Middle East crisis live: Hamas delegation heads to Cairo for more Israel-Gaza ceasefire talks | Middle East and north Africa

A US drone strike on a car in Baghdad has killed three members of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia, including a high-ranking commander, officials said after a string of blasts were heard in the Iraqi capital.

The strike late on Wednesday came on a main thoroughfare in the Mashtal neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad. A crowd gathered as emergency response teams picked through the wreckage. Security forces closed off the heavily guarded Green Zone, where a number of diplomatic compounds are located, amid calls for protesters to storm the US embassy.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the commander who was killed had been targeted “in response to the attacks on US service members.”

The strike killed “a Kataeb Hezbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on US forces in the region,” according to CENTCOM, which said there are “no indications of collateral damage or civilian casualties at this time.”

UK closer to large-scale conflict than in many years, intelligence official says

Dan Sabbagh

My colleague, the Guardian’s defence and security editor Dan Sabbagh has written a piece on an intelligence official that believes the UK is closer to large-scale conflict than in many years. You can read it here:

British defence intelligence officials say the UK is closer to a large-scale conflict than at any recent point, as the Middle East crisis intensifies while Russia pursues an expansionist agenda and China develops advanced weapons.

One senior official said the secretive 4,500-strong unit was the busiest it had been in at least a decade, and said the fast turnover of ministers made it harder to ensure key politicians were making informed decisions.

The official was asked if they agreed with Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, who said in a speech last month that the UK and the west was “moving from a postwar to a prewar world”.

The official, based in defence intelligence and speaking on condition of anonymity, cited Russia’s continuing attack on Ukraine and the possibility of an expansion of the conflict, while adding that it remained possible China would attempt to take Taiwan by force.

“Is there a likelihood of a large-scale conflict? Yes, there is. It’s probably more likely than it has been at any recent point,” they said, reflecting a period of instability deepened by the Israel-Gaza war and US-led bombing campaigns against Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iranian-back militias in Iran and Syria.

Norway has transferred $26m to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), foreign minister Espen Barth Eide said on Wednesday.

Several major donors suspended funding to the UN body after Israeli allegations that a number of UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October Hamas attacks in Israel. UNRWA responded by saying it had severed ties with the staff members accused and was launching an investigation.

Al Jazeera reported, Norway’s minister of international development Anne Beathe Tvinnereim as saying:

People in Gaza are starving. Health services have collapsed. In addition to all of the ramifications of the war, many are dying from infectious diseases and a lack of healthcare. Our support for UNRWA’s efforts is more important than ever.”

Turkish authorities have detained 147 people suspected of having ties to militant group Islamic State (IS) in operations across 33 provinces, interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Thursday, reports news agency Reuters.

The “Operation Heroes-49”, was carried out simultaneously across the country, Yerlikaya said on social media platform X.

Last month, one Turkish citizen was killed by two IS gunmen at the Italian Santa Maria Catholic church in Istanbul. Turkish police captured the suspected perpetrators of the attack.

A Hamas delegation is expected in Cairo for more ceasefire talks, a day after the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the group’s demands made as part of their response to a proposed ceasefire deal.

Senior Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan confirmed the trip at a news conference in Beirut while an Egyptian official has also told Agence France-Presse that “a new round of negotiations” is set to start on Thursday in Cairo aimed at achieving “calm in the Gaza Strip”.

It’s as the US secretary of state Antony Blinken continues his fifth trip to the region since the 7 October Hamas attacks. He said Wednesday that a ceasefire and hostage-release agreement between Israel and Hamas was still possible, despite the two sides being far apart on the central terms for a deal.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu also confirmed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had been instructed to commence operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

It’s just after 9am in Gaza, Tel Aviv and Cairo. Welcome to our latest blog on the Middle East crisis.

A Hamas delegation is heading to Cairo on Thursday to continue ceasefire talks, according to senior Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan. An Egyptian official has also told Agence France-Presse that “a new round of negotiations” is set to start on Thursday in Cairo aimed at achieving “calm in the Gaza Strip”.

It comes after the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the terms of a ceasefire in Gaza proposed by Hamas and ordered troops to prepare to enter the overcrowded Gazan city of Rafah.

The US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Wednesday that a ceasefire and hostage-release agreement between Israel and Hamas was still possible, despite the two sides being far apart on the central terms for a deal.

More on that in a moment but first, here’s a summary of the latest events:

• A US drone strike on a car in Baghdad has killed three members of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia, including a high-ranking commander, officials said after a string of blasts were heard in the Iraqi capital. The strike late on Wednesday came on a main thoroughfare in the Mashtal neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad.

• Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected Hamas demands for a ceasefire in Gaza and vowed to press ahead with Israel’s military offensive in Gaza until achieving “total victory”. Israel was within reach of achieving total victory “in a matter of months”, Netanyahu said at a news conference shortly after meeting US secretary of state, Antony Blinken. “The day after is the day after Hamas. All of Hamas.”

• Hamas laid out a detailed three-phase plan to unfold over four and a half months late on Tuesday via Qatari and Egyptian mediators, responding to a proposal drawn up by the US, Israel, Qatar and Egypt. The plan stipulates that all hostages would be released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including senior militants, and an end to the war.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said “a lot of work” remained to be done to bridge the gap between Israel and Hamas on terms for a new ceasefire and hostage-release deal. Blinken met with Netanyahu and Israeli president Isaac Herzog on Wednesday, during which he reiterated US support for “the establishment of a Palestinian state as the best way to ensure lasting peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike and greater integration for the region”, according to a US state department readout.

• The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said he is “especially alarmed” by reports that the Israeli military intends to focus next on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. His comments came amid concerns of an “imminent” Israel ground invasion of Rafah as Israeli gunboats reportedly fired on the main coastal road to the west of the city on Wednesday morning. “Such an action would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences,” Guterres warned.

• At least 27,708 Palestinians have been killed and 67,147 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures by the Gaza health ministry on Wednesday. The figures includes 123 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes and 169 injured in the past 24 hours.

• Saudi Arabia has said there will be “no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognised”. A Saudi foreign ministry statement on Wednesday reiterated “its call to the permanent members of the UN security council that have not yet recognised the Palestinian state, to expedite the recognition of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital”.

• Israeli protesters have prevented trucks carrying humanitarian aid from entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing on Wednesday, according an Israeli defence body. The group behind the protests has demanded freedom for the Israeli hostages in Gaza before further aid is allowed into the besieged Palestinian territory.

• Israel’s military has said it discovered and destroyed a tunnel used by senior Hamas leaders and to hold hostages in southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis. Israeli special forces unearthed what they said was a “strategic underground tunnel” stretching more than one kilometre (just over half a mile) in a “targeted raid”. The city has been the focus of intense bombardment in recent weeks.

• Israeli strikes on a southern Lebanese village has killed one civilian and wounded two others on Wednesday, according to Lebanon’s state media. An Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said the army attacked a series of Hezbollah targets in the Khiam area. “A sixth of all rocket launches from Lebanese territory since the start of fighting were launched from the vicinity of Khiam,” Adraee said in a statement on X.

• Police in Austin, Texas in the US say the stabbing of a 23-year-old Palestinian American was a hate crime, reports Associated Press. Threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities have increased across the US since the 7 October attacks by Hamas and during the Israel-Gaza war.

• Human Rights Watch has urged EU donors to restore funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) amid warnings that it could cease operations across the Middle East by the end of the month. The rights group said it was “unconscionable” to consider shutting down the UN agency amid a “desperate” humanitarian situation in Gaza.

• Norway has announced a fresh donation UNRWA. Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said the transfer of 275 million Norwegian kroner ($26 million) would support Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, Agence France-Presse reports.

• The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called the 7 October attacks by Hamas on Israel the “biggest antisemitic massacre of our century” as he led a ceremony paying tribute to the French victims. The ceremony, the first major international memorial event outside Israel since the Hamas attacks four months ago, remembered the 42 French citizens killed in the attacks and the three others still missing, believed to be held hostage.

• Canada’s immigration minister, Marc Miller, has said he is “pissed off” that extended family members of Canadians are being blocked from leaving war-torn Gaza. Ottawa last month provided a list of about 1,000 people approved to come to Canada to Israeli and Egyptian authorities, who jointly control the only border crossing out of the Palestinian territory, at Rafah. They would be permitted to stay in Canada temporarily while fighting continues. But none have been allowed yet to leave the coastal strip.