Middle East crisis live: Six killed at UN-run shelter in Khan Younis after IDF says troops encircled Gaza city | Israel

• Six displaced people were killed after one of the UN-run shelters in Khan Younis, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive in the southern Gaza Strip, was hit during military operations yesterday, the commissioner general of the UN’s Palestine relief agency UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said.

• Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, said the “devastating scale of loss of life” in Gaza “is unacceptable, is unprecedented and it is just a blemish on the international community’s moral perspective”.

• The United Nations Relief Works and Agency has said 570,000 people in Gaza face “catastrophic” hunger. “Intense fighting, access denials & restrictions + communications blackouts are hampering UNRWA’s ability to safely & effectively deliver aid,” the agency said in a post on X.

• Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday, by far the biggest single-day Israeli death toll in the three-month-old war. An Israeli military spokesperson said 21 soldiers were killed when two buildings they had mined for demolition collapsed after militants fired grenades at a nearby tank. Reports in local media said explosives set by the soldiers detonated prematurely. Earlier, the military said three soldiers were killed in a separate attack in southern Gaza.

• Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said it had been an “unbearably difficult morning” after hearing news of the deaths of the Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel would push on with fighting in Gaza until “absolute victory”.

• The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli bombardment was continuing in the vicinity of al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, with gunfire from Israeli drones targeting “anyone moving around” the hospital.

• The Gaza health ministry said a total of 25,490 Palestinians had been killed and 63,354 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October. At least 195 Palestinians had been killed and 354 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

• Israel’s military said its troops had encircled Khan Younis. “Over the past day, IDF troops carried out an extensive operation during which they encircled Khan Younis and deepened the operation in the area. The area is a significant stronghold of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade,” the military said.

• The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said action to degrade Houthi military capabilities would continue after the UK and US launched a fresh wave of airstrikes against the rebel group on Monday. “What we’ve done again is send the clearest possible message that we will continue to degrade their ability to carry out these attacks,” he told broadcasters.

• A Houthi army spokesperson said the latest US-UK strikes against the rebel group in Yemen would not go “unanswered” or “unpunished”.

• Israel has given Hamas a proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators that includes up to a two-month pause in the fighting as part of a multi-phase deal to free all the hostages being held in Gaza, Axios reported on Monday. The first phase would reportedly involve the release of women, men over 60 and those in critical medical condition.

Patrick Wintour

The UK must stand by the state of Israel and its right to defend itself as it deals with the terrible consequences of the Hamas attacks on 7 October, David Cameron, the UK’s foreign secretary, insisted as he was joined by a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor at a ceremony in the Foreign Office marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

Eva Kugler, a young girl at the time Germany swept through Poland and France, admitted she was angry that Israel was now being likened to the Nazis and condemned Hamas, saying: “I feel they have been indoctrinated against Israel as Hitler indoctrinated the German people in the same way as the Nazis. The Holocaust was all over Europe and north Africa; we can only hope this does not spread, but Jewish people have been attacked for 5,000 years, sadly.”

Cameron described the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust as “humanity’s darkest hour” and promised “to recommit to rid the world of the prejudice and hatred that persists today”.

He said two of the most unforgettable experiences of his life had been a visit to Auschwitz nine years ago to see “the architecture of mass murder and the mechanics of death” and a visit last year to the Be’eri kibbutz in Israel where he saw how horror had been brought to “a place of peace and beauty in the desert”.

He recalled seeing “the bullet holes in the walls, the blood on the floor, and the cupboards that had been full of children hiding before they were pulled out and murdered in front of their parents. It was the most deadly assault on Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

As a result, he said, “it has never been so important to say so clearly we stand with the Jewish people, the state of Israel and their right to defend themselves as they go about dealing with this terrible problem of dealing with the legacy of 7 October.”

Speaking at the same ceremony, the Israeli envoy to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, said the phrase “never again” seemed hollow after 7 October when “1,200 innocent people had been killed by the same poisonous hatred of the Jewish people that fuelled Nazi Germany during the Holocaust”.

“Jewish people in Britain were becoming fearful of showing themselves, or Jewish symbols,” she said.

Eric Pickles, the government’s envoy for post-Holocaust issues, attacked “the useful idiots who are willing to march alongside outright racists”.

Accusing Hamas of necrophilia and paedophilia in its attacks on Israelis on 7 October, he said he had been shocked to hear imams in the UK prepared to say Hamas had acted in self-defence. He said denial was the final stage of genocide and claimed “denial alongside distortion represented formidable obstacles to the truth”.

Six displaced people were killed after one of the UN-run shelters in Khan Younis, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive in the southern Gaza Strip, was hit “during military operations” yesterday, the commissioner general of the UN’s Palestine relief agency UNRWA has said.

“Terrified staff, patients and displaced people are now trapped inside the few remaining hospitals in Khan Younis as heavy fighting continues,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X on Tuesday.

He called on “all parties” to abide by international law and take every precaution possible to minimise harm and protect civilians, medical facilities and personnel.

‘Devastating scale of loss of life’ in Gaza is ‘unacceptable’ and ‘unprecedented’, Egypt’s foreign minister says

Lisa O’Carroll

Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, has said the “devastating scale of loss of life” in Gaza “is unacceptable, is unprecedented and it is just a blemish on the international community’s moral perspective”.

He called for an immediate ceasefire to deal with the “inhumane conditions that the people of Gaza are suffering under, absolutely horrendous, tragic, painful conditions.”

He warned that unless the world dealt with the displacement of Palestinians fleeing the bombing from Israel, the security of the wider region and Egypt would be at risk.

Shoukry said rhetoric was not enough. “The deprivation of their basic needs water, food, medicine, healthcare, sanitation, not being provided will make the conditions and Gaza unliveable in itself, and will induce displacements.

“If we don’t take measures to offset the potential of displacement, then displacement will occur and its consequences will be a further complication to the situation, will be a direct challenge to Egypt’s security,” he told reporters in Brussels.

Lisa O’Carroll

The EU and Egypt have signed a framework agreement to strengthen economic and political ties as fears grow over further displacement of people from Gaza in the region.

Unveiling the deal, Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, paid tribute to Egypt’s role in getting aid to Gaza and said the new deal would give Egypt access to some EU programmes including the Horizon research fund.

The deal, which is expected to lead to a fully blown partnership agreement in the next month, will draw on a €9bn fund already agreed to strengthen economic ties.

The EU’s neighbourhood commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi, described the deal as “the beginning of the golden age”, adding that it was based on “six pillars” of investment in the economy, water and food security, green energy and assistance with migration.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, said the deal “recognised that what happens in Egypt and in our region has a direct effect on conditions in Europe and what happens in Europe equally has an effect on Egypt and its adjoining regions whether it is the Middle East or Africa.”

Egypt already offers refuge to millions of people who have fled south Sudan, Eritrea and Yemen and has so far resisted the establishment of refugee camps on the Gaza border.

Asked about the possibility of future funds, he said he did not take the “Dickens perspective of I want more (money)” but his aim was for his country’s needs to be met through “a healthy and productive relationship that responds to the interests of both sides”.

Andrew Sparrow

The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has told MPs in the House of Commons that the latest airstrikes against the Houthis were only part of a “wider response” to the Houthis being taken by the government.

He said the government was increasing diplomatic engagement in the region, working to end the supply of arms to the Houthis, using sanctions to try to cut off their funding and delivering humanitarian aid to help people in Yemen who have suffered from the civil war.

He claimed there was no link between what the government was doing and the conflict in Gaza. He said people who glorified the Houthi attacks were glorifying terrorism, and that would be met by a zero tolerance response.

You can read the latest updates on UK politics in this liveblog.

The United Nations Relief Works and Agency (UNRWA) has warned that 570,000 people in Gaza face “catastrophic hunger”.

In a post on X, it wrote:

Intense fighting, access denials & restrictions + communications blackouts are hampering UNRWA’s ability to safely & effectively deliver aid.

As risk of famine grows, the UN calls for a critical increase in humanitarian access.

Israel’s war has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population and caused acute shortages of food, water and medical supplies.

In Rafah and Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza, tents and makeshift dwellings cover almost all available ground, with multiple families crammed into apartments, in UN-run shelters in schools or sleeping on the floors of hospitals.

The UN humanitarian office this month said Israeli authorities were systematically denying it access to northern Gaza to deliver aid and this had significantly hindered the humanitarian operation there.

Israel, which has previously denied blocking the entry of aid, will face pressure to allow more aid into Gaza at a meeting of the UN security council in New York on Tuesday.