Middle East crisis live: Rafah offensive would be ‘catastrophic’, leaders warn, as ceasefire talks continue | Israel-Gaza war

International medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have condemned an Israeli evacuation order on Nasser hospital in southern Gaza and called for an “immediate ceasefire”.

MSF said Israeli forces were “ordering thousands of displaced people out ‘into an apocalyptic landscape’”.

Nurse Mohammed al-Astal told Al Jazeera that the health facility in southern Khan Younis has been “besieged” for a month with no food or drinking water left.

“At night, tanks opened heavy fire on the hospital, and snipers on the roofs of buildings surrounding Nasser hospital opened fire and killed three displaced people,” he said.

According to MSF, at least five people have been killed and 10 others wounded in the past few days after shots were fired directly at the hospital. The medical charity said:

On 13 February, an Israeli military bulldozer destroyed the north gate of the hospital grounds and ordered displaced people to leave through it. Medical staff and patients were told they may remain in the hospital with a limit of one caretaker per patient. MSF staff are still in the building and continue to treat patients amid near impossible conditions.”

Since the war in Gaza began, MSF say its medical teams and patients have been “forced to evacuate nine different healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip, after coming under fire from tanks, artillery, fighter jets, snipers and ground troops, or being subject to an evacuation order”. It added:

Medical staff and patients have been arrested, abused and killed. Provision of healthcare and scaling up lifesaving assistance is being made impossible by the intensity of Israel’s bombings and shelling, as well as intense fighting.”

“Warring parties must always respect and allow unhindered access to medical facilities and their surroundings, and protect medical staff and patients,” said MSF.

Israel’s vow to push ahead with a “powerful” operation in Gaza’s Rafah was met with a growing chorus of international condemnation on Thursday, with leaders warning against catastrophic consequences for the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped there, reports news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Australia, Canada and New Zealand warned Israel “not to go down this path”, issuing a rare joint statement in the latest urgent appeal seeking to avert further mass civilian casualties. “An expanded military operation would be devastating,” they said. “There is simply nowhere else for civilians to go.”

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been driven into Gaza’s southernmost city by Israel’s relentless military campaign, seeking shelter in a sprawling makeshift encampment near the Egypt border.

Despite pressure from foreign governments and aid agencies not to invade, Israel insists it must push into Rafah and eliminate Hamas battalions.

“We will fight until complete victory and this includes a powerful action also in Rafah after we allow the civilian population to leave the battle zones,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Wednesday.

His threats of an imminent incursion come as mediators race for a truce in the four-month-old war, which has flattened vast swathes of Gaza, displaced most of the territory’s population and pushed people to the brink of starvation.

Should the Israeli assault on Rafah go ahead, the risk of atrocities is “serious, real and high”, the UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, said on Wednesday.

It has just gone 9am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and this is our latest Guardian blog on the Middle East crisis.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand – three members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – have warned Israel against a carrying out a “devastating” and “catastrophic” ground offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza, saying “there is simply nowhere else for civilians to go”.

The prime ministers of the three countries said in a joint statement on Thursday that Israel “must listen to its friends”. Justin Trudeau, Anthony Albanese and Christopher Luxon also said an immediate humanitarian ceasefire was “urgently needed”.

The statement appears aimed at ratcheting up pressure on Israel to rethink plans for a ground assault on Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians are taking refuge.

Here’s a summary of the latest developments:

• The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that Gaza’s hospitals are ‘completely overwhelmed’ and accused Israel of impeding its aid-delivery missions in Gaza. Speaking to reporters in Geneva via video link from Rafah in southern Gaza, Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the occupied Palestinian territories said that fewer than half of its requested aid-delivery missions in Gaza have been approved by Israel.

• “Military operations in Rafah could lead to a slaughter in Gaza” and a “humanitarian operation at death’s door”, warned the UN. Martin Griffiths, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said the scenario “we have long dreaded is unraveling at alarming speed” and “our humanitarian response is in tatters”.

• Eight people, all but one of them civilians, have been killed in Israeli strikes on south Lebanon, official sources said, while the Israeli army said it lost a soldier in cross-border rocket fire, Agence France-Presse has reported. The exchanges of fire – and the worst single-day civilian death toll in Lebanon since cross-border hostilities began in October – raised fears of a broader conflict between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah.

• Israeli intelligence chief David Barnea met CIA director William Burns in Cairo on Tuesday for talks on a Qatari-brokered plan to halt fighting in Gaza. The negotiations, which also involved Qatar’s prime minister and Egyptian officials, are part of an intensifying effort to secure a ceasefire before Israel proceeds with a ground incursion into the southern city of Rafah, where more than half of the territory’s population has fled.

• A Hamas source told news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) that a delegation was heading to Cairo to meet Egyptian and Qatari mediators, after Israeli negotiators held talks with the mediators on Tuesday.

• Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an outspoken critic of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, was also due in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, says AFP.

• Ireland and Spain’s prime ministers have written and implored EU chiefs to take action over the “deteriorating” situation in Gaza a day after the taoiseach claimed Israel had become “blinded by rage”. In a highly unusual move, Leo Varadkar and Pedro Sánchez wrote to the European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. They asked the commission to “urgently review whether Israel is complying with its obligations to respect human rights in Gaza”.

• Israel is in breach of international law as the occupying power if it fails to provide food and water to the people of Gaza, the UK foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, told peers on Tuesday in his clearest warning yet over Israel’s conduct. He also said it was simply not possible for people in Rafah to leave as proposed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), remarks that suggest the UK would not endorse any Israeli plan to mount a full-scale attack on the area.

• WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said that he is “alarmed by what is reportedly happening at Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza”. “Nasser is the backbone of the health system in southern Gaza. It must be protected. Humanitarian access must be allowed,” he said.

• Displaced Palestinians have begun evacuating Nasser hospital complex in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis after weeks of being isolated by fighting. Videos seen by the Associated Press showed dozens of Palestinians carrying sacks of their belongings and making their way out of the Nasser hospital complex, while a doctor wearing green hospital scrubs walked ahead of the crowd, some of whom were carrying white flags.

• Nasser hospital and the surrounding are has ‘turned into a battle zone’, reports Al Jazeera journalist Hani Mahmoud in Rafah, southern Gaza. In an update on Wednesday morning, Mahmoud said the situation in Nasser hospital was becoming “more and more risky” for medical staff and hundreds of displaced people sheltering there. He reported a lack of fuel, medical supplies and oxygen at the hospital, plus “a sewage flood as the facility is without electricity”.

• “There is sometimes even no space to walk” in Rafah, Médecins Sans Frontières project coordinator in Gaza, Lisa Macheiner said describing the unfolding situation and attacks in the area. Macheiner also spoke of the “lack of access to food … water … sanitation … healthcare” and said “there is a huge need for primary healthcare for follow up of patients, who had surgeries, multiple surgeries” and of people suffering with infected wounds. The medical humanitarian organisation has called on the government of Israel to halt any offensive on Rafah.

• Israeli air attacks have been reported across Gaza, including in the southern part of the strip, by Al Jazeera correspondents. They said artillery shelling had hit the centre of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza and Israeli warplanes had carried out repeated raids on the southern neighbourhoods of Gaza City.

• About 100 representatives of hostages flew to The Hague on Wednesday to file a “crimes against humanity” complaint at the international criminal court (ICC) against Hamas, reports AFP. The ICC is the world’s only independent court set up to probe the gravest offences including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

• 103 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes and 145 were injured in the past 24 hours, said the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

• An Israeli woman was killed and eight others were injured in a suspected Hezbollah attack, according to Israeli military and medical officials reports The Times of Israel. Safed’s municipality also said rockets hit the base, as well as the city’s industrial zone and an area near Ziv hospital. There has been no immediate claim for the attack.

• The UN secretary general, António Guterres said he was ‘deeply troubled’ by the number of journalists killed in the Gaza conflict. Reporting on an Israeli drone attack in Muraj, north of Rafah that allegedly targeted two journalists, Al Jazeera said the attack had resulted in its Arabic correspondent Ismail Abu Omar having to have his leg amputated, and had also seriously injured photojournalist Ahmed Matar. Guterres condemned the attack.

• At least 18 Palestinians were arrested overnight in the occupied West Bank, including two women from Jericho, reports Al Jazeera. It cites the Palestinian Prisoners Society and the Palestinian commission of detainees and ex-detainees affairs which said detentions also took place in Hebron, Qalqilya, Nablus, East Jerusalem and Ramallah. It put the total number of arrests after 7 October at 7,020 and called it “one of the most prominent tools of collective punishment”.

• Militants from the Islamic State (IS) group attacked military barracks in central Syria this week, killing nine soldiers, an opposition war monitor said. The Syrian army and officials have not confirmed the attack, reports AP. IS claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday near the town of Al-Sukhna, saying its fighters also seized weapons abandoned by fleeing soldiers and set fire to the barracks. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three Syrian troops were wounded in addition to the nine killed in Al-Sukhna.

• US Central Command (Centcom) said its forces launched a strike on Tuesday on a missile in a Houthi-controlled part of Yemen. It said the cruise missile was about to be fired at ships in the Red Sea.

• Protesters denouncing Israel’s offensive in Gaza disrupted a foreign policy debate in Sweden’s parliament on Wednesday, as the country’s foreign minister reiterated support for Israel’s right to self-defence against Hamas. Security guards escorted a woman out of the public gallery after she shouted that Israel “was committing genocide”, as foreign minister Tobias Billstrom presented the government’s foreign policy declaration to parliament.

• A leading British rabbi has publicly opposed an Israeli military offensive in Rafah, saying it is “impossible to remain silent”. Jonathan Wittenberg, the senior rabbi of Britain’s Masorti community, said in a statement “The calculated barbarity and strategic cruelty of Hamas’s military, and the presence of its forces in tunnels beneath Rafah, are beyond doubt … But over a million Palestinian civilians, many already in flight from the north of Gaza, are now trapped with nowhere to go. In countless references, Judaism has, throughout its history, stressed our duty to refugees and the helpless. How can we be unmoved by their grief and unbearable suffering?”