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Image source, Reuters

It's coming up to 03:00 in Gaza and Israel, and 01:00 in London. On a live video feed being transmitted from Israel we can hear occasional, distant explosions from the direction of the Gaza Strip tonight. Let's look back at Thursday's key developments:

Hostage death

The body of 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted by Hamas during its attacks on 7 October, has been found by Israeli forces in a structure close to Gaza's largest hospital.

Yehudit Weiss was recovering from breast cancer when she was taken from kibbutz Be’eri, according to campaigners. Her husband, Shmuel, was killed by Hamas gunmen.

Read more here.

Al-Shifa Hospital

Israel is continuing its operation at Gaza's largest hospital, and this evening the military said it had found a tunnel shaft and a "booby-trapped vehicle" on the grounds of the site.

Earlier, the BBC heard from a journalist at the hospital who said:" Soldiers are everywhere, shooting in all directions." Before his phone line cut out, he told us armoured bulldozers had been brought in.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of housing a command-and-control centre in a tunnel network underneath the hospital. Hamas denies this.

The hospital's director warned of "tragic" conditions inside. He said the facility had run out of oxygen and water, with patients "screaming from thirst". Read more on this here.

New Israeli evacuation calls

In Gaza’s south, leaflets were dropped by Israeli forces over Khan Younis, warning people in four towns to evacuate their homes and head to shelters.

For most of the day mobile phone and internet services were down across the Gaza Strip because of a lack of fuel, according to Palestinian telecoms companies. We've written up the story here.

Fuel shortages are also causing significant problems for the delivery of aid throughout the Strip. The UN's Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) has said that, from Friday, it will be unable to send trucks to pick up supplies for Gazans from the border with Egypt.

In the West Bank

Israel said its security forces had killed three gunmen who opened fire at a checkpoint on a road leading into Jerusalem from the West Bank.

Israel says one of its soldiers was killed and others were wounded. Hamas's armed wing said it carried out the attack.

There are also reports of an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Jenin tonight. We will bring you more on that as it comes in.

Image source, reu

Image source, .

We brought you updates about an Israeli operation at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, for much of the day on Thursday.

But several hours ago, the Palestinian Red Crescent said its medical services teams were "trapped" inside a different city hospital called Al-Ahli.

They said staff were hearing explosions in the area, along with "intense gunfire".

"There are several casualties in the hospital courtyard about 30 metres away from our teams but they are unable to reach [them]," they said on socila media.

There's been no update since then. Israel has yet to comment on the situation there.

The BBC is unable to verify what's going on on the ground - this work is being made especially difficult by the ongoing communications outage across the Gaza Strip.

As soon as we know more, we'll bring it to you.

Image source, CBS

Let's bring you more on that CBS interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu we mentioned earlier.

He said there could be no return to "failed strategies" in dealing with Hamas in Gaza City.

Netanyahu reiterated that Israel was not seeking to occupy Gaza but wanted overall military responsibility there to "prevent the re-emergence of terror".

"We have to demilitarise Gaza and we have to deradicalise Gaza," he said.

His comments come after US President Joe Biden warned him against taking control of the territory, saying that would be a "big mistake".

“We need a cultural change," Netanyahu went on, adding that there had to be a "different future for Israelis and for Palestinians alike."

“We can’t have a civilian administration enter Gaza that will not fight terrorists, that is committed to funding terrorists," Israel's prime minister said.

The Israeli military says it carried out strikes on "senior" Hamas figures in two different underground sites in Gaza in "the past few days".

"A number of senior Hamas commanders were hiding in one of them, including Ahmed Randor, the head of Hamas’ northern Gaza brigade and Hyman Sian, the head of the Hamas rocket brigade," said military spokesman Daniel Hagari.

Another underground site which was attacked, he said, contained "senior members of Hamas’ political wing, including Raukhi Mushta, who is a very close associate of Yahya Sinwar, Asam Dalyis, head of the Hamas government in Gaza who is close to Ismael Haniyah, and Samech El Sarg, who is also a close associate to Sinwar and other senior Hamas figures in Gaza".

Both sites were "significantly damaged", the Israeli spokesman said without giving further details.

The Israeli report could not be verified independently.

A student from Gaza, who is currently living in London, has told the BBC she just hopes her family back home "stay alive".

Menna Hijazi's family are staying at an UN-run facility in Khan Younis since their family home was bombed.

Here, Hijazi says, her family are surviving "day by day" and the situation is "getting worse and worse".

She says she managed to speak to them by phone on Wednesday for just a couple of minutes - she was told they planned on staying in Khan Younis and would not be evacuating.

This was before Israeli forces dropped leaflets there, warning people to evacuate.

"We're all living in fear," she says. "There's no access to food, they're barely eating anything... water is contaminated, it's not safe for drinking."

One of her brothers, Hijazi adds, has stomach pain and nausea "every day" on top of "what he is going through mentally".

"He told me he lost two of his schoolfriends," she says. "They've already bombed there before... I just hope they stay alive."

Image source, Family handout

As we've been reporting, Israel's military says its soldiers have found the body of an Israeli hostage taken into Gaza by Hamas in its attack last month.

The Israel Defense Forces said 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss was discovered in a house near Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

She had been recovering from breast cancer when Hamas launched its deadly attack on 7 October, but didn't have her medication when she was taken, according to the Bring Them Home Now group.

The Israeli military says that almost 240 people are being held hostage by Hamas.

We've compiled the stories of some of those taken from Israel on 7 October here.

We've been hearing a lot today about the situation at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but we've also been receiving photos from across the Gaza Strip.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Israel Defense Forces

Image source, Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says there were "strong indications" hostages held by Hamas had been at Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital.

It was "one of the reasons we entered the hospital", he says in an interview with CBS Evening News.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of housing a major base underneath Al-Shifa - which Hamas denies.

Forces entered the hospital on Wednesday, but Netanyahu says that when they arrived, the hostages were no longer there.

"If they were [there], they were taken out," he says.

He says his government has "intelligence about the hostages," but adds "the less I say about it, the better".

Some information now on efforts to allow foreign passport holders wanting to leave Gaza to exit through the Rafah crossing into Egypt.

The US State Department says nearly 700 American citizens, legal permanent residents and family members have now left the territory, of which around 300 are US citizens.

Speaking at a press briefing, spokesperson Matthew Miller says there are around 900 others still remaining in the Palestinian enclave.

Image source, FAMILY HANDOUT

We can bring you a little more information about Yehudit Weiss, the hostage whose body the Israeli military say they have recovered from a structure next to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.

She was a 65-year-old "cancer patient whose husband Shmuel was murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7", the Israeli foreign ministry said.

The Bring Them Home website about the hostages held in Gaza describes her as "a loving full-time grandmother" who loved culture, sports, travelling and baking.

You can read more here about the 239 people the Israeli military says are being held in Gaza.

Image source, EPA

"If the bombs don't kill people in Gaza, the diseases will," Dr Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), has told BBC Radio 4.

Harris says Palestinians in Gaza are facing "rampant gastroenteritis", limited clean water, pouring rain, a sewage system that doesn't work, with huge numbers of people living in tents.

"You don’t have to be a public health expert to realise how disastrous this is," she adds, calling the situation "a perfect storm".

Israel Defence Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari has just given a press briefing.

He says Israeli forces have found a tunnel shaft and a vehicle containing weapons in the Al-Shifa hospital.

He says troops are continuing to conduct "targeted activity" in the Al-Shifa hospital.

He also said "a booby-trapped vehicle that was prepared for the October 7th massacre was discovered, containing a large amount of weapons and ammunition".

Hamas denies operating there and the BBC cannot independently verify claims by either side.

The IDF shared the image below and some video footage, external - which the BBC has not yet verified - of what it said was the tunnel. We're working to bring you more detail.

Image source, IDF

Image source, Getty Images

The UN's Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) - which runs the largest humanitarian operation in Gaza - has told the BBC that, from tomorrow, it will be unable to send trucks to pick up aid supplies for Gazans from the border with Egypt.

Juliette Touma, the organisation's director of communications, says it's because of a lack of fuel.

"We have been warning about the impact of the siege on people's lives," Touma tells the BBC, "it seems our calls have fallen on deaf ears".

On Wednesday the first fuel tanker arrived in Gaza since the war began five weeks ago, but Unrwa said it brought in only about a tenth of what the agency needs each day, and there are restrictions on what the fuel can be used for.

Earlier today, Unrwa head Philippe Lazzarini said the organisation might have to suspend its operations entirely as a result.

He sees it is "a deliberate attempt" to "strangle" Unrwa's operations.

"It is outrageous that humanitarian agencies are reduced to begging for fuel, and forced after that, to decide who we will assist and not assist," he said.

Israel had been blocking all deliveries of fuel, saying it could be stolen by Hamas and used for military purposes.

Image source, Reuters

The body of Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted by Hamas during its attacks on 7 October, has been found close to Gaza's largest hospital, the Israeli military said.

In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces said her body was recovered by Israeli soldiers "from a structure adjacent to the Shifa hospital".

It said an "identification process" had been carried out and her family informed.

The statement said Weiss was abducted from her home in Be'eri, close to the border between Israel and Gaza.

Rushdi Abu Alouf
Reporting from Khan Younis, Gaza

It's very difficult to get information out of Gaza as communications are down, as I've been reporting.

In the last call I made to our contact in Al-Shifa hospital, he was talking about hundreds of soldiers searching the hospital room by room.

He said the army was also bulldozing some of the external walls of the hospital and tanks were inside the complex.

The BBC has not independently verified his account.

Rushdi Abu Alouf
Reporting from Khan Younis, Gaza

All communications are now down in Gaza tonight. The internet is down; services from the two mobile carriers are also down.

It's going to be a long time before communications are back working again because the reason for the outage is a lack of fuel.

The telecommunications company Paltel announced earlier , externalthat it was running out of fuel.

Only about 25,000 litres of fuel is being allowed into the Gaza Strip. This is only being used to transport essential aid from Egypt into Gaza by the UN.

The BBC and one other US television crew were invited by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to view what Israel says it has found so far in its search of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.

On Wednesday, BBC correspondent Lucy Williamson was shown rifles, ammunition and body armour, which Israel says Hamas had hidden there.

Both Israeli and US intelligence say Hamas has used tunnels under the hospital as a command centre. The group denies this.

The BBC's visit was tightly controlled and reporters weren't allowed to speak to any doctors or patients at the hospital, but there was no censorship on the words used to describe the visit.

Thousands of civilians have reportedly been sheltering in the hospital in recent weeks, alongside medical staff and patients, in what medics have described as dire conditions.

Read Lucy's full account of being inside the Al-Shifa hospital here.

Wyre Davies
Reporting from Lebanon

Image source, Reuters

As we've been reporting, Israeli soldiers say they're continuing their search of Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital. They've shown the BBC items they say they found inside - including 15 guns, bullet-proof vests and other items including laptops.

A senior Hamas leader has now directly responded, rejecting Israel's assertions that this is evidence of a Hamas control centre underneath Al-Shifa.

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK and many other Western countries but, speaking in Beirut, Osama Hamdan denied that Hamas based itself under hospitals in Gaza.

Without providing evidence, the Hamas official said that the few weapons Israel actually found during its raid on Al-Shifa were brought in and planted by Israeli soldiers. He said that Hamas kept well away from Al-Shifa and other hospitals in Gaza.

He also ridiculed a digitally generated video - recently released by Israel - which purported to show an elaborate complex underneath the hospital.

Hamdan is the top Hamas official in Lebanon and is the most senior figure from the organisation to comment, so far, on the latest Israeli statements.

We've been focusing on the situation at Gaza's largest hospital today, Al-Shifa.

We've put together four maps below to show how Israeli troops reached Gaza City, where the hospital is located.

It's worth remembering the Gaza Strip is relatively small - about 41km (25 miles) long and 10km wide.

The maps show how Israeli troops cut across central Gaza to isolate Gaza City, before pushing along the coast from the north and south.

Take a look: