Our coverage this morning has been following reports of heavy shelling in Rafah, after Joe Biden warned Israel against a major ground offensive there.

As a reminder, here's a brief look at how the conflict has developed in recent months up until this point:

• On 7 October, Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 others to Gaza as hostages
• Israel retaliated with a campaign of air strikes on targets in Gaza, and then launched a ground invasion three weeks later
• Israel's attacks were initially focused on northern Gaza, particularly Gaza City and tunnels beneath it

• A deal agreed in November saw Hamas release 105 hostages in return for a week-long ceasefire and some 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel says 128 hostages are unaccounted for
• Following a temporary truce in late November, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) extended ground operations to southern Gaza

• More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, and tens of thousands injured by Israeli strikes since the start of the war, Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says

• On Monday, the Israeli military ordered tens of thousands of civilians to begin evacuating nearby eastern parts of Rafah city, ahead of what it called a "limited" operation to eliminate Hamas fighters
• Hamas said Israel's seizure of the Rafah crossing was aimed at undermining attempts by regional mediators to secure a new ceasefire deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas's announcement was "very far from Israel's necessary requirements"

Image source, Anadolu

Palestinian media are reporting there were deadly Israeli air and artillery strikes overnight and on Thursday morning in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, in northern Gaza.

The official Wafa news agency, external cited medical sources as saying that dozens of people were killed.

A Wafa correspondent said that a number of homes and other buildings were targeted in the vicinity of the Ali bin Abi Talib mosque, 8 Street, the Hassan al-Banna mosque and the University of Gaza. Many of the buildings were set on fire, they added.

The Israeli military said it had launched an operation in Zeitoun and that it carried out strikes on about 25 “terror targets” in Zeitoun.

Wafa and Hamas-affiliated news outlets also said at least five people were reportedly killed in a strike on a home belonging to the Eid family in the west of Rafah, in the south of Gaza. They included three children, one of them a one-year-old infant, according to the Kuwaiti hospital.

A photo taken by Reuters news agency also showed a group of men praying next to seven body bags. At least two of which appeared to be marked with the surname “Eid”.

Image source, Reuters

More than 34,900 Palestinians have been killed and 78,500 injured since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory says.

During the past 24 hours, 60 people have been killed and 110 injured, it adds in a daily update.

Israeli forces began their major retaliatory campaign in Gaza after about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others taken hostage during Hamas's cross-border attacks on southern Israel on 7 October.

Image source, EPA

As Israel's strikes on Rafah continue, around 80,000 people have fled the city since Monday, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

"People are facing yet another forced displacement in the Gaza Strip," says Unrwa on X., external "The toll on these families is unbearable. Nowhere is safe. We need a ceasefire now."

Previously, more than a million displaced Palestinians - half of them children - had been sheltering there.

On Monday, the military told the tens of thousands of people in the eastern parts of Rafah to begin heading towards an “expanded humanitarian area", where it said they would find field hospitals, tents and basic supplies.

Israel does not yet seem to have crossed Biden's 'red lines'published at 09:04 British Summer Time 9 May

09:04 BST 9 May

Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent, reporting from Jerusalem

In the course of his CNN interview last night, Joe Biden said that Israeli forces “haven’t gone in Rafah yet”.

Since the operation was launched on Monday, Israeli troops have taken control of a small chunk of the Rafah governorate, between two key crossing points, Kerem Shalom (from Israel) and Rafah (from Egypt).

The area is largely unpopulated and was, for two hopeful years at the end of the 1990s, the site of Gaza’s international airport (destroyed by Israel in 2001, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising).

In contrast to Israeli airstrikes on the city of Rafah, which have claimed a number of lives since Monday, the ground operation does not seem to have resulted in significant casualties.

Israeli forces were able to reach the Rafah crossing within 24 hours, suggesting the fighting was far from intense.

By not entering the heavily populated adjacent city, Israel’s operation, which the government here describes as “limited”, does not yet appear to have crossed Washington’s red lines.

President Biden’s explicit threat to withhold US weaponry is designed to keep it that way.

US officials fear that an all-out offensive into Rafah, where as many as 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering, would result in a bloodbath.

Image source, Reuters

Joe Biden’s threat to cut off further weapons supplies to Israel in the event of a full-scale assault on Rafah is "very disappointing", Israel's ambassador to the United Nations says.

"This is a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war," Gilad Erdan tells Israeli public broadcaster Kan radio.

"If Israel is restricted from entering an area as important and central as Rafah where there are thousands of terrorists, hostages and leaders of Hamas, how exactly are we supposed to achieve our goals?"

Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says "Hamas [loves] Biden", in a post on X, after the US president threatened to cut off further weapons supplies to Israel.

Image source, X/ @itamarbengvir

In response, opposition leader Yair Lapid says if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not fire Ben-Gvir today, he is endangering the lives of every Israeli citizen and soldier.

Meanwhile, the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now posts: "Hamas [loves] Ben Gvir & Netanyahu."

Image source, Reuters

There have been reports of Israeli strikes in Rafah overnight - although the Israeli military is yet to comment.

Journalists with the AFP agency reported "heavy shelling" in the city, while the Palestinian news agency Wafa said eight people were killed by strikes in the west of the city.

Wafa also reported that the area around the Rafah crossing was struck.

The IDF has only commented publicly on an operation in Zeitoun, further north in central Gaza.

It says "intelligence-based aerial strikes" hit "25 terrorist targets", with ground troops also in the area.

Image source, Reuters

Let’s now bring you comments from Rafah itself, where we’ve just heard from Scott Anderson, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees' senior deputy director of affairs in Gaza.

He tells us that the situation has been “growing more tense overnight”.

This week, Israel issued evacuation orders in eastern parts of Rafah. Anderson says overnight there was some fighting moving westward -“toward the centre of Rafah itself” - and some 80,000 people are now displaced further.

“Perhaps most worryingly, because Kerem Shalom and Rafah entry points [into Gaza] are closed… we’re beginning to run out of fuel,” Anderson tells the Today programme on Radio 4.

Anderson adds that though the Erez crossing in the north is still open, that does little for the bulk of the population — 1.9 million people — who are in the southern part of the Strip.

“We desperately need crossings to reopen so aid can continue to come in, as we will soon see the UN and our humanitarian partners begin to run out of food as early as tomorrow,” Anderson says.

Biden's warning to Israel is a significant momentpublished at 08:14 British Summer Time 9 May

08:14 BST 9 May

Tom Bateman
Reporting from Washington DC

This is Joe Biden’s first public warning that the US is prepared to cut off further weapons supplies to Israel in the event of a full-scale assault into the city of Rafah.

He said he’d already spoken to the Israeli prime minister.

“I’ve made it clear to Bibi [Netanyahu] and the war cabinet, they’re not going to get our support if in fact they go into these population centres. We’re not walking away from Israel’s security, we’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas.”

It amounts to a significant moment, with the White House now prepared to cross the threshold of holding back at least some arms supplies - the bedrock of the US-Israel relationship.

An official told the BBC that the administration last week paused one arms shipment that included a batch of 2,000 pound bombs - one of the most destructive munitions in Israel’s arsenal.

Republicans have castigated the president, accusing him of - in effect - appeasing Hamas and loosening his so-called ironclad support for Israel.

But Biden has been under growing pressure due to the catastrophically high civilian killings, while concerns continue to grow about another downward spiral in the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Welcome to our live coverage of the war in Gaza.

Heavy shelling has been reported in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, after Joe Biden warned Israel against a major ground offensive there.

"If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah," the US president told CNN.

"We're not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells," he added.

Rafah - on the southern edge of the strip - is densely populated, after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled there from other parts of Gaza.

Stay with us for all the latest lines from Gaza, Israel, and around the world.