US says it conducted strikes against three Houthi missiles as it happened | Israel-Gaza war

US says 'we don't support a ceasefire at this time'

The US still opposes a ceasefire in Gaza, the White House said on Friday.

Kirby said that the US still opposes a ceasefire, believing that such a move would help Hamas militants.

“We do support humanitarian pauses, as I said, to try to get hostages out and more aid in, but we don’t support a ceasefire at this time,” Kirby said during a news briefing on Friday.

“I think it’s important to remember that there was ceasefire in place on 6 October,” Kirby added.

Closing summary

It’s 4.20 in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and we’re about to close this blog. Our live coverage of the Middle East crisis will resume later in the day. Here’s a rundown on the latest key developments. Thanks for reading.

• The US president, Joe Biden, has said the creation of an independent state for Palestinians is not impossible while Benjamin Netanyahu is still in office, following a call with the Israeli prime minister on Friday. The US president said he spoke with Netanyahu about possible solutions for the creation of such a state, noting that not all countries have their own militaries. Biden said Netanyahu was not opposed to all two-state solutions, and there were a number of types possible.

• The US central command said its forces conducted strikes against three Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed into the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch. The US has been launching strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, and this week returned the Iran-backed Yemen-based group to a list of “terrorist” groups. The Houthis said earlier today that they do not intend to expand their attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea, beyond their stated aims of blockading Israel and retaliating against the US and Britain for airstrikes.

• As Israeli forces have moved further into southern Gaza, airstrikes and close-combat fighting are approaching areas crowded with more than a million people seeking refuge from the destruction across the rest of the territory. The prospect of major operations taking place in territory with such a dense and vulnerable population is “deeply concerning”, say aid officials, who fear Gaza’s largest remaining hospital may have to be closed or evacuated.

• Gaza’s main internet provider, Paltel, has announced that communication services across the Palestinian territory are gradually returning after a nearly eight-day outage, the longest blackout since the war began. In a statement, Paltel said two of its technical team members lost their lives as a result of “direct shelling” during recent repair operations, bringing the total number of its employees killed to 14 since the start of the conflict.

• A senior minister in the Israeli war cabinet has said that only a ceasefire deal can win the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and that Israel is unlikely to achieve its aim of “total victory” over the militant Islamist group. Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, launched a blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the campaign against Hamas and failure to take responsibility for the failures that led to the Palestinian militant group’s bloody attack on Israel in October.

• Health services in Gaza are “decimated”, with medical staff exhausted after three months of war forced to extract shrapnel without adequate pain relief, conduct amputations without anaesthetics and watch children die of cancers due to a lack of facilities and medicine.

• Pakistan’s political and military leaders have moved to de-escalate tensions with Iran, after trading deadly airstrikes on militant targets in each other’s territory this week. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, by phone where they agreed “close coordination on counter-terrorism and other aspects of mutual concern should be strengthened”, according to a readout by Islamabad’s foreign ministry.

• Hezbollah’s number two leader has warned Israel against expanding the conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border, where there have been near daily exchanges of cross-border fire between the Israeli army and the Iran-backed militant group. Naim Qassem said in a statement on Friday: “If Israel decides to expand its aggression, it will receive a real slap in the face in response.” Any restoration of stability on the border was contingent on “the end of the aggression in Gaza”, he added.

• Leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticised the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy. Meanwhile, 60 of President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats have signed a letter urging his administration to reaffirm that the US strongly opposes “the forced and permanent displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza.

• The White House has said it was “seriously concerned” about reports that a Palestinian-American teenager had been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank. US-born 17-year-old Tawfiq Ajaq was killed by Israeli security forces in Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, east of Ramallah, according to reports.

• Palestinian detainees in Gaza described being “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture” said the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Ravina Shamdasani. Shamdasani said what detainees told her was consistent with reports her office has been gathering of the detention of Palestinians on a broad scale.

• The European Union has added six individuals to an asset freeze and visa ban blacklist for financing Hamas. The new EU sanctions framework targets “any individual or entity who supports, facilitates or enables violent actions by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad”, a statement said.

• EU foreign ministers will hold a series of meetings on Monday with counterparts from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab nations about the war in Gaza and prospects for a future peace settlement. The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, and his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Maliki, are not expected to meet each other.

• Swiss prosecutors have confirmed that Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is the subject of “criminal complaints” filed during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos. A statement allegedly issued by the people behind the complaint said the plaintiffs were seeking a criminal prosecution in parallel to a case brought before the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) by South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza.

• The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has accused the Israeli government of financing Hamas in an effort to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Benjamin Netanyahu has denied accusations by his opponents in Israel and some global media who have accused his government of spending years actively boosting Hamas, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.

Here’s more on the White House saying Israel will allow shipments of flour for Palestinians through the Israeli port of Ashdod, north of Gaza.

The move comes after the US president, Joe Biden, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke for the first time in nearly a month and follows the UN calling on Israel to allow access to the port for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid for besieged Gaza, Agence France-Presse reports.

Biden welcomed the Israeli decision on the port, the White House said, adding that US teams would “separately work on options for more direct maritime delivery of assistance into Gaza”.

Three UN agencies – the World Food Programme (WFP), Unicef and the World Health Organisation – pushed for the opening of Ashdod in a joint statement on Monday.

The use of Ashdod, about 40km (25 miles) north of the Gaza border, was “critically needed by aid agencies”, they said, while calling for a “fundamental step change in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza”.

The Israel-Hamas war has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe for Gaza’s 2.4 million people, who are struggling to get food, water, fuel and medical care.

Opening the Ashdod port would reduce the time it took to transport food from the north to Palestinians in Gaza, WFP’s regional director for the Middle East, Corinne Fleischer, said this month.

Hezbollah warns Israel of 'slap in face' if cross-border strikes escalate

A leader in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has warned that Israel would “receive a real slap in the face” if it expanded the conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border.

Since Hamas’s deadly 7 October attack on Israel there have been near daily exchanges of cross-border fire between the Israeli army and Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militants.

Hezbollah’s number two, Naim Qassem, said in a statement on Friday:

If Israel decides to expand its aggression, it will receive a real slap in the face in response.

Any restoration of stability on the border was contingent on “the end of the aggression in Gaza”, he added, in comments reported by Agence France-Presse.

The enemy must know the party is ready, that we are preparing based on the principle that an endless aggression can happen, just like our will to push back the aggression is infinite.

His remarks came after Israeli airstrikes “completely destroyed” at least three houses in southern Lebanon on Friday, the official Lebanese news agency NNA and the mayor of the affected border community said.

The Israeli army said on Friday it had “conducted air strikes and carried out artillery and tank fire against Hezbollah observation posts and terrorist infrastructure” in the Kfar Kila sector.

On Friday afternoon, Hezbollah claimed three attacks, including two against “deployments of soldiers of the Israeli enemy” on the border, including using Burkan missiles, which can carry a large explosive payload.

Since 7 October, Israel has repeatedly bombarded Lebanese border villages, with the violence killing more than 195 people in Lebanon, including at least 142 Hezbollah fighters, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, 15 people have been killed, of whom nine were soldiers and six civilians, according to the Israeli army.

An American drone crashed north of Baghdad, a US defence official said, after Iran-backed militants claimed they fired on an unmanned aircraft flying over Iraq.

“A US UAV crashed near Balad airbase, Iraq” on Thursday night local time, the official told Agence France-Presse, without identifying the type of drone that was lost.

Iraqi security forces recovered the aircraft. There were no injuries reported.

The official also said an investigation into the cause of the crash was under way.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-linked armed groups that oppose US support for Israel, said on Friday that it fired on a US MQ-9 – a type of drone that can be used for both surveillance and strikes - which was operating over Iraq the day before.

“Mujahideen yesterday targeted... an MQ-9 drone belonging to the American occupation,” the group said in a statement.

US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria have been hit by about 140 attacks since mid-October, according to the Pentagon – many of which have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. Washington has carried out retaliatory strikes in both countries.

On 4 January, a US strike in central Baghdad killed a pro-Iran commander who Washington said was involved in attacks on American troops – a move that infuriated the Iraqi government.

The prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, whose government is backed by Tehran-aligned parties, has called for the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group to depart the country.

Democrats urge US to reaffirm opposition to 'forced' Gaza displacements

Dozens of President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats have signed a letter urging his administration to reaffirm that the US strongly opposes “the forced and permanent displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza.

The letter to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, led by US representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jamie Raskin, was signed by 60 Democratic members of the House of Representatives, reflecting concern – especially on the left – over the steep toll on Palestinian civilians of Israel’s campaign against Hamas, Reuters reports.

The letter said:

We urge you to continue to reiterate the United States’ firm commitment to this position and ask that you provide clarification regarding certain provisions of the administration’s supplemental humanitarian and security funding request

A State Department spokesperson said the department did not typically comment on congressional correspondence. But on the broader issue of displacement, the spokesperson said in an email:

We have been clear. There must be no enduring forced displacement of Palestinians, whether inside of Gaza or outside.

The spokesperson said the state department had rejected statements by some Israeli officials calling for resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza and understood from the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that was not the Israeli government’s policy.

Earlier, we reported that leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticised the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy.

• This is Adam Fulton picking up our live coverage. It’s just passed 2.10am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv

Summary of the day so far

Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

• Joe Biden has said that the creation of an independent state for Palestinians was not impossible while Benjamin Netanyahu was still in office, following a call with the Israeli prime minister on Friday. The US president said he spoke with the Israeli prime minister about possible solutions for creation of an independent state for Palestinians, noting that not all countries have their own militaries. Biden said Netanyahu was not opposed to all two-state solutions, and there were a number of types possible.

• The US central command said its forces conducted strikes against three Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed into the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch. The US has been launching strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, and this week returned the Iran-backed Yemen-based group to a list of “terrorist” groups. The Houthis said earlier today that they do not intend to expand their attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea, beyond their stated aims of blockading Israel and retaliating against the US and Britain for airstrikes.

• Gaza’s main internet provider, Paltel, has announced that communication services across the Palestinian territory are gradually returning after a nearly eight-day outage, the longest blackout since the war began. In a statement, Paltel said two of its technical team members lost their lives as a result of “direct shelling” during recent repair operations, bringing the total number of its employees killed to 14 since the start of the conflict.

• As Israeli forces have moved further into southern Gaza, airstrikes and close-combat fighting are approaching areas crowded with more than a million people seeking refuge from the destruction across the rest of the territory. The prospect of major operations taking place in territory with such a dense and vulnerable population is “deeply concerning”, say aid officials, who fear Gaza’s largest remaining hospital may have to be closed or evacuated.

• Health services in Gaza are “decimated”, with medical staff exhausted after three months of war forced to extract shrapnel without adequate pain relief, conduct amputations without anaesthetics and watch children die of cancers due to a lack of facilities and medicine.

• Pakistan’s political and military leaders have moved to de-escalate tensions with Iran, after trading deadly airstrikes on militant targets in each other’s territory this week. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, by phone where they agreed “close coordination on counter-terrorism and other aspects of mutual concern should be strengthened”, according to a readout by Islamabad’s foreign ministry.

• Leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticized the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy.

• The White House has said it was “seriously concerned” about reports that a Palestinian-American teenager had been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank. US-born 17-year-old Tawfiq Ajaq was killed by Israeli security forces in Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, east of Ramallah, according to reports.

• A senior minister in the Israeli war cabinet has said that only a ceasefire deal can win the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and that Israel is unlikely to achieve its aim of “total victory” over the militant Islamist group. Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, launched a blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the campaign against Hamas and failure to take responsibility for the failures that led to the bloody attack into Israel in October.

• Palestinian detainees in Gaza described being “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture” said the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Ravina Shamdasani. Shamdasani said what detainees told her was consistent with reports her office has been gathering of the detention of Palestinians on a broad scale.

• The European Union has added six individuals to an asset freeze and visa ban blacklist for financing the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The new EU sanctions framework targets “any individual or entity who supports, facilitates or enables violent actions by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad”, a statement said.

• EU foreign ministers will hold a series of meetings on Monday with counterparts from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab nations about the war in Gaza and prospects for a future peace settlement. The Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz and his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki are not expected to meet each other.

• Swiss prosecutors have confirmed that Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is the subject of “criminal complaints” filed during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos. A statement allegedly issued by the people behind the complaint said the plaintiffs were seeking a criminal prosecution in parallel to a case brought before the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) by South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza.

• The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has accused the Israeli government of financing Hamas in en effort to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Benjamin Netanyahu has denied accusations by his opponents in Israel and some global media who have accused his government of spending years actively boosting Hamas, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.

16,000 women and children killed in Gaza, including two mothers every hour, says UN

An estimated 16,000 women and children have been killed in Gaza since the war began, including about two mothers every hour, a UN agency has said.

In a report released on Friday on “The Gendered Impact of the Crisis in Gaza,” UN Women estimated that at least 3,000 women may have become widows and heads of households since 7 October. At least 10,000 children may have lost their father, it said.

Of the territory’s 2.3 million population, 1.9 million are displaced and “close to one million are women and girls” seeking shelter and safety in a territory where no place is safe, it said.

Sima Bahous, UN Women’s executive director, said in a statement:

We have seen evidenced once more that women and children are the first victims of conflict and that our duty to seek peace is a duty to them … That failure, and the generational trauma inflicted on the Palestinian people over these 100 days and counting, will haunt all of us for generations to come.

The blistering attack by Gadi Eisenkot, a senior minister in the Israeli war cabinet, on Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the campaign against Hamas was the latest sign of deep disagreement among political and military leaders over the direction of Israel’s offensive.

Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said late on Thursday that only a ceasefire deal can win the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and that Israel was unlikely to achieve its aim of “total victory” over the militant Islamist group.

Central to the disputes inside the war cabinet is the question of how to free the more than 130 hostages who remain in Gaza. Not all of them are believed to be alive and there is a growing sense in Israel that time is running out.

The arguments are mirrored in wider Israeli society. Lilach Shoval in Israel Hayom, a rightwing newspaper, wrote:

Fifteen weeks have elapsed since Hamas forced this war on Israel on that Black Saturday of October 7, and Israel remains far from achieving the goals it set for itself: toppling Hamas’s military and governing ability, and returning the captives, not necessarily in that order.

Others have described a “quagmire”. Mairav Zonszein, an Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, said:

There is no lack of support for the war but it is increasingly clear that the release of the hostages is in conflict with other goals.

A poll published in Ma’ariv newspaper found that if elections were held now, Netanyahu’s Likud party would be reduced to 16 of the 120 seats in the national assembly, the Knesset.

Here are some of the latest images from Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Yemen.

Here’s some more detail on Joe Biden’s remarks to reporters after his call with Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US president said he spoke with the Israeli prime minister about possible solutions for creation of an independent state for Palestinians, noting that not all countries have their own militaries.

Asked if he would reconsider conditions on US military aid to Israel given Netanyahu’s comments rejecting a two-state solution, Biden said:

I think we’ll be able to work something out ... I think there’s ways in which this could work.

Asked if he believed Netanyahu would ever support a two-state solution, Biden replied “Yes, given the right one,” a CNN reporter said.

Netanyahu not opposed to two-state solution, says Biden

Joe Biden has said that the creation of an independent state for Palestinians was not impossible while Benjamin Netanyahu was still in office.

The US president spoke with the Israeli prime minister for the first time in nearly a month on Friday about Israel’s ongoing strikes in Gaza and differences over a future Palestinian state. According to the White House, Biden had been trying to schedule the call “for quite a bit of time”.

Asked if a two-state solution was “impossible” while Netanyahu was in office, Biden said, “No, it’s not”, Reuters reported. The US president said Netanyahu was not opposed to all two-state solutions, and there were a number of types possible.

The two leaders discussed efforts to secure the remaining hostages held by Hamas, and Israel’s shift to more “targeted” operations in Gaza to allow more humanitarian assistance to come through, the White House’s John Kirby said after the call.

A readout of the call from the White House said:

The president also discussed his vision for a more durable peace and security for Israel fully integrated within the region and a two state-solution with Israel*s security guaranteed.

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