Israel-Hamas war LIVE: IDF troops ‘will enter Gaza City within 48 hours’ after ‘splitting territory in two’ – as UN agencies call for ceasefire

In an operational update, the IDF claimed earlier today that Israeli fighter jets have neutralised a senior Hamas terrorist.

The military said Jamal Mussa, ‘who was responsible for the special security operations of Hamas’, was killed in an air strike in the past 24 hours.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country’s battle against Hamas is a ‘global battle’ against an ‘axis of terror’.

‘The axis of terror is led by Iran, it includes Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis (in Yemen) and their other minions,’ he said in an address to the media, a video of which was put out on his official X (Twitter) account today.

‘This is not a local battle. This is a global battle. The paramount need is to defeat this axis. That battle is now being waged by us against Hamas in Gaza.

‘There is no substitute for victory.’

A senior Hamas official has denied Israeli charges that the terror group has located missiles and rocket launchers near a hospital in the Gaza Strip.

Osama Hamdan told reporters in Beirut that Israel is trying to destroy the medical sector in Gaza to force Palestinians out of their land, AP reports.

Hamdan also denied Israeli military statements that the group has a tunnel near a hospital in Gaza, saying a hole shown in a photo presented by the Israeli military spokesperson is used for storing fuel.

Hamas terrorists have fired 16 rockets from Lebanon towards northern Israel, the Palestinian group’s armed wing announced.

The group said they targeted areas south of the Israeli coastal city of Haifa.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said the strikes came ‘in response to the occupation’s massacres and its aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip’.

Friends and relatives of Israeli hostages who were abducted by Hamas terrorists have protested today outside the Knesset demanding government action.

Pictures from Jerusalem show people holding placards bearing portraits of those who were taken into the Gaza Strip.

Israel says around 240 hostages are being held in the territory by Hamas.

Irish premier Leo Varadkar has said he does not regret saying that the Israeli response to the October 7 Hamas attack was becoming ‘something more approaching revenge’.

He was responding to a question on whether he believed the comment had hampered diplomatic relations with Israel over the exit of Irish citizens from Gaza.

Mr Varadkar said he did not believe that it had.

Asked if he regretted using the word revenge, he replied: ‘I don’t, no.’

He later said: ‘When the Tanaiste [Micheal Martin] and I take the positions that we do, we do so because we think its the right thing.

‘Ultimately, this is about civilians. Israeli civilians who died and were injured, and also Palestinians who are now experiencing a very difficult situation.

‘We’ve always taken a view since day one that we condemn Hamas’ attack unequivocally, no excuse for it whatsoever. Israel has a right to defend itself, but it has to do so in a way that’s proportionate and in line with humanitarian law.’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the situation in Gaza with Turkey’s foreign minister on Monday as part of Blinken’s efforts to calm regional tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas.

Blinken, who is touring the Middle East region, landed in Ankara on Sunday evening and held talks with Turkey’s Hakan Fidan on this morning.

The meeting between Blinken and Fidan lasted two and a half hours, a US State Department official said.

The Secretary of State said Washington was working ‘very aggressively’ to substantially expand the amount of aid reaching trapped civilians in Gaza.

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Israel’s Defence Forces say they have ‘split Gaza in two’ after armoured battalions surrounded Gaza City in preparation for a ground assault on Hamas.

Troops are now expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours, according to Israeli press – an operation that would mark a new chapter of the conflict which began almost one month ago when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel.

For our latest report on the situation on the ground in Gaza as Israel builds towards a ground offensive into the city, click the link below:

More than a hundred British citizens have left Gaza through the Rafah crossing so far, Downing Street said today, without confirming how many more are trapped inside the territory. The crossing has reopened for limited crossings today.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman told reporters:

It’s more than a hundred who have made it through the crossing. We are in contact with those who still remain, the British nationals who still remain in Gaza to update on the latest information we have. And we’ve got UK teams forward-deployed to receive those as they do make it through. I don’t have an update on the Rafah crossing as of right now, but obviously it’s disappointing it has been closed recently. It is obviously a complex situation and we will use all diplomatic options available to us to press for its reopening in co-ordination with our partners.

• Some 200 British nationals and their dependents were registered with the authorities to leave Gaza, meaning around half have made it out.

The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt has reopened to allow the evacuation of foreigners and dual nationals from the Palestinian territory being shelled by Israeli forces, the Hamas government said.

The terminal was opened for three days on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week to allow dozens of wounded Palestinians and hundreds of foreign passport-holders to cross into Gaza’s southern neighbour.

It closed on Saturday and Sunday amid a dispute over the passage of ambulances, after Israeli missiles strike hit ambulances outside a hospital on Friday night.

Today, the border authority said the crossing is open only for evacuations by Egyptians and foreigners listed since November 1.

The authority’s statement added that those who were not listed won’t be able to cross the border as per notification from the Egyptian authorities.

South Africa is recalling diplomats from Israel to assess its relationship with the country amid a rise in civilian casualties from its war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, its foreign minister has said.

South Africa has long been an advocate for peace in the Middle East and has rallied behind Palestinians, likening their plight to its own under an apartheid regime that ended in 1994.

Calling the return of diplomats a ‘normal practice’, Naledi Pandor said the recall was to determine ‘whether there is any potential for you to be of assistance and whether the continued relationship is actually able to be sustained in all terms.’

South Africa does not have an ambassador in Israel.

The UN in the past has also accused Israel of being an apartheid state. The charge is strongly denied by Israel and its supporters.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza says the Palestinian death toll from the ongoing war with Israel has jumped over 10,000.

The figures released Monday mark a grim milestone in what has quickly become the deadliest round of fighting since Israel’s establishment 75 years ago.

The health ministry says 10,022 people have been killed in Gaza, without distinguishing between fighters and civilians.

The vast majority of the dead are believed to have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, though Israel says over 500 errant rockets launched by Palestinian militants have landed inside Gaza.

Rishi Sunak does not believe all pro-Palestinian protests are hate marches, Downing Street has said, while emphasising there has been “some evidence of hateful behaviour”.

No 10 appeared to be seeking to distance the Prime Minister from Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s description of the demonstrations as “hate marches” when pressed on whether he saw them as such.

“We saw some evidence of hateful behaviour at the marches including arrests for inciting racial hatred, but obviously it remains the case rightly that people are able to, peacefully within the law, express their views,” Mr Sunak’s official spokesman told reporters.

He denied that the Prime Minister saw all the protests over the last few weeks as hate marches.

“Any instances of antisemitism is one to many,” he added, pointing to a “fairly large number of arrests” made and language being used that is “frankly terrifying” for Jewish communities.

The Israeli military has welcomed the deployment of a US nuclear missile submarine in the region, which was announced on Sunday in what was widely seen as a bid by Washington to prevent the spread of the Gaza war to other fronts.

‘It’s always good news to see that the Americans are moving in more assets,’ military spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Hecht told reporters.

‘We see this as sort of a deterring, stabilising aspect in the region.’

Turkey’s Foreign Minister today pressed visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to support an ‘immediate’ ceasefire, a Turkish diplomatic source has said.

‘Minister [Hakan] Fidan requested an immediate ceasefire in Gaza,’ the source said, according to AFP news agency. They adding that the sides agreed ‘on the need to prevent civilians from being harmed in Gaza.’

Amid reports that Israeli forces could move into Gaza City within the next 48 hours, here is a look at the territory held by the IDF (shown in blue) around the city.

The map shows how Israeli forces have split Gaza in two by cutting across the coastal strip from the border fence to the sea, south of Gaza City and just north of the Nuseirat Camp.

The red line dotted line shows the Wadi Gaza river, which is also the evacuation boundary.

The more than 1.1 million Palesinians living north of this line have been told to flee south in anticipation of the IDF assault on the city.

As the IDF once again accused Hamas of using hospitals in their military campaign, Gaza’s Hamas-run government said the Israeli army carried out ‘intense bombings’ on Sunday evening around several hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip.

This was shortly after telecommunications were cut, they said.

‘For more than an hour, intense bombings have been taking place around hospitals,’ said Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas government’s media office.

The vicinity of the Palestinian territory’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, saw particularly heavy strikes, according to Marouf.

Yesterday, the IDF said it had exposed a network of Hamas tunnels, command centres and rocket launchers beneath and adjacent to hospitals in northern Gaza.

‘Hamas systematically exploits hospitals as part of its war machine,’ Israel’s chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters.

Hamas denies doing so and has accused Israel of spreading lies.

• During a media briefing, Hagari presented videos, photographs and audio recordings that he said demonstrated Hamas’ strategy of using hospitals as cover and preventing civilians from leaving combat zones.
• He also said that over 800 rockets fired from Gaza at Israel during the war fell short and landed inside the territory, killing many Palestinians.
• It was not possible to verify Hagari’s statements.
• Israel has for weeks focused attention on Gaza’s main hospital, al-Shifa, accusing Hamas of using it as a shield for underground operational centres.
• Hagari has now made similar allegations for two other hospitals in northern Gaza.
• Two of the videos of the Qatari hospital showed an opening to Hamas tunnels and Hamas gunmen firing at Israeli soldiers from within the hospital, Hagari said.
• One satellite image shows rocket launchers located across the street from the Indonesian hospital, he said.
• ‘They launch rockets on Israel 75 meters from a hospital. Why? They know precisely that if Israel will air strike a launch pad like that, the hospital would be damaged,’ he said.

The IDF says this video shows them capturing a Hamas outpost in Gaza on Sunday night. It said the outpost had observation posts, tunnels and training facilities for terrorists, a number of whom were ‘eliminated’ in the operation.

Israeli media has reported troops are expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours.

The large, densely packed city – home to 1.1 million people before the conflict – has been surrounded by the IDF and cut off from the south of the territory.

Casualties on both sides are expected to rise as Israeli troops advance into the city’s narrow streets and dense residential neighborhoods.

Analysts predict steet fighting will be akin to urban warefare seen in the battles of Bakhmut in Ukraine, Mosul in 2017 and Stalingrad in 1942.

‘Today there is north Gaza and south Gaza,’ Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters, calling it a ‘significant stage’ in Israel’s war.

Over a third of Gaza’s 35 hospitals are not functioning and those still in service report dire fuel shortages that have severely reduced their electricity supply, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

The generators of two hospitals (Shifa and Indonesian Hospital) have stopped working due to lack of fuel and are running on secondary generators for a few hours a day and for critical services only, OCHA said.

However, Israeli officials have disputed the warnings of fuel shortages.

Israel’s envoy to the UN posted a video on X of what he described as a film screening next to Shifa hospital by Hamas.

Windows of the building appear illuminated in the clip, although it was not possible to verify where or when the video was recorded.

The WHO says it has documented at least 93 attacks in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began, killing 16 on-duty health care workers and damaging or destroying 28 ambulances. Ambulances were struck in a deadly attack on Friday.

A British surgeon among the first to flee wartorn Gaza on an evacuation flight has shared the horror of working in a warzone he says is a ‘disaster beyond imagination’.

Dr Abdel Hammad, 67, a consultant at Royal Liverpool Hospital, was working on behalf of the World Health Organisation, who directed him to safety after Israel announced a ‘complete siege’ of the war-weary enclave in October.

The surgeon – who had travelled to Gaza to train doctors last month – was finally able to leave the Strip on Friday night after escaping through the southern Rafah crossing into Egypt. He told The Times it had not yet sunk in that he had left.

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We’re seeing photos showing the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on a building in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip.

The city is south of the northern region that the IDF has told all civilians to evacuate from as Israeli forces carry out an air and ground offensive against Hamas.

Pictures show a residential building reduced to rubble, with dozens of Palestinians standing in the adjacent street, looking on in shock.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 200 people were killed overnight in airstrikes on Gaza City alone, around nine miles north of Deir Al-Balah.

The European Union is increasing its aid to Gaza by 25 million euros, president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has announced.

The increase will bring the EU’s humanitarian aid to Gaza to €100 million, she said in a speech in Brussels.

Footage released by the IDF on Saturday, November 4, shows tanks and soldiers advancing into Gaza, as well as targets being hit by air strikes.

War heroes today joined calls for pro-Palestine supporters to ‘show some respect’ and call off a march coinciding with Armistice Day commemorations in London. – as Met chief Sir Mark Rowley came under pressure to request a ban.

The latest ‘Day of Action’ ended in ugly scenes as protesters surrounded British Legion poppy sellers during a sit-in protest at Charing Cross over the weekend.

Meanwhile, families leaving a McDonald’s in the capital were hounded amid a row over Israeli franchised restaurants giving free and discounted food to IDF soldiers.

There are now concerns remembrance events this Saturday could be disrupted by a major march in London calling for a ceasefire.

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Humza Yousaf’s in-laws safely arrived back in Scotland after fleeing the conflict in the Gaza Strip, Scotland’s First Minister confirmed yesterday.

He shared a family photo on X, formerly Twitter, which included his wife Nadia, and her parents, Elizabeth and Maged El-Nakla, and said they had endured ‘a traumatic few weeks’. He said his father-in-law had broken down as he described how heart-wrenching it had been to leave other family members behind in Gaza.

The El-Naklas, from Dundee, were named among 92 British nationals permitted to pass through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt on Friday morning.

They became trapped in Gaza, where they had been visiting relatives, when the conflict with Israel erupted.

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Ireland’s Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, has said the Government is doing everything it can to support the family of an Irish-Israeli girl believed to have been abducted by Hamas, PA reports.

Emily Hand was originally feared dead after the assault on Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7. However, it was reported in Israel on Sunday that the eight-year-old’s family have been informed she may still be alive and being held hostage in Gaza.

Emily’s father, Thomas, is originally from Dublin. He said in the aftermath of the attack that he was relieved to learn she had been killed as he felt it would be worse for her to have been taken hostage.

Read Related Also: Girl, 12, is charged with stabbing murder of woman, 38, in Footscray, Melbourne – as disturbing details are revealed about her life ‘running wild’ in state care

Ms McEntee told RTE: ‘This is a hugely traumatic situation for her family and for every family who finds themselves with their loved one held hostage.

‘We are doing everything that we can to support this family and others to make sure that people can be returned home safely to their families.

‘We have called from the very beginning for Hamas to release any hostages that they might have. And, of course, where Irish citizens are involved here every effort has been made to support them.’

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The IDF last night said its forces had seized weapons and intelligence material from a residential area in Beit Hamsun, Gaza when carrying out raids.

‘Type weapons and a submachine gun, cartridges, grenades, explosives, protective equipment, armed drones and RPG missiles were found,’ the Israeli military said.

It also released pictures of several weapons including what appeared to be AK47s and RPGs, as well as a half-dismantled drone.

In a rare joint statement by more than a dozen UN agencies, the organisation has called for a ceasefire to the on-going conflict.

• We renew our plea for the parties to respect all their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law.
• We renew our call for the immediate and unconditional release of all civilians held hostage.
• Civilians and the infrastructure they rely on – including hospitals, shelters and schools – must be protected.
• More aid – food, water, medicine and of course fuel – must enter Gaza safely, swiftly and at the scale needed, and must reach people in need, especially women and children, wherever they are.
• We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now.

Signatories included officials from 18 agencies, including UNICEF, OCHA, OHCHR, Save the Children, UNHCR, WFP and the WHO.

The Palestinian Authority will not accept a partial transfer of tax funds from Israel that withholds sums earmarked for administration expenses in Gaza, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Monday, Reuters reports.

He said he hoped international pressure would bring a speedy transfer of the funds, which are collected by Israel in areas of the West Bank and paid to the Palestinian Authority under a longstanding arrangement between the two sides.

Part of the funds go to pay for expenses in Gaza, including the salaries of health workers, that are still covered by the Palestinian Authority even though the Islamist movement Hamas controls the blockaded enclave.

The Israeli army says it has arrested the prominent 22-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi during a raid in the West Bank.

‘Ahed Tamimi was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence and terrorist activities in the town of Nabi Salih’ near the city of Ramallah, an army spokesman told AFP.

‘Tamimi was transferred to Israeli security forces for further questioning.’

The activist was arrested during an Israeli army raid ‘aimed at apprehending individuals suspected of being involved in terrorist activities and incitement to hatred’ in the north of the West Bank, the spokesman added.

When AFP news agency inquired about the reasons for her arrest, a security source forwarded an Instagram post, which has circulated widely on social media and is attributed to the young activist, the agency reported.

According to the post, written in Arabic and Hebrew, she called for the massacre of Israelis in explicitly violent terms, referring to Hitler.

But the activist’s mother, Nariman al-Tamimi, denied she wrote the post.

‘There are dozens of (online) pages in Ahed’s name with her photo, with which she has no connection,’ Tamimi told AFP.

These dramatic clips graphically reveal the intensity of the battle now raging between the Israelis and Hamas in war-torn Gaza.

They revolve around one incident during the ground war inside the enclave when a squad of Israeli armoured personnel carriers were ambushed by Hamas terrorists emerging from their tunnels and fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) at the vehicles and tried to attach explosives.

Watch the full video below:

Efforts were under way on Sunday to resume evacuations of foreign nationals and injured Gazans through the Rafah crossing to Egypt, suspended since Saturday after a deadly attack on an ambulance, Egyptian, U.S. and Qatari officials said.

The crossing to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is the only exit point from Gaza not controlled by Israel.

Aid trucks were still able to travel into Gaza, two Egyptian sources said.

So far, roughly 1,100 people have left the Gaza Strip through the crossing since Wednesday under an apparent agreement among the United States, Egypt, Israel and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.

It was not immediately clear on Monday if the crossing would reopen.

Britain’s Foreign Office has declared it will withdraw some British embassy staff from Lebanon amid concerns that fighting between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah would spiral out of control.

The FCDO said this morning it had already advised Britons against all travel to Lebanon due to the conflict between neighbouring Israel and Gaza, and encouraged any Britons still in the country to leave while commercial flights remain.

But the temporary withdrawal of embassy staff marks a ramping up of safety precautions as Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) traded fire with Hezbollah militants at the border over the weekend.

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A knife-wielding Palestinian assailant stabbed and seriously wounded a female Israeli soldier before being shot dead in east Jerusalem today, police said.

‘A terrorist armed with a knife arrived at Shalem police station and stabbed a female soldier… border police forces neutralised the terrorist by shooting,’ police said.

Police said a female soldier was seriously wounded and another suffered light injuries. The Israeli emergency services said they had provided medical treatment to the wounded, both aged 20.

The assailant was identified by police as a young Palestinian from the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Issawiya.

It added that ‘another suspect’ had been arrested near the scene of the attack, which has been cordoned off.

The attack marks the latest violence to flare up in the area as Israel deepens its military offensive in Gaza.

On October 30, a Palestinian stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli police officer before being shot dead in east Jerusalem, the police said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid an unannounced visit to Iraq on Sunday, as he tours the Middle East attempting to tamp down tensions.

After an earlier visit to the West Bank, Blinken landed in Baghdad on Sunday evening for his first visit to the country as the US top diplomat and held talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani.

Blinken said he had a good, candid conversation with the Iraq government.

Washington wants to prevent a wider regional conflict from spilling over and has stepped up diplomacy with regional countries whose populations have been angered by Israel’s assault on Gaza.

But Iran-backed group Kataib Hezbollah issued a warning on Saturday night that the expected Blinken visit would be met with ‘an unprecedented escalation.’

Actor Jon Voight has ripped anti-Israel posts by his famous daughter Angelina Jolie – branding them ‘lies’ and saying ‘the Israeli army must protect thy soil.’

Jolie has strongly condemned the IDF’s response to the October 7 Hamas terror attacks that killed 1,400 people, the majority of whom were civilians.

But in a video posted online, Voight, 84, did not hold back in his criticism of his daughter Jolie, saying: ‘I am very disappointed that my daughter, like so many, has no understanding of God’s honor, God’s truths.’

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Intense Israeli strikes killed more than 200 people overnight in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run health ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory has said.

‘More than 200 martyrs were reported in the overnight massacres,’ the ministry said in a statement, adding the death toll only covered Gaza City and the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and not the southern region.

Israel said this morning its fighter jets struck 450 Hamas targets and its troops seized a militant compound in the past 24 hours.

Jordan’s air force air-dropped vital medical supplies to a field hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip, King Abdullah II said early Monday.

‘Our fearless air force personnel air-dropped at midnight urgent medical aid to the Jordanian field hospital in Gaza,’ he said on X, formerly Twitter.

‘This is our duty to aid our brothers and sisters injured in the war on Gaza,’ he said, adding: ‘We will always be there for our Palestinian brethren.’

• Israel later said it coordinated with Jordan on the air drop, a vital injection of supplies as the territory runs low on food, water, fuel and medicines.
• The air drop was announced as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken carried out a regional diplomatic tour, holding talks in Amman on Saturday with his counterparts from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
• A slow trickle of aid has been passing through the southern Rafah crossing. The number of trucks has increased in recent days, with Blinken saying on Saturday that 100 trucks were now entering Gaza each day.
• He said that was still not nearly enough for the population of 2.3 million.

Gaza lost communications in its third total outage of the Israel-Hamas war, while Israel’s military said it encircled Gaza City.

The IDF says it has divided the besieged coastal strip into two.

‘Today there is north Gaza and south Gaza,’ Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters, calling it a ‘significant stage’ in Israel’s war against the Hamas militant group ruling the enclave.

Israeli media reported troops were expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours, and strong explosions were seen in northern Gaza after nightfall.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari has said freeing the hostages inside Gaza remains the Israeli military’s top priority.

‘We are going to defeat Hamas. We are going to free our hostages,’ he said during a press briefing, shown below.

Is it believed around 240 hostages are currently in Gaza. Hamas officials in the territory claims a number have been killed in IDF airstrikes.

IDF soldiers were marching through Gaza when they were attacked by terrorists who sprang out of a nearby underground hatch.

Video shows the Israeli troops pushed the enemy back through the opening but rather than follow them inside, they called in an airstrike.

An eight-year-old girl who was believed to have been slaughtered in Israel by Hamas terrorists is now thought to be alive and among those held hostage in Gaza .

Emily Hand, a young Irish-Israeli girl, was reported to have been one of the at least 130 people killed in the deadly massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri, where she spent the night of October 6 to October 7 at a sleepover at her friend’s house.

In the aftermath of the attack, in an interview that went around the world, her Irish-born father Thomas Hand said that he was glad to hear that she was dead as he was terrified of how she would have been treated by Hamas terrorists.

But after a month of mourning thinking she had been killed, her family today revealed Israeli authorities had told them the schoolgirl is a hostage of Hamas, and is likely being held somewhere in in the besieged Gaza Strip.

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Britain’s Foreign Office has said some staff and family members have been temporarily withdrawn from the British embassy in Lebanon due to the ‘security situation’ in the region.

Guidance on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) website said: ‘FCDO advises against all travel to Lebanon due to risks associated with the conflict between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

‘There are ongoing mortar and artillery exchanges and air strikes in South Lebanon, on the boundary with Israel. Tensions are high and events could escalate with little warning, which could affect or limit exit routes out of Lebanon.

‘There is also a risk of civil unrest. There have been large protests outside embassies, including outside the US and French embassies on October 17. Further protests are expected. British nationals should exercise caution and avoid areas where demonstrations may be held.

‘Due to the security situation, some staff at the British embassy and all family members of staff have been temporarily withdrawn. The embassy continues with essential work including services to British nationals.’

Israel has clashed with Lebanese terror group Hezbollah since the October 7 attack, raising fears the war in Gaza could spread to the wider region.

Israel continued its massive bombing campaign after the Palestinian militants staged the worst attack in the country’s history a month ago.

In their October 7 attack, Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 others hostage.

The health ministry in Gaza, which is run by Hamas, says more than 9,770 people, many of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli strikes and the intensifying ground campaign since the war began.

Israel now says it has split Gaza in two, encricling Gaza City in the north. The IDF says it plans to see the whole of the north free of civilians, who it has repeatedly urged to flee to the south of the territory.

As the bombardment continues, UN aid agencies have released a rare joint statement calling for a ceasefire to the conflict. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained firm on his position, vowing that ‘there won’t be a ceasefire until the hostages are returned’.

Meanwhile, Britain’s foreign office has said it is withdrawing some embassy staff from Lebanon amid fears the conflict could broaden.

Here’s what else you need to know of day 31 of the conflict:

• Israel on Monday pounded Gaza with ‘significant’ strikes, while IDF troops and Hamas fighters engaged in house-to-house combat in the north.
• Israeli officials have continued to ignore ceasefire calls by UN aid agencies who condemned surging civilian deaths in the month-long conflict.
• Since Israel sent ground forces into the north of Gaza late last month, ‘over 2,500 terror targets have been struck’ by ‘ground, air and naval forces’, IDF says
• ‘We will take the fight to Hamas wherever they are, underground, above ground’, Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said at a briefing Monday.
• He repeated calls for civilians to leave the urban war zone in the north of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to the south.
• The war has sent 1.5 million people fleeing to other parts of the territory in a desperate search for cover.
• Conricus again accused Hamas of building tunnels underneath hospitals, schools and places of worship in Gaza to hide fighters, plan attacks and store ammunition – a charge the militant group has repeatedly denied .
• Israel has resisted calls for a halt in the fighting, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken touring the region calling for ‘pauses’ while rejecting Arab countries’ demands for a ceasefire.
• Israeli troops now encircle Gaza City, effectively splitting the territory in two, with ‘significant’ strikes carried out, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said late Sunday.
• On Sunday, the health ministry said 45 people were killed in Israeli strikes on a refugee camp in central Gaza, leaving people searching through the rubble.
• The sole border crossing into Egypt was closed Sunday for a second day in a row, with Hamas suspending the evacuation of foreign passport holders after Israel refused to allow some injured Palestinians to be evacuated.
• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirmed the closure, saying more than 1,100 people had been allowed out so far.