Israel-Gaza war live: Gaza health system could collapse within hours, authorities say; 20 killed in attacks on Jabaliya camp | Israel-Gaza war

• Residents said Israeli tanks pushed further into Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, with tank shells landing at the centre of the city’s refugee camp and airstrikes destroying clusters of houses. Palestinian health officials said they had recovered 20 bodies of Palestinian people killed in the overnight Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya, while dozens of people were reported injured. Israeli forces fired on ambulances trying to reach injured people as Israeli air raids hit crowded residential areas within the sprawling refugee camp, Al Jazeera Arabic reported.

• Gaza’s health ministry has said the health system across the devastated enclave could collapse imminently. “A few hours separate us from the collapse of the health system in the Gaza Strip as a result of the failure to bring in the fuel necessary to operate electricity generators in hospitals, ambulances, and transport employees,” the ministry said in a post on social media.

• Rafah residents on Monday received more evacuation orders through phone calls and text messages, sending yet more people to start packing and leave their homes, witnesses have told Agence France-Presse (AFP). More than 350,000 Palestinians have fled the southern Gazan city in the past week after Israeli warnings to evacuate before an imminent military assault. The parents of more than 900 Israeli soldiers deployed in Gaza have signed a letter urging the military to call off an offensive in Rafah, calling it a “deadly trap” for their children.

• Hezbollah fighters fired “a guided missile” at an Israeli Merkava tank across the border on Monday morning, destroying it “after closely monitoring the enemy’s movements”, the group said in a statement. The Israeli army said “two anti-tank missiles” crossed from Lebanon into the area of Yiftah, a kibbutz community less than two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the border. The missiles injured four Israeli soldiers, the army said, one of them moderately and the rest lightly.

Hezbollah fighters fired “a guided missile” at an Israeli Merkava tank across the border on Monday morning, destroying it “after closely monitoring the enemy’s movements”, the group said in a statement.

The Israeli army said “two anti-tank missiles” crossed from Lebanon into the area of Yiftah, a kibbutz community less than two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the border.

The missiles injured four Israeli soldiers, the army said, one of them moderately and the rest lightly.

Earlier on Monday, Hezbollah – the powerful militant Lebanese group – said it launched “a swarm of explosive drones” targeting tents and “sleeping quarters” for an Israeli artillery battalion.

Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been trading fire since the Hamas 7 October attacks on Israel, in which, according to Israeli figures, about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 abducted.

The exchanges have become gradually more serious, displacing tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.

Peter Beaumont

There has been a lot of commentary overnight about the UN’s Office for the coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) publishing new figures apparently “halving” the number of women and children killed in Gaza, not least how this has supposedly proved that figures by the Hamas run ministry of health in Gaza are unreliable.

The Guardian has been in contact with OCHA to ask about the methodology and it turns out these are not UN figures but updated figures from the Hamas-run health ministry.

The figures, which appear in a UN infographic tracking casualties, were updated last week. Previously it had shown some 9,500 women and 14,500 children among fatalities. The new figures list some 5,000 women and 8,000 children as casualties.

OCHA’s Jens Laerke points out:

The breakdowns in question have been published by the ministry of health in Gaza. The figures from the ministry of health can vary based on the verification process that they undertake.

The United Nations’ teams in Gaza are unable to independently verify those figures given the prevailing situation on the ground and the sheer volume of fatalities.

It is for this reason that all figures used by the UN clearly cite the health ministry in Gaza as the source. The UN will verify these figures to the extent possible when conditions permit.

It should be pointed out the revision to the figures doesn’t affect the overall total (which is slightly reduced from 34,844 to 34,735), only an adjustment to the proportion of women and children.

What does it mean? It remains entirely unclear whether this affects the number of civilian casualties. In the past Israel has tried to suggest that the presence of men of a certain age is suggestive that those killed are more likely to be combatants but others have questioned that methodology.

In the current conflict Israel’s own combatant casualty figures have tended to be quite contradictory. However, the framing by a number of media organisations – including Israeli – that this is a “gotcha” moment and that the UN has corrected ministry of health figures is undermined by the fact that these are still ministry of health figures.

Palestinian health officials on Monday said they had recovered 20 bodies of Palestinian people killed in the overnight Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya in northern Gaza, while dozens were reported injured.

In the sprawling Jabaliya refugee camp, the biggest of Gaza’s eight such camps, tanks have pushed towards the heart of the district.

Residents said tank shells were landing at the centre of the camp and airstrikes had destroyed clusters of houses (see earlier post at 07.56).

Thick clouds of black smoke from explosions could be seen rising over northern Gaza from the Israeli border on Sunday, Reuters reported.

Israeli tanks entered the Jabaliya camp, which holds more than 100,000 people, on Sunday after heavy overnight bombardments of the area, according to reports.

The Israeli army said its aim is to eliminate “attempts by Hamas to rehabilitate its military capabilities in Jabaliya.”

Gaza’s health ministry has said the health system across the devastated enclave could collapse in a “few hours”.

“A few hours separate us from the collapse of the health system in the Gaza Strip as a result of the failure to bring in the fuel necessary to operate electricity generators in hospitals, ambulances, and transport employees,” the ministry was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying in a post on social media.

Only around a third of Gaza’s 36 hospitals and primary health care centres are working and all face acute shortages of medicine, basic medical supplies, fuel and manpower.

Residents said Israeli tanks pushed further into Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, with tank shells landing at the centre of the city’s refugee camp and airstrikes destroying clusters of houses.

Tanks were trying to advance towards the heart of the camp, the biggest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, according to Reuters.

Israeli troops reportedly forced hundreds of Palestinians housed in shelters to leave.

Al Jazeera Arabic reported that Israeli forces are firing on ambulances trying to reach injured people as Israeli airstrikes hit crowded residential areas within the refugee camp. Israeli jets are bombing block 2 and block 4 of the camp, according to the outlet.

The Israeli military issued evacuation orders to residents of the Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday, telling them to leave “immediately” as it said its forces were trying to root out Hamas militants there.

“They were bombing everywhere, including near schools that are housing people who lost their houses,” Jabaliya resident Saed, 45, told Reuters yesterday. “War is restarting, this is how it looks in Jabaliya.”

Welcome to our latest live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and the wider crisis in the Middle East. Here’s a snapshot of the latest key developments.

Egypt has announced its intention to formally support South Africa’s case at the international court of justice (ICJ), which alleges genocide by Israel in the war in Gaza.

On Sunday, Egypt said its move to back the case comes “in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip”, according to a foreign ministry statement.

It further pointed to Israel’s systematic “targeting of civilians and destruction of infrastructure” and “pushing Palestinians into displacement and expulsion”.

South Africa brought its case to the ICJ in December, calling on the UN court to order Israel to suspend its military operations in Gaza. Israel has denied the allegations put forward by South Africa.

Hamas expressed its “appreciation” to Egypt in a statement Sunday evening, calling on “all countries around the world to take similar steps in support of the Palestinian cause by joining the lawsuit”.

Here’s a summary of some of the other main events:

• Israel sent tanks into eastern Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday after a night of heavy aerial and ground bombardments, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens of others, Palestinian health officials said.

• There were clashes reported in the south of Gaza, where tens of thousands fled the city of Rafah on Sunday, following bombardment and warnings from the Israel Defense Forces to clear central and eastern neighbourhoods before planned offensives. Israel says it considers Rafah Hamas’ last stronghold. But its advance into the city has prompted global outrage and strained relations with the US, its staunchest ally.

• The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in several areas inside Gaza with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs, including in Rafah, previously the Palestinians’ last refuge where more than a million people were sheltering.

• The UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, warned that a full-scale Israeli assault on Rafah “cannot take place”, saying it could not be reconciled with international law. He said a full-scale offensive could have a “catastrophic impact … including the possibility of further atrocity crimes”. The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said that it would be wrong for Israel to carry out a major offensive in Rafah “without a plan to protect people”.

• Thousands of Israelis joined protests over the weekend calling for a deal to bring home hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas, early elections and the immediate resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, delivered some of the Biden administration’s strongest public criticism yet of Israel’s war on Gaza. In interviews on Sunday, Blinken said the US has worked with Arab countries and others for weeks on developing “credible plans for security, for governance, for rebuilding’’ in Gaza, but “we haven’t seen that come from Israel”. “Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left, or if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” Blinken said. He also said Israeli tactics have meant “a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians” while failing to neutralise Hamas leaders and fighters and could drive a lasting insurgency.

• All 12 of Gaza’s higher education institutions have been destroyed or damaged, leaving nearly 90,000 students stranded, and more than 350 teachers and academics have been killed, according to Palestinian official data.