What exactly is happening in Gaza at the moment is still unclear.

Hamas has been quoted by the AFP news agency saying it fired rockets at Israel in response to strikes.

From our live feed, we've seen explosions in the territory as well as what appears to be rockets flying over it.

At this stage we haven't had a statement from the Israeli military.

The Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip says "most of the internet" has been cut in the territory, the AFP news agency quotes it as saying.

The internet monitoring service Netblocks has posted on X to say, external there's been a "collapse in connectivity" in Gaza.

Image source, AFP

We're watching live footage of explosions rocking parts of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military told the AFP news agency it is "continuously striking in the Gaza Strip".

We'll bring you more on this when we get it.

It's been widely reported that negotiations around the return of hostages held by Hamas have involved discussion of a possible ceasefire. Qatar is playing a key role as mediator between the two sides.

Publicly, Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire, vowing to destroy Hamas. But earlier, the US - its key ally - offered a slightly more nuanced position by saying it didn't support any ceasefire that could allow Hamas to regroup.

A source familiar with the negotiations has now told the BBC that negotiations are accelerating to agree on a ceasefire and complete an exchange deal between the two sides - with Qatari mediation.

We should stress that no parties to the talks have made any official statements on the matter. Israel says more than 220 hostages are being held in Gaza.

Image source, PA Media

Sticking with the UK, further divisions have emerged in the main opposition party, Labour, about whether or not to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The Labour mayors of London and Manchester, as well as the Scottish Labour leader, have all urged the Israeli military and Hamas to lay down arms - and for all hostages to be released unharmed. They've also stressed the urgent need for aid to enter the Gaza Strip.

But the trio of senior figures are at odds with party leader Keir Starmer, who has not called for a ceasefire - instead backing humanitarian pauses to help aid reach Gaza. That's a position consistent with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

A shadow minister has defended Starmer's position, saying Israel needed to be able to take "action to disable the terrorists who attacked them in the first place".

• Read more here

Nadia Ragozhina
Live reporter

Image source, Blake Ezra Photography

"You don't understand what 200 people feels like in a space, until you see the empty Shabbat table," Claudia Salem tells me.

Claudia is one of the co-organisers of The Empty Shabbat Table installation that was presented at north London's Jewish community centre, JW3, this morning. The installation aims to highlight the plight of 229 hostages that were taken by Hamas to Gaza during the 7 October attacks on Israel.

"When setting up last night, putting together all the tables and chairs, counting and making sure we had a flyer of the hostage on every chair, you really feel that they are not just names," Claudia continues.

She is emotional as she tells me that she tried to organise the flyers with the names of the hostages around the table the way she would organise a Shabbat table at her home.

"Where you have two parents and two children, you try to put the family together. And suddenly I was thinking about these families. Are these children with their parents; are they being held together? Are the parents being able to look after their children? Are they injured?"

Raymond Simonson, the chief executive of JW3, says he is conscious that there are more than 200 people who won't know peace this Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. "Parents who won't be with their children and children who can't be with their parents.

"The empty plates and the empty glasses, there's something so impactful about that. We need to bring them [the hostages] back home".

• You can read more about the people that are being held captive here

Image source, Blake Ezra Photography

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

A short time ago, the Israeli military accused Hamas of using hospitals in Gaza, including Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, as a shield for tunnels and command centres.

Al Shifa is the biggest hospital in Gaza, located in Gaza City in the north of the Strip. Thousands of displaced people have been sheltering in Gazan hospitals, which have also been dealing with the wounded from Israel's bombardment campaign.

Photos taken on Wednesday by a photographer from the AFP news agency show displaced families using the hospital grounds as a shelter.

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

The photographer says families have returned from the city of Khan Younis in the south - outside of Israel's evacuation zone - due to the dangers and difficulties they faced from Israeli bombardment in the southern city.

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

A report from the same agency earlier in the week said some Palestinians returning north have found it impossible to reach their homes due to the intensity of the bombing, and have resorted to staying at Al Shifa.

One of those sheltering at the hospital told the news agency: "We can hardly use the toilets because of the overcrowding. We don't have fresh water to drink and the children are sick because of the cold."

Other recent images from the hospital show people, including children, with serious injuries. We are deciding not to show these images. We want to reflect the gravity of this conflict, and its toll on civilians, while being sensitive about what you, the audience, are exposed to.

Earlier in the week, the head of the hospital, Mommed Abu Selmeya, told AFP more than 90% of their medicine and supplies have been depleted.

Image source, .

Hamas has rejected an assertion from the Israeli military - as reported in our last post - that it's been using hospitals in the Gaza Strip as command centres.

A member of the group's political bureau is quoted by the news agency Reuters as saying that the Israel made the allegation as "a prelude to committing a new massacre against our people".

Image source, Reuters

We've just been listening to a briefing from the spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Daniel Hagari.

He says Hamas "wages war from hospitals" in Gaza by using these facilities as "terror infrastructures".

He makes specific reference to Al Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip. He describes an elaborate network of tunnels beneath the building in Gaza City, from which he says attacks can be planned.

Hagari says "hundreds of terrorists fled into the hospital to hide there" after attacks on Israel on 7 October, and says Israel has intelligence that "there is fuel in hospitals in Gaza, and Hamas is using it for its terror infrastructures".

He adds that Hamas does this because, he says, the IDF distinguishes between "terrorists and civilians" in its attacks. By contrast, he says Hamas is harming both Israeli and Gazan civilians.

Image source, .

An official in Tel Aviv says four people were injured after a rocket hit a four-storey apartment building in the city.

Dany Geva, the deputy commander for Tel Aviv's home front command, told the Reuters news agency two people had "medium" injuries and two had "light injuries" as a result of a rocket he says was launched from the Gaza Strip (about 40 miles or 64km away).

"The reason we don't have any casualties, to the best of my understanding of the scenario, is because people acted according to the instructions. They listened to the sirens... they went into the stairway into safe areas and basically lives were saved."

Take a look at the latest footage from the scene below:

Image source, Reuters

The Israel-Gaza war is in its 20th day - claiming thousands of lives on both sides of the conflict.

• Medics say three people have been injured in a rocket strike on an apartment building in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv
• The World Health Organization (WHO), citing the Hamas-run health authorities, says that 7,028 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October. Nearly 3,000 of them were children, it says
• Ten more aid lorries carrying water, food and medical supplies have been allowed to enter Gaza accompanied by a medical team, but humanitarian agencies and charities continue to say much more is needed
• No fuel has been allowed to cross the border since the war began, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told the BBC fuel for ambulances is running out and only life-saving machines are still working
• UNRWA (the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees) repeated calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and said the work of the UN agency would last "no more than a few days" if the conflict persisted - as at least 57 of its staff in Gaza had been killed
• Hamas's brutal attack in southern Israel on 7 October killed at least 1,400 people, while 229 others are still thought to be hostages. Israel launched retaliatory attacks on Gaza afterwards
• The US has insisted its strikes in eastern Syria were a response to attacks on its own forces in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes were "separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas"

Wyre Davies
Reporting from southern Israel

There have been two very publicly admittable incursions by Israeli troops in the last couple of nights: the first in northern Gaza, the second one - last night - further down towards central Gaza.

It involved ground troops and several tanks, and the IDF (the Israeli Defense Forces) said it was aimed at a specific set of Hamas-related targets close to the central part of Gaza, not far from the border fence.

The IDF said its objective was met, the target was destroyed and there were no Israeli casualties.

In the first night, there were significantly more vehicles involved - including tanks and bulldozers. The Israeli government and the Israeli army say that has been part of a process of literally laying the ground, laying paths, for what might be to come - clearing minefields and Hamas positions close to the border.

Also last night, the Israelis said they killed Shadi Barud - a deputy Hamas commander who Israel says was directly involved in preparing those attacks on 7 October, when thousands of Hamas's armed men broke through the [border] fences and killed 1,400 people in Israel.

So Israel is not just taking out sites and Hamas targets - where it can identify senior Hamas operatives - it is, in Israeli words, neutralising them as well.

Image source, Reuters

Reuters news agency is reporting that three people have been injured in a rocket strike on an apartment building in southern Tel Aviv, Israel.

Rocket sirens sounded throughout the area in the early afternoon, it adds.

We're looking into this and will bring you more details as we get them.

Image source, Reuters

Let's turn back to those US strikes in eastern Syria, which we covered earlier, because we've since heard from US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin who said Washington was responding to attacks on its forces in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups.

The US strikes were "separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas," he said in a statement.

Austin went on to urge all state and non-state forces to avoid action that could escalate into a broader regional conflict.

The strikes, carried out by a pair of F-16 US air force fighters, took place on Friday at around 04:30 local time (01:30 GMT) near Abu Kamal, a town on the border with Iraq.

It is not yet known if there were any casualties from the attacks.

• You can read more about them here

An issue that has been brought up time and again by humanitarian agencies in Gaza is that fuel is running out in the region. Despite some aid getting in over the last few days, fuel has not been allowed to cross the border due to Israel's fears that it'll be used for military purposes by Hamas.

As a result, Marwan Jilani, director general of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, says only essential life-saving machines - such as incubators for premature babies - are still working.

Jilani, who is based in Ramallah in the West Bank, tells our TV colleagues on the BBC News channel “everything else has been shut off” - and warns that fuel for ambulances is running out and soon there won’t be any left to transport aid getting in via the Rafah crossing.

Explaining how his agency distributes the supplies coming through Egypt, Jilani says they take everything to UN storage, which is “supposedly” protected, and from there it's distributed to shelters.

But, he adds, they aren't able to bring it north - where it’s most needed in places like the Al-Ahli and Al-Shifa hospitals - because they’ve been told they could get caught up in the conflict if they do. The Israeli military has repeatedly told all people living in northern Gaza to flee south for their own safety.

Imogen Foulkes
Geneva correspondent

The World Health Organization (WHO) says more than 7,028 people have now been killed in Gaza and, as reported in my previous post, that 41% of them are children.

There have been questions about how the WHO gets these figures since its own ability to work inside Gaza is highly restricted - plus there are suggestions that Hamas, who run the health ministry in Gaza, may be exaggerating the numbers.

Today the WHO’s representative in its office for the West Bank and Gaza, Richard Peeperkorn, explained that the WHO, in any conflict, emergency, or disease outbreak, relies on the local health authorities to provide statistics.

He said the WHO had received a list of 6,747 names and registration numbers of those who had died, and an additional figure - 281 - of bodies which had yet to be identified. He also said there were indications that many more people had died, but could not be counted because they remained under the rubble.

In a sign of impatience with the frequent questioning about the reliability of figures that come from Hamas, Dr Peeperkorn said he found the discussion somewhat "cynical" and asked if views would change if the deaths were 1,000 less or 1,000 more.

He also explained that the WHO has, over the years, worked regularly with the authorities in Gaza to record births, deaths, and immunisations - and these figures had proved reliable.

Imogen Foulkes
Geneva correspondent

UN aid agencies today offered an ever more desperate picture of life inside Gaza, with the World Health Organization reporting 7,028 deaths, more than 40% of whom are children. The WHO cited data from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza and said it had received significant detail about those killed.

There have been 18,482 injuries, the WHO said, again a significant proportion of them are children. The agency said 23 of 35 hospitals were still partially functioning - others, as well as community clinics, have had to close.

The WHO says 1,000 people in Gaza need dialysis, 30 premature babies are in incubators and 2,000 cancer patients need urgent treatment. All of this becomes impossible without fuel to run hospital generators.

A WHO official spoke of desperate conditions inside the hospitals which are still functioning, with seriously injured patients being operated on in corridors with no anaesthetic, and "the smell of death" and "bodies of children" everywhere.

The next convoy of lorries carrying water, food and medical supplies has been allowed to enter Gaza.

Ten aid lorries were accompanied by a medical team, according to reports first circulated by Reuters, which cited a Palestinian border official.

"This Friday morning, a medical delegation consisting of 10 foreign doctors entered, in addition to 10 trucks entering the Gaza Strip through the Rafah land crossing, carrying water, food and medicine, bringing the total number of trucks since the beginning of the war to only 84 trucks," the official is reported to have told the news agency.

Since aid was first allowed into the region last week, humanitarian agencies and charities have consistently said much more was needed to deal with the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Image source, Reuters

We've been having a look at the latest images to come out of Israel and Gaza, as the enduring conflict in the region nears the three-week mark.

Here's a small selection:

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, EPA

Image source, Gett