Middle East crisis live: US ship south-east of Aden hit by Houthi missile; two Palestinians kill woman and injure 12 in Israel | Israel-Gaza war

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has dismissed what he called the “malign narrative” claiming airstrikes against Houthis were part of the Israel-Gaza war, writes the Guardian’s political correspondent Andrew Sparrow.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Sunak prefaced his views by noting that the Houthis attacked British and American warships on 9 January, after other attacks on commercial shipping. It was “the biggest attack on the Royal Navy for decades”, he said.

He said the UK, with the US, retaliated in self-defence, and to uphold freedom of navigation, as Britain has always done.

He said the initial assessment was that all 13 targets of the airstrike were successfully hit. And there was no evidence of civilian casualties, he said. Great care was taken to avoid them, he said.

He said that in protecting international shipping, the UK was upholding international law.

The Houthis’ attack on international shipping, has put innocent lives at risk. They have held one crew hostage for almost two months and they are causing growing economic disruption. Global commerce cannot operate under such conditions. Containers and tankers are having to take a 5,000-mile detour around the Cape of Good Hope.

This was pushing up prices, and reducing consumers’ access to vital goods, he said.

He said people should not accept the “malign narrative” that this was about Israel and Gaza. It was not, he said; it was about protecting shipping.

The US military has posted some more detail about the ship struck near Yemen on social media.

An anti-ship ballistic missile fired by Iran-backed Houthi militants struck a Marshall Islands-flagged, US-owned and operated container ship on Monday.

The ship has reported no injuries or significant damage and is continuing its journey.

A missile fired from Yemen struck a US-owned ship in the Gulf of Aden on Monday, private security firms have told the Associated Press.

Ambrey and Dryad Global identified the vessel as the Eagle Gibraltar, a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier. The ship is owned by Eagle Bulk, a Stamford, Connecticut-based firm traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The firm did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though suspicion fell on Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The US Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• A fresh attack on a ship passing through the Gulf of Aden is being investigated by United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO). It posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it had received reports of an “incident” 95 nautical miles south-east of Aden, Yemen. It said: “Master reports port side of vessel hit from above by a missile. Authorities are investigating.”

• Two Palestinians carried out coordinated car-rammings in central Israel on Monday, killing a woman and injuring 12 other people, police and medical officials said, as tensions soared over the more than three-month-old war in the Gaza Strip. Police described the incident in Raanana, north of Tel Aviv, as a terrorist attack and said two suspects were under arrest. The two are from the same family in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank, and entered Israel illegally, police said.

• Gaza urgently needs more aid or its desperate population will suffer widespread famine and disease, the heads of three major UN agencies have warned. Authorities in the territory reported that the death toll in the Israel-Hamas war had surpassed 24,000, AP reported. While the UN agency chiefs did not directly point a finger at Israel, they said aid delivery had been hobbled by the opening of too few border crossings, a slow vetting process for trucks and goods going into Gaza, and continued fighting throughout the territory – with Israel being a deciding factor in all of this.

• A total of 24,100 Palestinians have been killed and 60,834 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday. It said 132 Palestinians were killed and 252 injured in the past 24 hours.

• A new round of negotiations to obtain the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza by Hamas has made incremental progress, sources close to the talks say, signalling the end to months of deadlock and raising hopes among relatives as the war passes its 100th day. New details emerged in recent days of a deal to allow medicine – such as vital prescription drugs – to reach the hostages, along with an increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza.

• Israeli forces killed five militants who were trying to “locate weapons” in northern Gaza and killed another two who had been loading weapons on to a vehicle in the territory’s south, according to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). It said in an operational update that it had also raided a Hamas “command centre” in Khan Younis, confiscating dozens of weapons as well as diving gear belonging to Hamas’s naval forces.

• A video journalist from the Cairo-based television channel Al Ghad was killed in the Gaza Strip on Sunday in a strike that the channel blamed on the Israeli army. In a post on X, the station said it was announcing “with a heavy heart” that Yazan al-Zwaidi was “murdered by Israeli fire”, Agence France-Presse reports.

• The White House has said “it’s the right time” for Israel to scale back its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, as Israeli leaders again vowed to press ahead with their offensive against Hamas. The comments exposed the growing differences between the close allies on the 100th day of the war on Sunday, Associated Press reports. The White House national security council spokesman, John Kirby, told the US network CBS that the US had been speaking to Israel “about a transition to low-intensity operations” in Gaza.

• The US cannot call for restraint while supporting Israel’s war in Gaza, Iran’s foreign minister said on Monday, while calling for a diplomatic solution to the war in the strip. Hossein Amirabdollahian, in a televised joint press conference with his Indian counterpart in Tehran, called on US officials “not to tie the security and national interests of the US to the fate of Israel’s prime minister who is falling”.

• China’s foreign minister Wang Yi called for a larger, more authoritative Israeli-Palestinian peace conference and a timetable to implement a two-state solution as the Gaza conflict escalated and the Red Sea became a new flash point. Speaking to reporters after talks with Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry in Cairo on Sunday, Wang said the international community should “listen” carefully to the legitimate concerns in the Middle East.

• Hizb ut-Tahrir will be banned from organising in the UK following claims that the group is antisemitic, the home secretary has said. The Islamist group, which is already banned in several countries including Germany and Indonesia, will no longer be allowed to recruit or hold protests and meetings across the UK. It follows criticisms of the group by ministers in the wake of demonstrations held against Israeli strikes on Gaza.

• US fighter aircraft shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired from Houthi militant areas of Yemen toward a US destroyer operating in the southern Red Sea, the US military said on Sunday. The midair interception is the latest incident in the Red Sea where the Houthis have been attacking international shipping in what they say is a campaign to support Palestinians under siege from Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Reuters reports.

• Britain’s “decisive” action in the Red Sea “dealt a blow” to the Houthis, the UK’s defence secretary has said. In his first major speech, Grant Shapps said “enough was enough” and precision strikes were authorised in response to Houthi attacks because they “chose to ignore” clear warnings.

• The UK has no interest in taking part in any wider conflict in Yemen but is “waiting to see what happens” before deciding whether further military strikes against Houthi forces might be needed, the defence secretary has said. Discussing the US-led strikes on the Yemen-based rebels in the early hours of Friday, which were aimed at stopping Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, Grant Shapps said the aims of the military operation were always limited.

• Turkish authorities have released Israeli football player Sagiv Jehezkel from police custody and he will return to Israel on Monday, the foreign ministry in Jerusalem said. Jehezkel had been detained in Antalya after wearing a wristband during a match with the words “100 days”, the date of the Hamas militant attack that precipitated Israel’s war in Gaza, and a Star of David.

• Three gunmen who crossed into Israel from Lebanon and two Israelis were killed in clashes and a strike along the frontier between the two countries on Sunday, the army and medics said. Five soldiers were wounded in the firefight with the gunmen, the Israeli military said. Earlier, an Israeli man was pronounced dead and a woman, who the local municipality said was his mother, died later after a missile strike in the Israeli border community of Kfar Yuval that reportedly wounded multiple Israelis.

That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for today. My colleague Rachel Hall will be along shortly.

Rajeev Syal

Hizb ut-Tahrir will be banned from organising in the UK following claims that the group is antisemitic, the home secretary has said.

The Islamist group, which is already banned in several countries including Germany and Indonesia, will no longer be allowed to recruit or hold protests and meetings across the UK.

It follows criticisms of the group by ministers in the wake of demonstrations held against Israeli strikes on Gaza.

If agreed by parliament, a draft order that was laid on Monday will come into force on 19 January. This means that belonging to, inviting support for and displaying articles in a public place in a way that arouses suspicion of membership or support for the group will be a criminal offence.

A fresh attack on a ship passing through the Gulf of Aden is being investigated by United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO).

It posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it had received reports of an “incident” 95 nautical miles south-east of Aden, Yemen.

It said: “Master reports port side of vessel hit from above by a missile. Authorities are investigating.”

Two Palestinians carried out coordinated car-rammings in central Israel on Monday, killing a woman and injuring 12 other people, police and medical officials said, as tensions soared over the more than three-month-old war in the Gaza Strip.

Police described the incident in Raanana, north of Tel Aviv, as a terrorist attack and said two suspects were under arrest. The two are from the same family in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank, and entered Israel illegally, police said.

“They went out together and in parallel, to two different locations, took two cars and launched a series of rammings,” the central district police chief, Avi Biton, told reporters in Raanana.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, Reuters reported.

At least one of the vehicles had been stolen, police said earlier.

Israeli TV showed scattered personal items on a pavement and said several children were among the injured.