Image source, Getty Images

More than 260,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza as the Israeli military continues to bombard the Palestinian enclave, the UN said.

This reresents the "highest number of people displaced since the 50-day escalation of hostilities in 2014", it said in an update on Tuesday night, external. The number is expected to rise further.

The Gaza Strip is home to about 2.3 million people and has one of the highest population densities in the world.

Bombing in recent days have destroyed more than 1,000 housing units, the UN said.

Meeting basic needs has become "increasingly challenging", it added.

Josep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, has said in a statement, external that Israel's response in Gaza may have already breached international law.

"Israel has the right to defend [itself], but it has to be done according to the right of international law, humanitarian law," he said. "Some decisions are against this international law."

He also expressed the need to continue funding the Palestinian Authority in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel.

"We consider Hamas a terrorist organisation and what they have done shows – certainly – that they behave like this," Borrell said. "But the Palestinian Authority is another thing. The Palestinian Authority is our partner."

Borrell added that: "We have to think also about what happens after," and that it is time to think about a solution that will bring long-term peace to the region.

Civilians in Gaza are being subject to "collective punishment", humanitarian worker Hozayfa Yazji told the BBC's Newshour programme.

"I do not accept targeting civilians from both sides by any means. To this retaliation in Gaza... In my mind, it's a collective punishment.

"I'm looking out of my window and people just running in the streets of Gaza and they don't know where to go. There is no hope," says Hozayfa, who is the Gaza area manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council.

While Gaza residents have experienced many rounds of attacks in the last 14 years, Hozayfa says they have never been on this scale.

"The situation is very bad, it's beyond even words. In Gaza there is no safe place at the moment," he said.

You can listen to Hozayfa's account in full on Newshour.

Image source, EPA

Peter Gillibrand
BBC Newsnight

Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior adviser has told BBC Newsnight that Israel must "respond with force" to Hamas.

Speaking from Jerusalem, Mark Regev, who also used to be the Israeli Ambassador to the UK, said the country is shocked and they want a more stable reality in the region.

“Hamas started this war. We’ll finish it and we’ll finish it on our terms,” he told BBC Newsnight’s Diplomatic Editor, Mark Urban.

“I’d ask other people, citizens of Britain, of any other country, what would you do if 1,000 of your people were killed on one day?" he said.

"The Prime Minister has compared this to the September 11 attacks in the US. But if you look at the size of the Israeli population and compare it to the Americans… it was worse than September 11th."

“If Israel doesn’t respond with force, I’m afraid the lesson will be learnt across this region - you can hit Israel with impunity - that’s not acceptable.”

Ayeshea Perera
BBC News

Good morning to our readers in Asia and Oceania. I am joined by my colleague Kelly Ng as the Singapore team takes over live coverage from our colleagues in Washington DC.

Here's the latest from Israel and Gaza:

• Almost four days after Hamas' unprecedented assault on Israel, fighting on both sides has intensified, with Israel taking out two high-ranking Hamas officials
• The death toll in Israel has reached 1,200, and more than 900 people have been killed in Gaza
• Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said he has "released all restraints" on his troops, adding Gaza “will never return to what it was”.
• US president Joe Biden has reiterated support for Israel, calling the Hamas attack an 'act of sheer evil'. US military equipment has arrived in Israel
• A clearer picture of the scale of atrocity wrought on civilians in Israel is unfolding. An Israeli general spoke of babies killed in their bedrooms, while some soldiers said the dead had been beheaded

• The last power source in Gaza may soon run out of fuel, while a British-Palestinian war doctor has warned that the enclave's health system could “collapse within a week”

Stay with us as we bring you more details of what is unfolding.

Image source, EPA

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

The death toll in Israel has climbed to 1,200, its public broadcaster Kan said. The victims were primarily civilians, it added.

A new episode of BBC's Podcast The Conflict Israel-Gaza has just been released.

You can click here to listen to it in full.

In this episode, Lyse Doucet and Jeremy Bowen are back to take a closer look at what’s happening on the ground.

Jeremy has been in Kfar Aza, a small border village where Israeli soldiers told him Hamas had stormed in, burning homes and killing families, including babies in their bedrooms.

We also hear BBC reporting inside Gaza, where our correspondent says the bombings were the worst he’d seen in 20 years.

Image source, Getty Images

Canada's foreign minister Melanie Joly said on Tuesday that the country is planning to airlift its citizens and residents out of Tel Aviv with the help of the Canadian Armed Forces.

"These flights will be available to Canadian citizens, their spouses and their children, as well as Canadian Permanent Residents, their spouses and their children," Joly said in a statement.

"We are also working on additional options for those who cannot reach the airport in Tel Aviv."

Global Affairs Canada has said that more 3,200 Canadians in Israel and nearly 500 in Gaza and the West Bank have registered with the department.

Two Canadians have reportedly been killed in the attacks, and two more are missing.

The US has not yet stated whether it will also conduct its own mission to evacuate Americans out, but Republican House Representative Mike Lawler, who sits on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN that he would support such an operation.

Australian media has also reported, external on plans being drawn up in the country to airlift its citizens out.

Image source, Getty Images

A series of explosions overnight forced Najla Shawa - Oxfam Country Relations Senior Broker for MENA - and her children to flee their home in Gaza city.

She tells BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that, initially, she was under the impression that we were in a safe area.

“People fled to us,” she adds.

Shawa says she fell asleep briefly, but woke soon after to screams that everyone was leaving the area and that the building across from her home would be bombed.

Along with 18 others, all from different families, they drove to a restaurant, where they gathered and stayed together until the morning.

On returning to her home, Shawa says the building opposite had been flattened to the ground and the windows of her own house had been shattered.

She said waking her children in such a panic was “horrible”.

“I don’t think these moments I will ever forget in my life. It was amazing to see the morning come up again.”

When Hamas militants attacked early Saturday morning, US professor Ilan Troen received a call from his daughter Deborah Matias.

Fighters were circling her home where she was hiding with her husband Shlomi Matias and their 16-year-old son Rotem.

Not long after, Rotem messaged that his parents had been shot and killed and he lay injured and hidden.

Ilan and family messaged him in the hours that followed until he was rescued by Israeli military.

Ilan tells the BBC his daughter and her husband "created a life of light and vibrancy".

A 66-year-old woman is the first Australian citizen confirmed to have been killed in the Hamas attacks.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Galit Carbone had been "murdered in the attacks on Israel by terrorist group Hamas".

"On behalf of the Government, I wish to convey my deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Ms Carbone. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to her family in Israel and in Australia," Wong said.

"Australia unequivocally condemns the attacks on Israel by Hamas. There is no excuse for the deliberate killing of innocent civilians."

The first plane carrying US military equipment has recently arrived at the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel, according to local authorities.

"The cooperation between our militaries is a key part of ensuring regional security and stability in times of war," the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement shared on social media.

The USS Gerald R Ford strike group has also arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
US reporter

Image source, Getty Images

As fighting continues to rage in Israel and Gaza, Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans in the US say they are increasingly worried for their friends and family members caught in the conflict.

Taher Herzallah, the director of outreach for American Muslims for Palestine, told the BBC that he is frightened for the fate of several cousins and two aunts who live in the Rimal district of Gaza City.

"So far they are still alive, but we are dreadfully awaiting terrible news as the situation is worsening by the minute," he said.

He added that the fears of the "devastated" Palestinian community in the US have been worsened by the difficulties communicating with those still in Gaza.

Rania Mustafa, the executive director of the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton, New Jersey, said that while concerns for her family and friends in Gaza and the West Bank are "not a new feeling", the scale of the current conflict has caused "chronic stress".

"It's hard to go on as if things were normal, without breaking into tears," she said.

Peter Gillibrand
BBC Newsnight

Image source, Supplied

A man from Israel says his sister, her husband and two of their children are missing.

Yonart Or, her husband Dror, Noam, 15, and Alma, 13, were at home in Kibbutz Be’eri when the alarm was raised on Saturday morning.

Ahal Besorai told BBC Newsnight he hopes they are captured rather than dead, and is speaking out to try and find them.

“We have witnesses that saw them pulled out of the house,” he said.

“The fact they were pulled out alive and being dragged out. The fact they were being pulled out alive rather than shot alive like many, many others in the Kibbutz, gives us hope… that they are captured rather than dead."

Besorai said his sister called about 9am on Saturday and whispered that there was voices and shooting outside.

“Then she hung up the phone and I had no response from her.”

Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US from 2009 to 2013, told the BBC that President Joe Biden’s address earlier today will go down in history as one of the most powerful statements of American support to Israel.

"I have never heard a speech like President Biden just gave at the White House," he said.

Oren said the speech communicated “unequivocal support for the State of Israel, categorical condemnation of Hamas terror, and basically giving Israel a greenlight to proceed with its operation”.

This operation may likely involve a ground operation into Gaza, Oren said.

Biden’s remarks, he added, also seemed to get ahead of any condemnation that Israel might receive because of its response.

By all accounts, America’s response so far has been “very, very significant,” Oren said.

“The president has basically put American power at the disposal of Israel's defence,” he said, both in words and actions.

Barbara Plett Usher
US State Department correspondent

The Secretary of State Anthony Blinken plans to visit Israel on Thursday.

He will be bringing a message of “solidarity and support,” said the State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller, making clear this was not a trip to try and mediate an end to the conflict.

Rather, Blinken will be talking about what more the US can do to best support Israel in its “fight against the terrorists who launched these horrific attacks”.

Otherwise, Blinken’s diplomacy so far has focused on asking regional players tell Israel’s enemies that they’d better not join the fight.

He’s also been seeking help to secure release of the hostages captured by Hamas, some of whom the White House believes to be American.

The Secretary has not called for a ceasefire, and the State Department deleted a tweet that suggested he had because it was “unfortunately worded,” said Miller.

Brandon Livesay
Live reporter

Hello and welcome to our live coverage, which continues from our earlier reporting on this page.

It’s just after 02:10 in Israel and Gaza, where citizens are likely spending another restless night.

The Israel Defense Forces shared an update on social media about half an hour ago, saying more than 1,000 Israelis have been killed and there are 50 confirmed hostages or missing people.

The latest update from the Palestinians was that more than 900 people have been killed in Gaza.

We recently heard from BBC reporter Alice Cuddy, who is in Ashkelon - a city in Israel.

She says residents have been told to head to safe rooms after reports of more militants crossing from Gaza.

In the US, President Joe Biden described Hamas' assault on Israel as an "act of sheer evil". We also learned that the US Secretary of State will fly to Israel on Thursday.

Stay with us as we continue to bring you the latest news and analysis.