Israel's military says it has killed "a number of terrorists exiting the shaft of a tunnel in the Gaza Strip", near the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Israeli soldiers confronted the Hamas gunmen as they were coming out of the tunnel, the Israel Defense Forces said in a Telegram post.

The Erez crossing links Israel with the north of Gaza. The IDF post said that it was previously where "thousands of Gazans entered Israel for work or medical treatment".

"Hamas built tunnels near the Erez Crossing so that it would be able to attack the humanitarian crossing and harm everyone in the area, Israelis and Palestinians alike," the Israeli military claimed.

In the post, Israel said its operations within Gaza were continuing. Pictures it released earlier showed tanks near the water on Gaza's west coast.

Our analysis places the pictures - including the one below - just inside the boundary between Israel and Gaza. This is in the north-west corner of Gaza, an area where clashes between the IDF and Hamas have been reported by both sides.

Image source, IDF

Image source, Reuters

Abu Qusai Al-Deeb has been sheltering at Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City for three weeks, he tells the Reuters news agency.

He says he's received around six warnings to evacuate the hospital.

"We told them, identify safe places and we will leave the hospital. There’s no safe place, not in the south, nor in the whole of Gaza”, he says.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

The director of Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, Bassam Mourad, has been speaking to the Reuters news agency - and he says he has received several warnings to evacuate the building.

“The first was through a phone call from the Palestinian Red Crescent which the Israeli army called to demand the evacuation of all patients and workers, as well as those residing in the hospital, to the south of Gaza.

"They mentioned that this area is going to be a military zone, that there will be clashes and the area will be dangerous and that we have to evacuate quickly,” he said.

He went on to say the number of displaced people residing in the hospital is somewhere between 12,000 to 14,000.

"The figure changes every day in addition to the hospital departments and the intensive care unit,” he says.

Israeli forces are focusing their bombardment on the northern half of the Gaza Strip, and Al-Quds hospital is in Gaza City, right in the centre of the evacuation area - take a look at the map below.

Image source, .

Alice Cuddy
Reporting from Jerusalem

We’ve made contact with more people inside Gaza, who have described continuous bombing and deteriorating conditions.

One woman, who is in the southern city of Rafah after fleeing her home, said she was living in fear.

“You can hear the sound of the rocket, but you don’t know exactly where it’s going or what the target is… It is a life of fear. It’s not normal,” she said.

“They say to people ‘go to the south’, but it’s being bombed every day," she says, referring to Israel's instruction that people in the north of Gaza evacuate to the south.

The woman, who we are not naming, said she feared “every second” that she would be bombed.

She said the communications blackout on Friday and Saturday had made things even more difficult.

“When the internet was disconnected, they cut off the vein of life from Gaza,” she said. “You didn’t know where they were bombing, you didn’t know what your family was doing, where your brothers were. The ambulances didn’t know where the places were that had been bombed.”

Elsewhere, in Gaza City, we also heard again from a journalist we managed to establish limited contact with yesterday while communications were down.

He described “continuous bombing”, adding: “The situation is very hard right now.”

Ashitha Nagesh
Community affairs correspondent

Image source, Family handout

Lalah Ali Faten messaged me this morning to say that she'd finally heard from her daughter, Zaynab, who is trapped in Gaza and couldn't communicate with her while communication lines were out.

"She sounded okay and was asking me to not worry if she doesn't message as it's just the lack of internet," the mother from Manchester told me. "She's very brave."

She added that Zaynab has asked the British government to not delay getting British nationals out.

"They have no water left and the food supplies are minimal. The aid trucks that were allowed in were not enough for the population.

"The longer they are left there, the higher the likelihood they will not survive, therefore Zaynab is asking for her government to please get them out as soon as possible," Lalah told me.

"They (the British government) need to take action on behalf of their citizens immediately and facilitate the opening of the Rafah border so they can leave. This closure of the border is the only thing preventing them from leaving.

"If the British government fails to take action, they will be held accountable for the deaths of their citizens in Gaza."

Yesterday, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told me they have been keeping in close contact with British nationals in Gaza, and will continue to update them on the latest status of the Rafah crossing.

People in UK are starting to hear from loved ones in Gaza after connectivity was restored on Sunday.

Abas Mobarak, a human rights lawyer in Birmingham, has four brothers and two sisters in Gaza. He tells the BBC he managed to speak to one of his brothers who lives in Deir-al-Balah, this morning.

His brother said the last three days had been "crazy, madness" with heavy bombing while no being able to communicate inside the enclave.

Abas says his brother started to get phone signal again in the early hours of Sunday morning.

"It's indescribable, they're just trying to survive" Abas says.

"They have no idea of what's happening in other places, they can't move, the roads are blocked or destroyed, you risk your life if you move, it's not easy."

Israel continues burying the people killed on 7 October when Hamas infiltrated its territory and went on a deadly rampage.

1,400 people were killed and 230 more taken hostage.

A funeral was also held on Sunday for Tamar Chaya Torpiashvili, a 9-year-old girl who died a week after experiencing a cardiac attack during a siren warning of incoming rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel.

“She didn’t die, she didn’t pass away, she was murdered. That siren murdered her. Not a knife nor a gun. A siren. That all it takes to take away the soul of a 9-year-old girl,“ Tamar's father Avraham said, just after his daughter was buried.

Image source, REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Image source, Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Image source, Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Image source, REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Wyre Davies
Reporting from Jerusalem

Image source, Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

A division of the Israeli military responsible to overseeing civilian affairs in Gaza (COGAT) said this morning that it would allow increased supplies through the Rafah crossing in the coming days.

A spokesman said the (non-fuel) aid would be distributed via the UN in what it called “humanitarian safe zones” in southern Gaza around Khan Younis.

The UN and other aid agencies have described the situation in Gaza as a humanitarian crisis. With an average of fewer than 20 trucks of basic aid getting in across the border each day, the need is huge and desperation means that civil order is on the verge of breaking down.

But the COGAT spokesman suggested that the crisis in Gaza was not as dire as the agencies were making out. In a briefing, he said there were “no food shortages" in Gaza, that water supplies were “enough to meet humanitarian needs”, and that Israel had opened two water supply lines in the south.

The spokesman also intimated there were plenty of medical supplies but they were being strictly controlled by Hamas.

My colleague in Gaza said earlier today that the food situation around Khan Younis was dire, and reported , externalthat people were struggling to find food.

The UN has made repeated calls for fuel to be included in the aid shipments because it was needed to run medical facilities and other infrastructure like water desalination plants. But this has repeatedly been refuted by Israel which says existing fuel supplies were strictly controlled byHamas and that alternative energy supplies, including solar, were available to hospitals.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent have said they are "deeply alarmed" after staff at the Al-Quds hospital in Gaza were told to immediately evacuate the site.

The hospital is thought to be providing shelter to more than 14,000 civilians as well as hundreds of patients.

A statement from International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the umbrella organisation for the two groups, read: "Hospitals are places of help and refuge; they must be protected at all cost. PRCS’s Al-Quds hospital in Gaza city is caring for hundreds of injured people and bed-ridden, long-term patients.

"Evacuating patients, including those in intensive care, on life-support and babies in incubators, is close to, if not impossible in the current situation.

It added that healthcare workers "should never be put in front of the impossible dilemma of leaving patients behind or risking their lives staying in the hospital".

Alice Cuddy
Reporting from Jerusalem

In a video statement shared on social media, , externalthe Palestinian Red Crescent says it doesn’t have the means to evacuate Al-Quds hospital in northern Gaza, as apparently directed by the Israeli authorities.

“We have over 400 patients who are inside the hospital, many of them are in the intensive care unit. Evacuating them means killing them. That’s why we refuse the evacuation order,” a representative of the group says.

“We call on the international community to intervene immediately to stop a humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding.”

She says there are also more than 14,000 civilians seeking shelter at the hospital.

The Israeli military has not commented on the apparent evacuation order.

Doctors and the Palestinian Red Crescent working at the Al-Quds hospital in northern Gaza said earlier today that they had been told by the Israeli military to evacuate immediately.

A message, translated by BBC staff, is addressed to "Al-Quds Hospital staff, ambulance drivers and displaced people in schools".

It tells them to leave the area immediately, and relocate to the "humanitarian zone in the south".

The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says the reports are deeply concerning.

"We reiterate - it's impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives," he said in a post on X, external.

"Under International Humanitarian Law, healthcare must always be protected."

Israel's military has not commented.

Image source, Reuters

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the hostages captured by Hamas.

Speaking during a visit to Nepal, he repeated his appeal for "an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the delivery of a sustained humanitarian relief at a scale that meets the needs of the people of Gaza".

"I regret that instead of a critically needed humanitarian pause supported by the international community, Israel has intensified its military operations."

He also again expressed his "utter condemnation of the appalling attacks" perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October, and conveyed his condolences to the families of the ten Nepali students who were killed in the attack.

He said he hoped for the safe return of one who was still missing.

Israel's military says it has been fighting with Hamas inside the Gaza Strip, in the north of the territory.

In a Telegram post published in the last hour, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was continuing "ground operations in the northern Gaza Strip" and that it had clashed with Hamas gunmen inside Gaza who had shot at Israeli troops.

"Terrorists who shot at [Israeli] soldiers were killed, as well as terrorists who were identified on the coastline in the Gaza Strip near the area of Zikim," it said. Zikim is a kibbutz in southern Israel, a few kilometres from Gaza.

Earlier, the Telegram account of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, reported clashes with Israeli forces near Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, claiming it had ambushed Israeli troops there.

The IDF also published a video that it said showed its tanks and other vehicles inside the Gaza Strip. We are trying to verify the location shown in the video. It also published photos of its tanks - we're trying to verify the location of those, too.

Another IDF video shows aerial strikes on Beit Hanoun, in the north-eastern corner of the Strip. The video shows clips from different locations, and we cannot say for sure they are all recent strikes from the last 48 hours. Below is a still from this video - the black marks are explosions.

Image source, IDF

Nadia Ragozhina
Live reporter

Image source, Family handout

"Anger is not my emotion," Noam tells me when I ask how he feels about Israeli government's handing of the kidnappings (see post below to read about his girlfriend's situation).

"I feel that the government will decide if she is returned or not, if she stays alive.

"I hope they do everything to bring her home. It should be the priority for the government, for all the politicians."

Noam says he hasn't been sleeping at night and his voice hardens when he talks about the fate of those who have been held hostage for more than three weeks now.

"I hope they (the IDF) are making sure that they are not risking the lives of the hostages and the innocent people - Israeli and Palestinian," he says.

Noam has been talking to me from the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art where the families of hostages had gathering to highlight the plight of their loved ones.

"We support a deal to release all Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages," Noam says.

"Israel should pay the highest price to bring them back. They are our people. Israel left them behind on 7 October and it can't do it again.

"Now we need to pay the price and bring them back, and later we can make sure nothing like this happens again. But first we need to bring them back."

Nadia Ragozhina
Live reporter

Image source, Family handout

"I am trying to be strong," Noam Alon tells me on the phone from Tel Aviv.

Talking about his girlfriend, who is one of 230 people taken hostage by Hamas, he says: "Inbar is an amazing person. She is kind and beautiful, full of passion and love".

Inbar Heiman, a graphic design student, was abducted from the Supernova music festival in southern Israel on 7 October. Noam tells me that she went there with her friends, one of whom was murdered during the attacks.

More than 260 bodies were later recovered from the site of the festival.

"That Saturday, that awful day, we didn't know what had happened to her. We were hoping she was still hiding," Noam continues and I can hear that he is struggling to talk, overcome by emotion.

He describes how he and his parents looked through dozens of Hamas videos being published on social media before eventually discovering footage showing his girlfriend on the back of a motorcycle, injured, surrounded by four Hamas gunmen.

"The footage is too graphic to watch. My parents prefer I don't watch it.

"We want to believe she got medical treatment in Gaza.

"I just hope she's in a safe place and is alive. I hope she is staying strong."

Hugo Bachega
Reporting from Lebanon

The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (Unifil) says a peacekeeper was wounded after two mortar shells hit a base near the village of Houla in southern Lebanon on Saturday night.

They sustained minor injuries and are in a stable condition, the organisation says.

Earlier on Saturday, a shell hit the Unifil headquarters in the town of Naqoura, it adds, saying nobody was injured on this occasion.

The Lebanese group Hezbollah and the Israeli military have frequently exchanged fire along the Lebanon-Israel border in recent weeks.

"Attacking UN peacekeepers is a crime, a violation of international law and must be condemned," Unifil says.

Alice Cuddy
Reporting from Jerusalem

We’ve just heard from a woman who has fled from her home in central Gaza for the city of Khan Younis in the south.

“The situation is very, very bad everywhere,” she says by voice note. “There is no safe place.”

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous because of fears for her safety, said the bombing in Gaza was “continuous, non-stop”.

“The houses can fall down on the heads of residents at any moment, any time. We don’t sleep or rest at all,” she says.

Her final words in the message are: “God help us.”

Some of the displaced Gazans who took wheat, flour and other basics from UN warehouses have been speaking to reporters.

"We have no flour, no aid, no water, not even toilets," Abdulrahman al-Kilani told AFP news agency.

"Our houses were destroyed. No one cares about us. We appeal to the people of the world. All international powers are against us. We needed aid, and we wouldn't have done this if we weren't in need."

Image source, AFP

Also outside the Deir al-Balah distribution depot in the centre of the Gaza Strip, Um Samer al-Attar described the conditions people in the area had been facing.

"We need fresh water, we need food, we are starving," she said.

"This is totally unfair. Our children can't sleep [from hunger and thirst]. We need to provide water and food for them."

Image source, AFP

Israel's ground offensive grows:

• More Israeli troops entered Gaza overnight, according spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari without giving numbers
• The Israel Defence Forces say warplanes have attacked 450 Hamas targets over the last day

Chaos at aid centres in Gaza:

• Thousands of people have broken into aid warehouses to grab basic survival items such as flour and hygiene kits, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNWRA) says
• UNWRA says there are signs civil order is starting to break down in the territory
• After more than a day of almost total communications blackout, phone and internet connections are returning

• The Palestinian Red Crescent says it was told by Israeli authorities that it should evacuate the Al-Quds hospital in northern Gaza because it was in the combat zone

Israeli hostages

• IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari says bringing hostages back to Israel is a top priority as families express concern about the ground operation in Gaza

• The families of the hostages being held in Gaza are due to meet Israel's president to discuss their safety later