Middle East crisis live: Israel bombs overcrowded Rafah as UN warns of ‘humanitarian nightmare’ | Middle East and north Africa

Israeli forces bombed areas in the southern border city of Rafah where more than half of Gaza’s population is sheltering on Thursday, a day after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposal to end the war, reports Reuters.

Netanyahu said on Wednesday terms proposed by Hamas for a ceasefire that would also involve releasing hostages held by the Palestinian militant group were “delusional” and vowed to fight on, saying victory was in reach and just months away.

The rejection followed intense diplomacy to end the four-and-a-half-month conflict before a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, which is now home to more than one million people, many of them in makeshift tents and lacking food and medicine.

Israeli planes bombed areas in Rafah on Thursday morning, witnesses told Reuters, killing at least 11 people in strikes on two houses. Tanks also shelled some areas in eastern Rafah, intensifying the residents’ fears of an imminent ground assault.

Aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if Israel follows through on its threat to enter one of the last remaining areas of the Gaza Strip that its troops have not moved into during its ground offensive.

UN secretary general António Guterres said on Wednesday that pushing into Rafah on the border with Egypt would “increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”

Those who fled to the border city, almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, face a terrifying choice: stay in overcrowded Rafah – once home to 280,000 people – and wait for the attack, or risk moving north through an area of continued fighting.

The Canadian government did not see any evidence backing up Israel’s claim that staff employed by UNRWA colluded with Hamas before suspending funding to the agency, CBC News reports.

Government sources told CBC that Israel still has not shared evidence with Canada to substantiate its claim that 12 employees of UNRWA were involved in some capacity in the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas and the affiliated group Islamic Jihad. CBC News said it had not yet been able to review the Israeli intelligence document.

CBC News said Israel had refused to provide the intelligence it says backs up its allegations, either to UNRWA or to the UN Office of internal oversight services (OIOS), the UN body assigned to investigate.

Canadian officials told CBC News that Canada’s own decision to defund was a reaction to UNRWA’s decision to dismiss the staffers, which created the impression that the agency saw Israel’s allegation as credible.

The latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said 130 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes and 170 were injured in the past 24 hours.

According to the statement, at least 27,840 Palestinians have been killed and 67,317 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October.

The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken left the Middle East on Thursday with public divisions between the US and Israel at perhaps their worst level since Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began in October, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Wrapping up a four country Middle East trip – his fifth to the region since the conflict erupted – Blinken was returning to Washington after the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war would continue until Israel is completely victorious and appeared to reject outright a response from Hamas to a proposed ceasefire plan.

Relations between Israel and its main international ally, the US, have been tense for months, but Netanyahu’s public dismissal of a plan the US says has merit, at least as a starting point for further negotiation, highlighted the divide, say AP.

Yet Blinken and other US officials said they remained optimistic that progress could be made on their main goals of improving humanitarian conditions for Palestinian civilians, securing the release of hostages held by Hamas, preparing for a post-conflict Gaza and preventing the war from spreading.

“Clearly there are things that Hamas sent back that are absolute non-starters,” Blinken said of the response the militant group delivered on Tuesday to a ceasefire and hostage release proposal that was endorsed last month by Egypt, Qatar, the US and Israel.

“But, at the same time, we see space to continue to pursue an agreement,” Blinken said late on Wednesday. “And these things are always negotiations. It’s not flipping a light switch. It’s not ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ There’s invariably back and forth.”

Shortly before Blinken spoke, though, Netanyahu took direct aim at the Hamas response, calling it “delusional” and vowing that Israel would fight on to achieve “absolute victory” over the militant group, no matter what.

Compounding Blinken’s dilemma, Netanyahu also appeared to dismiss concerns from the US and others about expanding Israel’s military operations in southern Gaza, particularly in Rafah, the area on the Egyptian border to which more than one million Palestinians have fled.

“On all of my previous visits here and pretty much every day in between, we have pressed Israel in concrete ways to strengthen civilian protection, to get more assistance to those who need it. And over the past four months, Israel has taken important steps to do just that,” he said. “And yet … the daily toll that its military operations continue to take on innocent civilians remains too high.”

Blinken appealed to Netanyahu and other Israelis still reeling from the Hamas attack not to allow vengeance to dictate their continued response. “Israelis were dehumanised in the most horrific way on 7 October,” he said. “And the hostages have been dehumanised every day since. But that cannot be a licence to dehumanise others.”

A senior member of the Swedish security police said on Thursday that Iran has planned attacks on the country, days after local media reported that two Iranians were deported for a plot to kill three Swedish Jews several years ago, reports news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Earlier this week, Swedish broadcast SR reported that two Iranians had been suspected of planning to kill members of the Swedish Jewish community. They were arrested in 2021 and were expelled from Sweden in 2022 without charges, according to Swedish radio.

According to AFP, Daniel Stenling, counterespionage head at Sweden’s domestic security agency, told SR on Thursday that Iran “has been preparing and conducted activities aimed at carrying out a so-called physical attack against someone or something in Sweden.”

He added, “we have worked on a number of such cases where we have, as we gauge it, thwarted such preparations.” He declined to give specifics.

The two deported Iranians sought asylum in the Scandinavian country in 2015, claiming to be Afghans, and eventually got shelter in Sweden, according to SR. The report identified them as Mahdi Ramezani and Fereshteh Sanaeifarid, and said they have links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

A Swedish prosecutor earlier confirmed to the Associated Press that the two, a man and woman, were suspected of planning to carry out an attack “deemed to be terror” and that they have been expelled from Sweden. Prosecutor Hans Ihrman did not say when.

Ihrman told the AP that the prosecution “failed to get the necessary evidence that had been a prerequisite to be able to bring charges.” He also declined to give further details.

SR said the Iranians arrived in Sweden in 2015 as hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers sought to Europe. Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson said on Wednesday that the report was “very serious.”

“We have had too many people in Sweden entering on the wrong grounds and who were not stopped at the border,” Kristersson said. “It is extremely important that dangerous people are stopped if they try to enter.”

The security agency earlier said that Iran was active in Sweden and has been described as one of the countries that pose the greatest intelligence threat to Sweden. “But I can’t go into detail about what it’s about, because then I’d reveal what we’re doing,” Stenling told SR.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said a paramedic colleague, Mohammed Al-Omari, was killed, and two other paramedics were injured after Israeli occupation forces directly fired at them in Gaza City while they were transferring several wounded individuals from al-Ahli Baptist hospital in preparation for their transfer to hospitals in the south.

The PRCS have shared updates of the situation in Gaza on its X account. Another post by the humanitarian organisation said on Wednesday that two people had been injured at the PRCS al-Amal hospital, including one patient by the direct firing from the vehicles of Israeli forces positioned at the gate of the hospital in Khan Younis. “This comes amidst the ongoing siege and continuous targeting of the hospital for the seventeenth consecutive day,” said the PRCS.

In an update to X on Wednesday, the humanitarian organisation also shared a video showing PRCS teams inside al-Amal hospital burying a patient who had died the same day due to oxygen depletion at the medical facility.

“Patients’ lives are at severe risk due to the ongoing siege for the seventeenth consecutive day, oxygen and medical supplies running out, and the hospital being targeted with direct gunfire,” said the PRCS.

Israel’s ambassador to Australia invites Greens politicians to view 7 October footage

Amy Remeikis

Israel’s ambassador to Australia has invited federal Greens MPs and senators to view footage of Hamas’s attacks from 7 October, after the party’s push for Australia to remove support for what it called Israel’s “slaughter” in Gaza.

On Thursday afternoon, the embassy posted on X that ambassador Amir Maimon was inviting the MPs when they’re in Canberra next week to view the 42-minute compilation which has been shown to politicians and journalists.

Maimon said he was inviting the politicians to view the footage due to the “amount of time the Greens have devoted to attacking Israel in parliament this week”.

On Wednesday, the Greens failed in an attempt to suspend standing orders so they could propose a motion stating that parliament “does not support the State of Israel’s continued invasion of Gaza and calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire”.

The leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt, said Israel’s actions had “moved beyond self-defence – this is now a slaughter”.

The Greens were contacted for comment.

Palestinian groups accuse UN adviser of failing to warn about potential genocide

Patrick Wintour

My colleague, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour has written about leading Palestinian human rights groups accusing the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide of failing to fulfil her mandate. You can read it here:

Leading Palestinian human rights groups have accused the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide of failing to fulfil her mandate after she issued only one statement on the war in Gaza – largely supportive of Israel – that has claimed 26,000 Palestinian lives.

In a statement issued in October, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, a Kenyan, omitted any criticism of Israel.

In a letter sent to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, on Wednesday, 16 Palestinian groups, including the umbrella body the Palestinian human rights council, said there had been a “glaring absence of any action in response to the sustained mass atrocities endured by Palestinians in Gaza”, and that this raised “significant concerns about the special adviser’s capability to execute her mandate with due effectiveness and impartiality”.