Middle East crisis live: Gaza hostage families press Netanyahu to secure their release; EU in talks with Israeli and Palestinian ministers
Welcome to our continuing live reporting of the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis. I’m Adam Fulton and we’ll begin with a rundown on the latest news to bring you up to speed.
Relatives and supporters of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have rallied again outside the Israeli prime minister’s home in Jerusalem, pitching tents and demanding the government urgently strike a deal to secure their release.
The protest comes as Benjamin Netanyahu faces mounting pressure over the hostages’ ongoing captivity but rejected what he said were the militant group’s conditions for their release, including ending Israel’s offensive and leaving Hamas in power.
“I reject outright the terms of surrender of the monsters of Hamas,” he said.
A Hamas official said Netanyahu’s refusal to end the offensive “means there is no chance for the return of the [Israeli] captives”, which are estimated to number 130.
Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers will separately meet their Israeli and Palestinian counterparts – as well as those from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – on Monday in a string of meetings to discuss the war in Gaza after Netanyahu rejected calls for postwar Palestinian statehood.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, insisted last week that the only way to get an enduring peace in the region was for a two-state solution to “be imposed from outside”.
In other key developments:
A total of 25,105 Palestinians have been killed and 62,681 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday. The head of the UN, António Guterres, denounced Israel for the “heartbreaking and utterly unacceptable” killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, saying: “Israel’s military operations have spread mass destruction and killed civilians on a scale unprecedented during my time as secretary general.”
Two US Navy Seals who went missing during an operation to seize Iranian weapons bound for Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been declared dead after a 10-day search failed to locate them, the US military has said. The US central command had previously said that two Seals who were reported as lost at sea were involved in the 11 January operation in which the elite special operations personnel boarded a dhow off the coast of Somalia and seized missile components made in Iran.
An Israeli strike killed a Hezbollah fighter on Sunday in south Lebanon, a source close to the group said. According to a Lebanese security official, the strike on a car in south Lebanon “killed a member of Hezbollah’s protection team”, while the senior commander he was protecting “escaped death”. The commander was in a vehicle with three other people behind the car that was hit, the official added.
A strike on Damascus targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Syria spy chief and blamed on Israel killed 13 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said in an updated toll. The Guards confirmed it lost five members in Saturday’s strike.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) received 80 trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent via the Rafah border crossing with Israel over the weekend. The trucks carried food, water, relief items and medical supplies, the PRCS said, adding that no trucks entered through the Karm Abu Salem crossing.
The US said it was taking an attack by Iran-backed militants on an Iraq base “extremely seriously”. On Saturday, the US military said “multiple ballistic missiles and rockets” were fired by Iran-backed militants at al-Asad airbase in western Iraq, while an official said US personnel suffered minor injuries.
The UK’s defence secretary, Grant Shapps, described Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state as “disappointing”, while Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, condemned the Israeli prime minister’s stance. Netanyahu’s spokesperson claimed that in a phone call on Friday with Joe Biden, the Israeli leader told the US president that his country’s security needs left no space for a sovereign Palestinian state.