Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent in Amman

Image source, Reuters

I'm now in Amman, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with leaders and foreign ministers from several Arab nations - but yesterday he was in Tel Aviv.

There, his half-hour press conference in a cavernous subterranean hotel conference room in Tel Aviv mostly covered familiar ground.

He spoke about continued US support for Israel, as well as the need for Israel to abide by the rules of war and limit civilian casualties.

He did reveal more details about US efforts to arrange “humanitarian pauses” in the Israeli attacks, which he said would facilitate the supply of aid to Palestinians in need and create a better environment for the release of hostages.

He called it an “important area of discussion” with Israeli leaders.

Blinken, however, made a conscious decision to open his remarks by recounting details of one of the violent attacks by Hamas militants on an Israeli family on 7 October. He somberly described watching a video earlier today - one that Israelis have shown to members of the press, as well - in which a father was killed with a grenade and gunfire in front of his children, after which a Hamas militant casually rummaged through the family’s kitchen.

“It is striking and in some ways shocking that the brutality of the slaughter has receded so quickly in the memories of so many,” he said. “But not in Israel. And not in America.”

If Blinken came to Tel Aviv to tell Israelis to use caution in their war against Hamas, the Israelis also wanted to remind Blinken - with words and videos - of the violence they endured.

Image source, EPA

As we've been reporting, yesterday the Israeli military said it had struck an ambulance that it says was being used by Hamas operatives, without giving a location.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has shared a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying a convoy was struck twice on its way to the Al-Shifa hospital - once 1km (0.62 miles) away and a second time outside the hospital gate, where it said it had arrived to unload patients.

The PCRS said 15 civilians were killed when one ambulance was "struck by a missile" close to the hospital gate.

It said the convoy had been attempting to transport casualties towards the Rafah border crossing, but had turned back about 4km from the hospital because the road was blocked with rubble.

Earlier, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said at least 13 people had been killed in a blast outside Al-Shifa.

BBC Verify has verified graphic videos showing badly injured and possibly dead people lying outside the hospital.

In its comment, the Israeli military said a number of Hamas fighters had been killed and accused Hamas of transferring militants and weapons in ambulances, though it has not yet supplied evidence of this.

"We emphasise that this area is a battle zone. Civilians in the area are repeatedly called upon to evacuate southwards for their own safety," it added.

Image source, Reuters

There are 112 entries under ‘UK’ on the list of people who will be allowed to evacuate Gaza through the Rafah crossing today, including 88 British citizens.

The first groups of British people trapped in Gaza crossed into Egypt yesterday.

On Wednesday, the Rafah border crossing was opened for people to leave Gaza the first time in three weeks, with limited of numbers of foreign nationals and the badly wounded allowed to leave since then.

Image source, Reuters

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Jordan today for talks with several Arab leaders and ministers today.

His schedule includes meetings with Jordanian King Abdullah II and the prime minister of Qatar. He has already met with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

Blinken will also hold discussions with foreign ministers from Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.

THe US secretary of state will also hold a meeting with UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) commissioner general Phillipe Lazzarini and a video call with his Gaza-based staff.

Image source, Reuters

We've had an update from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this morning, saying it has killed "dozens" of Hamas members and destroyed more of the group's infrastructure over the past day.

It says Hamas launched "numerous attempted attacks" on IDF troops from tunnel shafts and military compounds in the north of the Gaza Strip.

IDF soldiers engaged with 15 Hamas operatives "killing several of them" and destroyed three of the group's observation posts with tank fire, it said.

Also overnight, the IDF launched a raid in the south of Gaza, during which its armoured and engineering corps "encountered a terrorist cell exiting a tunnel shaft". In response, the troops fired shells toward the group and killed them, the military said.

Yesterday it said it had encircled Gaza City, and killed ten senior "Hamas terrorists who held the rank equivalent to battalion or brigade commander" and who had planned the deadly 7 October attacks in which 1,400 Israelis were killed.

It also confirmed it had struck an ambulance that it says was being used by Hamas operatives.

The IDF did not mention airstrikes in this update, but it has continued to bomb the Gaza Strip in the four weeks since Hamas's attacks, saying at has dropped 10,000 munitions on Gaza City alone.

Sam Harrison
BBC News

A British-based doctor who was trapped in Gaza when the latest conflict broke out has arrived back in the UK.

Dr Abdelkader Hammad - a surgeon at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital - had been working at the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City. It’s one of many trips he’s made to Gaza over the last 10 years. But shortly after arriving, Hamas gunmen conducted their deadly attacks on 7 October.

He had hoped to leave Gaza earlier this week, but complications at the Rafah border crossing meant he had to wait.

On Thursday he was finally able to enter Egypt before flying back to Heathrow from Cairo.

After arriving, he said he felt overwhelming relief.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Jordan today for discussions with representatives of Arab nations who are expected to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

He'll meet King Abdullah before talks with foreign ministers from Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, as well as a representative of the Palestinian Authority.

There's been mounting concern about the large numbers of civilian casualties.

As we've been reporting, on Friday Blinken's call for humanitarian pauses were rebuffed by the Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who said there would be no break in its attacks on Gaza until all hostages there were freed.

Image source, Getty Images

A “broader regional conflict” in the Middle East “has been deterred", according to a Pentagon spokesperson.

Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Brig Gen Patrick S Ryder said: “Right now, we see this conflict as contained between Israel and Hamas".

The intervention comes after the leader of the Lebanese Shia Islamist group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, made his first speech since the 7 October attacks, stopping short of committing his fighters to an all-out war.

Asked if Hezbollah have been successfully deterred from entering into the conflict, Ryder said: “It has been a key focus for our government and for our Department of Defence to prevent this from becoming a broader regional conflict.

"This is why we have deployed additional capabilities to include two US aircraft carrier strike groups into the region to provide us with a variety of options and capabilities, should we need to respond to a whole range of contingencies.”

“And so yes, we do see that, broadly speaking, a broader regional conflict has been deterred. And so we'll continue to do that. We do not seek any conflict with Iran. We do not seek to have conflict across the region. Our focus here is on containing this and getting back to a stable and secure region as quickly as possible.”

Israel has yet to agree with US calls for humanitarian pausespublished at 05:42 Greenwich Mean Time 4 November 2023

05:42 GMT 4 November 2023

Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent, in Jerusalem

With Israeli forces closing in on Gaza City, amid fierce fighting, America’s top diplomat was back in Israel on Friday, trying to contain the crisis and, if possible, alleviate the suffering.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke of trying to engineer what are being called humanitarian pauses - brief breaks in the fighting to enable aid to get to where it’s needed in the Gaza Strip and, perhaps, to allow for the further release of hostages, including American citizens.

Israel has yet to agree.

Blinken said mechanisms had been identified to get fuel to hospitals and other key facilities in the southern Gaza Strip. But Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was adamant - no fuel would be allowed in at all.

Following allegations of an Israeli airstrike on wounded civilians being evacuated from Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, Israel said it had attacked an ambulance, but that it was being used to transport a Hamas cell close to Israeli positions.

An army spokesman, Jonathan Conricus, said Hamas had a long record of abusing ambulances to move fighters and weapons.

Image source, Reuters

Here's a bit more from UN official Thomas White, who has been warning about the organisation's ability to offer protection to displaced people.

He's said the 600,000 displaced people seeking shelter in UN buildings cannot be guaranteed safety, with more than 50 of those sites "impacted" by the ongoing war – including five that had "direct hits".

White said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, can no longer provide safety "under a UN flag".

Speaking in a video address from Gaza, he said 38 people had died in UN facilities, without saying who had been responsible.

He described the UN agency as "practically out of business in Gaza".

It's just gone 07:00 in Gaza and Israel, and 05:00 in London where we are restarting our live coverage of the war. Thanks for joining us.

As a reminder of some of the key developments, a UN official has warned that "there is no place that is safe in Gaza right now", with many of the UN buildings sheltering displaced people "impacted" by the conflict.

Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu has rebuffed calls from the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken for a humanitarian pause until all the hostages taken by Hamas are freed.

Blinken is in Jordan today for talks with Arab leaders amid mounting concern over the civilian casualties in the war.

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

Sam Hancock
Live reporter

Image source, EPA

We're pausing our live coverage for the next few hours, so until then here's where things stand in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has discarded suggestions of a temporary ceasefire with Hamas.

With fighting between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas about to enter its fifth week, Netanyahu today met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv.

The pair discussed, among other things, calls by the US for Israel to agree to a humanitarian pause in its strikes on Gaza to allow for the effective delivery of aid. But Netanyahu said until all hostages were freed, no such agreement could be made.

Meanwhile, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said he was “utterly shocked” by a reported blast outside Gaza City's largest hospital, Al-Shifa.

The Hamas-run health ministry said at least 13 people were killed in the incident and blamed an Israeli air strike. In a statement, Hamas officials said Israeli forces targeted "a convoy of ambulances which was transporting the wounded" from Al-Shifa towards Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

The IDF confirmed it had hit an ambulance, which it said was being used by Hamas operatives. It did not say where the strike took place.

"Patients, health workers, facilities, and ambulances must be protected at all times," Ghebreyesus said, ahead of a separate warning by the UN.

Thomas White, director of affairs at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said there was increasingly little the UN could do to protect Palestinians trying to shelter from the fighting. "Let's be very clear, there is no place that is safe in Gaza right now," he said.

Mark Regev, an adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has told the UK's Channel 4 news that Israel believes that Hamas has “established its command and control" centre under the Al-Shifa hospital.

Regev goes on to say that if a combatant builds such a construction under civilian infrastructure it could become a "legitimate target".

Israel has previously claimed that Hamas is using the population in Gaza as human shields by placing part of its military system under civilian infrastructure.

As we've been reporting, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has said at least 13 people have been killed in a blast outside that hospital – Gaza City's biggest.

The Israeli military has confirmed it struck an ambulance that it says was being used by Hamas operatives. It did not say where the air strike took place.

Image source, Getty Images

We've just heard some details from a senior official about the US administration's current thinking about the conflict.

Speaking on background - meaning they cannot be identified - an official from the White House's National Security Council said that a ceasefire can only happen when Israeli feels secure and confident that the Hamas attacks of 7 October cannot happen again.

On the hostages, the official said intense efforts are going on to try to free the more than 200 people who are thought to be held. But he said there is no guarantee a deal can be reached to release them and any effort to get them our would require a significant pause in hostilities.

"We're hopeful and doing everything we possibly can to get the hostages out, but there's absolutely no guarantee a) that it is going to happen or b) when it's going to happen," the official said.

Regarding the American citizens still in Gaza, he said there was a delay in getting them because of the effort by Hamas to try to get its own fighters out of the territory.

The official also said the US has frequent and very direct conversations with Israel about it wartime decisions and whether they are being achieved.

Ali Abbas Ahmadi
Live reporter

Image source, Getty Images

War may not be officially declared but it has already reached south Lebanon, says Elie Bwary, a resident of Alma al-Shaab, a village just a few hundred metres from the Israeli border.

“Hundreds of rockets were fired in the last three weeks. If that’s not war, what is?” he says.

Speaking to the BBC from Beirut - where he has now fled, like nearly the entire village - Bwary says several houses have been destroyed in Alma al-Shaab, including his uncle’s. Iran-backed Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces across the Lebanon-Israel border since the 7 October attacks launched by Hamas on southern Israel.

Elie says he feels for the Palestinians bearing the brunt of Israel's retaliation in Gaza, but he does not want Lebanon to get involved.

“We already experienced 2006,” he says, referencing the full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel. “People still carry the grief anxiety, and the stress of [that conflict],” and nobody wanted to experience it again.

Bwary has lived through constant violence and war. At 35, he says he remembers Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000, the war in 2006, and continuous fighting in between. Bwary highlights Lebanon’s failing economy, runaway inflation, and political stagnation to show that the country is not ready for another tragedy. “We are barely standing; can we take any more destruction?”

Several countries, as well as the United Nations, have called for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

But countries including the UK, US, Canada and EU have stopped short of calling for a ceasefire, saying it would favour Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the US and several Western governments.

The US again rejected calls for a ceasefire this week - instead calling for a pause. But what's the difference?

Compared to a formal ceasefire, humanitarian pauses tend to last for short periods of time, sometimes just a few hours.

They are typically implemented purely with the aim of providing humanitarian support, as opposed to achieving long-term political solutions, according to the United Nations, external.

Ceasefires, meanwhile, are intended to be long-term, and often have an aim to allow parties to engage in dialogue, including the possibility of reaching a permanent political settlement, the UN says.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry has said at least 13 people were killed in the blast outside Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, which we reported on earlier.

A Hamas statement said Israeli forces targeted "a convoy of ambulances which was transporting the wounded" from Al-Shifa towards Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military has confirmed it hit an ambulance, which it says was being used by Hamas operatives. But it did not say where the strike took place.

BBC Verify has verified graphic videos showing badly injured and possibly dead people lying outside the hospital.

Blinken's visit to Jordan likely to be as challenging as one to Israelpublished at 21:58 Greenwich Mean Time 3 November 2023

21:58 GMT 3 November 2023

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

Image source, Reuters

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Israel on Friday to offer a message of continued US support and seek assurances that Israel would take “concrete steps” to protect Palestinian civilians during its war with Hamas.

The secretary of state delivered that message, but evidence of those concrete steps were few and far between.

A key request from the Americans, that Israel agree to “humanitarian pauses” in its strikes on Gaza - steps that, in Blinken’s view, would allow for the effective delivery of aid and encourage the release of hostages held by Hamas - was quickly rebuffed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At a news conference, he said:

The US will continue to press for pauses, but it’s clear that those “legitimate questions” will pose significant obstacles to an agreement.

Blinken did tout the fact that more than 100 aid trucks entered Gaza in the past 24 hours, where none were permitted until recently, but he acknowledged that this was still not enough.

A day that began in Tel Aviv for the secretary of state ends with a short flight east and an overnight stay in Jordan, which earlier this week recalled its ambassador from Israel in protest over civilian bloodshed in Gaza.

For the next three days, Blinken will meet with Arab leaders who have become increasingly outspoken in their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza. If Blinken’s visit with Israeli officials proved difficult, his time spent in Jordan - and, perhaps, elsewhere in the region - is sure to be equally challenging.

Image source, Reuters

It's 23:30 in Israel and Gaza, where fighting is fast approaching the four-week mark - and shows no sign of easing. If you're just joining us, or need a recap, here are the latest developments:

• Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said he was “utterly shocked” by a reported blast outside Al-Shifa hospital, the largest hospital in Gaza City
• The Hamas-run health ministry said “several citizens were killed and dozens wounded". It blamed an Israeli air strike, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it hit an ambulance “being used by a Hamas terrorist cell” - but didn’t clarify if it was talking about the same incident
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel on Friday, where he called for "humanitarian pauses" to protect civilians in the region - but Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said there will be no temporary ceasefire until all Israeli hostages are freed
• The Pentagon has since confirmed it's been flying unarmed surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip since Hamas launched its attack on Israel last month
• And the IDF said earlier it was on "very, very high alert" at its border with Lebanon after the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah - considered a terrorist group by the UK and US - used a rare speech to praise Hamas's attacks on Israel

Image source, Getty Images

In the UK, the Foreign Office says it has not yet been informed of any British nationals killed in Gaza.

But James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, warned that the "flow of information is often interrupted" and "sometimes we get contradictory information".

Speaking to reporters this evening, he said a number of British nationals have made it through the Rafah crossing and into Egypt - but wouldn't clarify how many.

About 200 British passport holders are believed to be in Gaza. Hundreds of people with dual citizenship have been allowed to leave the warzone in recent days, for the first time since the conflict began.