … This is incredibly complicated for the Israelis. It’s incredibly complicated for the Muslim world as well … I supported a two state solution, I have from the very beginning. The fact is the matter is that Hamas is a terrorist organisation. A flat out terrorist organisation.”

His comments came as Israel continued its assault on Gaza by land, sea and air.

More foreign nationals and wounded Palestinians were expected to leave the Gaza Strip today, but in limited numbers.

The Israel Defence Forces has reported heavy fighting with Hamas in the Gaza Strip overnight and claimed “dozens” of fatalities on the Hamas side.

In a statement, the IDF says troops of the Golani Infantry Brigade led “prolonged battles” against Hamas terrorists who had fired missiles, detonated explosives and hurled grenades.

The IDF said it responded with artillery fire, tank fire, an aerial strike from a helicopter and a missile strike from a navy boat. It said: “At the end of the fighting, dozens of terrorists were killed.

The IDF also reported a ground encounter between its troops and Hamas.