US warship attacked in Red Sea

A US warship has come under attack in the Red Sea, the Pentagon announced on Saturday, in the most high-profile of a series of maritime attacks linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

Among other vessels that were hit by rocket fire were commercial ones including a UK-owned ship thought to have ties to Israel.

“We’re aware of reports regarding attacks on the USS Carney and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and will provide information as it becomes available,” the Pentagon said, without identifying where it believed the fire came from.

The British military earlier said there had been a suspected drone attack and explosions in the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandab strait.

An official at the US Department of Defence also said the navy ship USS Carney destroyed a Houthi drone travelling toward it in southern Red Sea.

Sunday’s attack follows a series of incidents in Middle Eastern waters since war broke out between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Oct 7.

An Israeli-linked cargo ship was seized last month by the Houthi group, an ally of Iran. The group, which controls most of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, had previously fired ballistic missiles and armed drones at Israel and vowed to target more Israeli vessels. There was no immediate comment from the Houthis on Sunday.

05:03 PM GMT

That’s all for today

Thank you for reading our coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. The key developments from the day were:

• Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the ground assault “with increasing force”, saying it was the only way to achieve Israel’s goal of “eliminating Hamas and releasing our hostages”.

• Israel ordered more areas in and around Gaza’s second-largest city of Khan Younis to evacuate, as it shifts its offensive to the southern half of the territory where it says many Hamas leaders are hiding.

• French president Emmanuel Macron said Israel risks unleashing a decade of war, appearing to push back on the army’s stated plan to continue fighting until the total elimination of Hamas.

• United States Vice President Kamala Harris sharply rebuked the rising civilian toll in Israel’s eight-week war on Saturday. “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she said.

• The United Nations humanitarian agency has said about 1.8 million people – roughly 75 per cent of Gaza’s population – have been internally displaced.

• The UK’s military said it will conduct surveillance flights over Gaza to help locate hostages held by Hamas.

• Israeli forces bombed the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Hamas-ruled enclave on Sunday.

• Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank late on Saturday, killing one man and torching a car, Palestinian authorities said.

• Israeli forces have found 800 shafts leading to Hamas’ vast subterranean network of tunnels and bunkers, and destroyed 500 of them, the military said on Sunday.

• Denmark said it will deploy army units to protect Jewish and Israeli sites in Copenhagen in response to an increase in anti-Semitism.

04:55 PM GMT

Pictured: Palestinian child receives medical care in Egypt

04:44 PM GMT

Israel says it has launched 10,000 air strikes during war

Israel says it has carried out “approximately 10,000 air strikes” in Gaza since the beginning of the war.

In a statement, the Israeli military says the cooperation between ground forces and the air force “is one of the most prominent elements in the IDF’s [Israel Defense Forces’] ground operation in the Gaza Strip”.

04:43 PM GMT

Qatar PM demands investigation into Israeli 'crimes’

Qatar is demanding an “immediate, comprehensive and impartial international investigation” into what the Gulf country’s prime minister described as Israeli crimes in Gaza, Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV reported on Sunday.

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani also said Qatar would continue its efforts towards facilitating another truce and reaching a permanent ceasefire in the besieged enclave, Jazeera added.

04:31 PM GMT

UK to start Gaza surveillance flights to find hostages

The UK’s military will conduct surveillance flights over Gaza to help locate hostages held by Hamas since its October 7 attack on Israel, Britain’s defence ministry confirmed at the weekend.

Hamas fighters seized around 240 Israelis and foreign hostages, according to Israeli authorities. Around 110 have since been freed, mainly during a recent week-long truce.

The UK has said at least 12 British nationals were killed in the October 7 attacks, and that a further five are still missing. It has not confirmed how many are being held by Hamas.

London did not reveal when its military surveillance flights over the territory would start but stressed they would be unarmed and focused only on hostage recovery efforts.

“In support of the ongoing hostage rescue activity, the UK Ministry of Defence will conduct surveillance flights over the Eastern Mediterranean, including operating in air space over Israel and Gaza,” it said in a statement.

“Surveillance aircraft will be unarmed, do not have a combat role, and will be tasked solely to locate hostages,” the ministry added. “Only information relating to hostage rescue will be passed to the relevant authorities responsible for hostage rescue.”

04:13 PM GMT

Pictured: Aftermath of Israeli strikes

03:45 PM GMT

Denmark calls in army to defend Jewish sites

Denmark will deploy army units to protect Jewish and Israeli sites in Copenhagen in response to an increase in anti-Semitism amid the war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza, government officials said Sunday.

“The conflict in the Middle East has led to an absolutely unacceptable increase in anti-Semitism and insecurity for Jews in Denmark,” Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said.

“We’re in a situation where the terrorist threat hanging over Denmark is serious.”

The defence ministry said the Gaza conflict was taking a heavy toll on police resources, with several protests being held at a time when Coran burnings by anti-immigrant groups have stoked tensions.

“In this context... armed forces will support the surveillance of Jewish and Israeli sites in Copenhagen,” such as synagogues or the Israeli embassy, it said.

The deployment will begin December 6.

03:20 PM GMT

Jabalia refugee camp bombed

Israeli forces bombed the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Hamas-ruled enclave on Sunday, according to Reuters. A Gazan health ministry spokesperson said several people were killed by an Israeli air strike there.

Footage obtained by Reuters of the aftermath of the strike showed a boy covered in grey dust, sitting weeping amid crumbled cement and rubble from collapsed buildings.

“My father was martyred (killed),” he cried in a hoarse voice.

A girl in a pink sweatshirt, also coated with dust, stood between piles of rubble saying: “No, no, no.”

Bombardments from war planes and artillery also concentrated on the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah in Gaza’s south, residents said, and hospitals were struggling to cope with the flow of wounded.

There was no immediate comment from Israel on the reported actions.

The renewed warfare followed the end on Friday of a seven-day pause in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants which had allowed an exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

The violence took place despite calls from the United States – Israel’s closest ally – for Israel to avoid further harm to Palestinian civilians.

02:50 PM GMT

Hamas could end war immediately, says UK minister

Hamas could end the war with Israel immediately by releasing hostages and returning to the table for truce talks, according to a British senior Government minister.

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said the UK Government wanted to see further pauses in the fighting after a truce between the Palestinian militant group and Israel broke down last week.

“We were very supportive of the humanitarian pauses,” she told Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme. “And we very much hope that Hamas will get back around the table and agree to more of these pauses and release more hostages. They could end this tomorrow – today, even.”

02:14 PM GMT

Pictured: Hamas tunnels

01:55 PM GMT

ICC prosecutor to intensify investigations in Palestinian territories

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court vowed Sunday to step up efforts to investigate alleged war crimes, AFP has reported.

Karim Khan stressed his visit was “not investigative in nature” but said he was able to speak to victims on both sides of the conflict.

More than 15,200 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza, according to Hamas, in more than eight weeks of combat and heavy bombardment.

“My office will further intensify its efforts to advance its investigations in relation to this situation,” Khan said.

“Credible allegations of crimes during the current conflict should be the subject of timely, independent examination and investigation.”

The ICC is the world’s only independent court set up to probe the gravest offences including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

01:41 PM GMT

Watch: Khan Younis rocked by missile strike

01:26 PM GMT

Israel says IDF soldiers injured in attack from Lebanese territory

Israel’s military has said several of its soldiers have sustained minor shrapnel injuries in an anti-tank missile attack from Lebanese territory.

The Israel Defense Forces say the attack also damaged one of its vehicles in the Beit Hillel area of northern Israel, a few miles from the border with Lebanon.

They did not confirm how many soldiers were hurt or who fired at them.
Israel’s military says artillery are striking the areas in Lebanon that the missile was fired from.

01:13 PM GMT

Israeli settlers attack two Palestinian villages in occupied West Bank

Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank late on Saturday, killing one man and torching a car, Palestinian authorities said.

Reuters reports the Palestinian ambulance service said a 38-year-old man in the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan, in the northern West Bank, was shot in the chest and died as residents confronted settlers and Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli military said it broke up the confrontation between residents and settlers. It said Palestinians shot fireworks in response and an Israeli and four Palestinians were injured.

In another incident, Wajih Al-Qat, head of the local council of the village of Madama near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, said a group of about 15 settlers burned a car and broke the windows of a house with stones.

The claims have not been independently verified.

The attacks are the latest in a series of similar incidents involving settlers that have drawn condemnation from world leaders including US President Joe Biden, whose administration is set to impose visa bans on extremist settlers.

Yesh Din, a human rights group that monitors settler violence, said there had been at least 225 incidents of settler violence in 93 Palestinian communities since the war started.

01:02 PM GMT

Three quarters of Gaza’s population internally displaced

The United Nations humanitarian agency has said about 1.8 million people – roughly 75 per cent of Gaza’s population – are internally displaced, up from a previous figure of 1.7 million.

However, the UN says “obtaining an accurate count is challenging” as it is difficult to track those who have fled and account for those who returned home during the temporary ceasefire.

12:53 PM GMT

Pictured: Funeral of Israeli soldier

12:41 PM GMT

Israel says it uncovered 800 shafts to Hamas tunnels below Gaza

Israeli forces have found 800 shafts leading to Hamas’ vast subterranean network of tunnels and bunkers, and destroyed 500 of them, the military said on Sunday.

Hamas said before the now eight-week-old war in the Gaza Strip that it had hundreds of kilometres of tunnels – a network comparable in size to the New York subway system – to protect and serve as operational bases.

That has made them prime targets for Israeli air strikes with penetrating munitions and army engineers using mapping robots and exploding gel that can be poured into the passages.

“The tunnel shafts were located in civilian areas, many of which were near or inside civilian buildings and structures, such as schools, kindergartens, mosques and playgrounds,” the military said in a statement on Sunday.

The military said that the 500 had been destroyed by using a variety of operational methods, including by “detonation and by sealing off”.

12:24 PM GMT

WHO describes unimaginable scenes in Gaza hospital

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, has reiterated calls for a ceasefire, describing unimaginable scenes from a visit by a WHO team to a Gaza hospital.

12:11 PM GMT

Israeli medical experts declare some hostages dead in absentia

Israel has started declaring some of the missing as dead in captivity, a measure designed to grant anxious relatives a measure of closure.

A three-person medical committee has been analysing videos from the Oct 7 attack for signs of lethal injuries among those abducted, and cross-referencing with the testimony of hostages freed during a week-long Gaza truce that ended on Friday.

That can suffice to determine that a hostage has died, even if no doctor has formally pronounced this over his or her body, said Hagar Mizrahi, a Health Ministry official who heads the panel created in response to a crisis now in its third month.

“Designation of death is never an easy matter, and certainly not in the situation embroiling us,” she told Israel’s Kan radio. Her committee, she said, addresses “the desire of the families of loved ones abducted to Gaza to know as much as possible”.

11:58 AM GMT

Watch: Hamas rockets intercepted over central Israel

11:44 AM GMT

Pope deplores end of Israeli-Hamas truce

Pope Francis on Sunday said it was “painful” to see that the truce between Israel and Hamas had been broken and called on all parties involved to reach a new ceasefire agreement as soon as possible.

He also said he was thinking about the people still held hostage in Gaza and the lack of basic necessities in the Palestinian territory.

Francis, who is suffering from a lung inflammation, had his words read by an aide during his Sunday Angelus message, which he delivered indoors from his Vatican residence rather than by a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.

11:27 AM GMT

Israel risks decade of war, says Macron

French president Emmanuel Macron has said Israel risks unleashing a decade of war, appearing to push back on the army’s stated plan to continue fighting until the total elimination of Hamas.

“What is the total destruction of Hamas, and does anyone think it’s possible? If it is, the war will last 10 years,” Mr Macron said on Saturday, speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of the UN’s COP28 climate talks.

“I think we’re at a point where the Israeli authorities are going to have to define their objective and desired end state more precisely,” he added.

The Israeli army resumed shelling the Gaza Strip on Friday following the collapse of a week-long truce.

“We will continue the war until we achieve all its goals, and it’s impossible to achieve those goals without the ground operation,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address Saturday night.

11:20 AM GMT

Pictured: Refugees arriving in southern Gaza Strip

11:08 AM GMT

Israel says Hamas ‘not serious’ about hostage release

Israeli ambassador to the UK said fighting has resumed with Hamas as the militant group was “not serious” about releasing hostages.

Tzipi Hotovely told Sky News on Sunday: “It is Hamas that failed this pause and the reason is that they are still holding 15 women, two children, one of them is a 10-month-old baby.

“We have over 100 hostages still in the hands of Hamas. They’re the ones who started firing on Israeli cities and towns on Friday.

“We’re back fighting as it seems like Hamas were not serious when he said ‘we’ll release the women and children’.”

10:55 AM GMT

Netanyahu vows to continue assault with ‘increasing force’

On Saturday evening the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, held a press conference vowing to continue the ground assault “with increasing force”, saying it was the only way to achieve Israel’s goal of “eliminating Hamas and releasing our hostages”.

“The day before yesterday I directed the IDF, together with the War Cabinet, to resume fighting, with increasing force. In the last 24 hours, we have destroyed over 400 Hamas terrorist targets,” he said.

“We carried out extensive aerial attacks in Khan Yunis. We eliminated terrorists and infrastructure in Beit Lahiya. We are continuing to act in the northern Gaza Strip.”

10:32 AM GMT

Pictured: Factory on fire in Khan Younis

10:13 AM GMT

US sharply rebukes rising civilian deaths

United States Vice President Kamala Harris sharply rebuked the rising civilian toll in Israel’s eight-week war on Saturday.

“Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she told reporters at UN climate talks in Dubai.

“Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.”

The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Saturday that the overall death toll in the strip since the Oct 7 start of the war had surpassed 15,200, a sharp jump from the previous count of more than 13,300 on Nov 20.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but it said 70 per cent of the dead were women and children. It said more than 40,000 people had been wounded since the war began.

09:56 AM GMT

Britain's maritime agency reports possible Red Sea blast

Britain’s Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) on Sunday said that it has received reports of drone activity and a possible explosion in the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandab strait.

UKMTO said the drone activity originated from Yemen, and called on vessels in the vicinity to exercise caution.

The incident is the latest in a series of attacks in Middle Eastern waters since war broke out between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Oct 7.

An Israeli-linked cargo ship was seized last month by the Houthi group, an ally of Iran which controls Yemen’s Red Sea coast. The group had previously fired ballistic missiles and armed drones at Israel, and vowed to target more Israeli vessels.

There was no immediate comment from the Houthis on Sunday’s incident.

09:46 AM GMT

Pictured: Aftermath of overnight Israeli bombing in Rafah

09:40 AM GMT

Israel conducts more than 400 strikes over weekend

The Israeli army said it has conducted more than 400 strikes in Gaza since a ceasefire collapsed on Friday, while Hamas announced “rocket barrages” against multiple Israeli towns and cities including Tel Aviv.

Israeli strikes hit the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza late Saturday, killing at least 13 people, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

“We will continue the war until we achieve all its goals, and it’s impossible to achieve those goals without the ground operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address Saturday night.

The Israeli military said Sunday that its fighter jets and helicopters “struck terror targets in the Gaza Strip, including terror tunnel shafts, command centers and weapons storage facilities” overnight, while a drone killed five Hamas fighters.

09:23 AM GMT

Israel orders more evacuations in southern Gaza

Israel has ordered more areas in and around Gaza’s second-largest city of Khan Younis to evacuate, as it shifts its offensive to the southern half of the territory where it says many Hamas leaders are hiding

Heavy bombardments were reported overnight and into Sunday in the area of Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, as well as parts of the north that had been the focus of Israel’s blistering air and ground campaign.

Many of the territory’s 2.3 million people are crammed in the south after Israeli forces ordered civilians to leave the north in the early days of the two-month-old war.

Residents said the Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering residents to move south to Rafah or to a coastal area in the southwest. “Khan Younis city is a dangerous combat zone,” the leaflets read.

United Nations monitors said in a report issued before the latest evacuation orders that the areas residents were told to leave make up about one-quarter of the territory of Gaza. The report said that these areas were home to nearly 800,000 people before the war.