Israel-Hamas war live: Gaza strikes to intensify, Israeli military says; West Bank mosque hit | Israel-Hamas war

Hello and welcome back to our rolling live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. This is Adam Fulton and here’s a snapshot of where things stand, including the latest developments on day 16.

Israel said it planned to intensify its attacks on Gaza from Saturday night, while Israeli commanders visited frontline units to rally troops who have massed on the border with Gaza.

Israeli Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, speaking to reporters in response to a question about a possible ground invasion into Gaza, said on Saturday: “We will deepen our attacks to minimise the dangers to our forces in the next stages of the war. We are going to increase the attacks from today.”

“We will enter Gaza,” chief of staff Lieut Gen Herzi Halevi told one infantry brigade on Saturday. “Gaza is densely populated, the enemy is preparing a lot of things there – but we are also preparing for them,” he said.

Meanwhile, Israel says it killed “terror operatives” from Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were planning attacks, in an air strike on the Al-Ansar mosque in Jenin on the West Bank early on Sunday.

The Red Crescent in Jenin said one person was killed and three injured.

In other news as it approaches 7.30am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv:

• Israel said its aircraft struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Saturday and that one of its soldiers was hit by an anti-tank missile, in cross-border fighting that the Iran-backed group said killed six of its fighters. A security source in Lebanon said one Hezbollah fighter was killed in the Lebanese area of Hula, opposite the Israeli community of Margaliot, which Israel said was the target of an anti-tank missile attack. The Israeli army said it fired back. Hezbollah, which claimed attacks on Israeli military positions throughout Saturday, later said five other members were killed.

• The Unites States will send a terminal high altitude area defence (Thaad) system and additional Patriot air defence missile system battalions to the Middle East, the Pentagon has said, in response to recent attacks on US troops in the region. Defence secretary Lloyd Austin also said he was placing additional troops on prepare-to-deploy orders, while not saying how many.

• Israel says it killed “terror operatives” from Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were planning attacks, in an air strike on a mosque in Jenin on the West Bank. The strike hit the Al-Ansar mosque, which the Israeli military said on Sunday “was used by the terrorists as a command centre to plan the attacks and as a base for their execution”. It did not specify the number killed. The director of the Red Crescent in Jenin, Mahmoud Al-Saadi, said one person was killed and three injured.

• Two Palestinians were killed and several wounded in earlier Israeli shelling on the Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

• Hamas claimed it had planned to release two more hostages “for humanitarian reasons” but that Israel refused, a Hamas spokesperson said on Saturday. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that “we will not refer to false propaganda by Hamas” and would “continue to act in every way to return all the kidnapped and missing people home”. Abu Ubaida, a spokesperson for the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, had said it informed Qatar on Friday of Hamas’s intention to release the two hostages.

• Hezbollah is “in the heart of the battle”, the deputy leader of the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon said. Sheikh Naim Kassem vowed that Israel would pay a high price whenever it started its ground offensive in Gaza.

• Gaza’s healthcare system is “facing collapse”, Médecins Sans Frontières has said. The international medical organisation said on Saturday that Gaza’s hospitals were “overwhelmed and lacking resources”.

• Doctors in Gaza have warned that 130 premature babies are in “imminent danger due to a lack of fuel”. “The world cannot simply look on as these babies are killed by the siege in Gaza,” said Melanie Ward, the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians.

• The Rafah crossing point between Egypt and Gaza finally opened to allow in a trickle of aid on Saturday for the first time in two weeks, after intense negotiations involving the US, Israel, Egypt and the UN. Under the US-brokered agreement, only 20 trucks were allowed in on Saturday, deliveries from the Egyptian Red Crescent to the Palestinian Red Crescent organisation. Aid officials said they were not expecting a delivery on Sunday, with the next consignment due to be a UN convoy on Monday. Saturday’s entry of humanitarian aid “is a welcomed glimpse of hope but this minuscule aid represents a drop in the ocean”, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, urged all parties to keep the Rafah crossing into Gaza open to enable aid to continue coming through.

• The US on Saturday proposed a draft UN security council resolution that says Israel has a right to defend itself and demands Iran stop exporting arms to “militias and terrorist groups threatening peace and security across the region”. Russia plans to hold another UN security council meeting on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Russian deputy UN envoy Dmitry Polyansky said on Saturday.

• Qatar’s foreign minister has said it is coordinating with the US and other international partners to release more hostages and reduce escalation in Gaza. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani spoke to US secretary of state Antony Blinken in a phone call on Saturday.

• The first Palestinian American to serve as a congressman on the US Capitol is mourning the loss of several family members who were killed at the Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza that was reportedly struck by Israel. Justin Amash detailed his sorrow in a post on X/Twitter.

• Up to 100,000 people marched in London on Saturday in support of Palestine, calling on an immediate end to the war.

• Thirteen people were reportedly killed in an airstrike above a residential unit in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. The report from Reuters, citing Hamas media, has not been independently verified.

• The Iraqi prime minister said at peace talks in Cairo on Saturday that Palestinian people were “facing genocide” and being targeted in hospitals. “It’s a war crime on full scale,” Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said: “We won’t leave, we will remain on our land.” UN secretary general António Guterres told the summit that the time had come for “action to end this godawful nightmare” and called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. “I appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire now,” he said. The UN’s undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and the emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said the humanitarian situation in Gaza “has reached catastrophic levels”.