As we’ve been reporting, Israel’s army says its forces are moving deeper into the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The picture of who lives where in Gaza has been difficult to track since Israel launched its retaliatory campaign there after the 7 October attacks by Hamas, and warned residents to leave northern Gaza. However, before the war began, Jabalia was the largest of eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip.

UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, said there were more than 116,011 registered refugees there.

Established after the 1948 war, the camp covers an area of 1.4 sq km (0.8 miles).

In late October, Israel launched an air strike on the camp, which it said killed a senior Hamas commander and caused the collapse of Hamas underground infrastructure.

Dozens were said to have been killed in that strike, and the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said many more have been killed in subsequent strikes - including as recently as 3 December.

Image source, .

The Israeli military has just posted on X, formerly Twitter, that a temporary pause in fighting will be enforced today in the south of Gaza.

"A local tactical pause will take effect today in the Rafah area until 14:00 [12:00 GMT], for the purpose of allowing the entrance of further humanitarian aid," it says.

A further message in Arabic specified the pause would take place in the El Geneina neighbourhood.

These pauses are not uncommon and have been called in various parts of Gaza. Until recently, Rafah was a relatively safe area that had been spared the worst of the fighting.

Since the end of the truce with Hamas last Friday, however, the IDF has targeted the area more intensely.

Image source, Getty Images

As Israel says it has taken control of some Hamas military posts in northern Gaza, a senior government spokesman has given his thoughts on how the war is going.

Earlier this morning, Eylon Levy told reporters at a briefing: "We're moving ahead with the second stage now. A second stage that is going to be difficult militarily."

Israel expects difficult fighting in the new phase of its war in Gaza but is open to "constructive feedback" on reducing harm to civilians as long as the advice is consistent with its aim of destroying Hamas, Levy added.

Image source, IDF

The Israeli army (IDF) says its forces are moving deeper into Jabalia refugee camp in the north of Gaza which it has encircled.

The army says it's taken control of military posts from which Hamas had staged attacks. It also says it has seized a Hamas command and control centre and found "observation and control materials, weapons, and maps".

A video shared by the IDF also shows powerful strikes hitting and heavily damaging a building, which is labelled as a "Hamas military compound".

Further south, Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles could be seen approaching the city of Khan Yunis from the east. The IDF said the main road leading there from the north constituted a battlefield.

Rushdi Abu Alouf
Reporting from Istanbul

The BBC’s Rushdi Abu Alouf has reported from Gaza for decades, but left the territory with his family on 20 November for their safety.

He is now in Istanbul, Turkey, and describes how it feels to leave his home and observe Gaza from the outside.

My family and I grew up in Gaza, we were born in Gaza.

I really feel sad that I have had to leave in this way.

I have a memory from every corner of my house, and from every corner of my neighbourhood.

The rest of my wife's family - her father, mother and brother - are still there, while my father, brothers and sisters also remain in Gaza.

To be honest, it's more difficult for me to watch Gaza from the outside, because when I was there, inside the enclave, I was busy dealing with too many things and not thinking about the situation in the Strip.

Now, when you are out, you have more time to think. And it's very hard for me to imagine that I will no longer see my house or sleep in my bed, and I will no longer see my neighbours and my neighbourhood.

Read the full article here.

Image source, Getty Images

Unicef spokesman James Elder, who was in Gaza until earlier this week, has shared his take on the situation in the enclave with the BBC's Newsday.

The Israeli military said it was dropping leaflets with QR codes that "open a map guiding Gazans to safer areas" - but Elder notes that disruptions to the electricity grid mean that many won't have working phones to scan the codes.

He also says that the so-called "safe zones" are a "dangerous false narrative": "These are tiny patches of barren land. They have no water, no facilities, no shelter from the cold, no sanitation."

"If you are going to forcibly evacuate people you cannot send hundreds of thousands people to places where there is no water and no toilets. I genuinely mean no toilets. Every corner I had turned to, there was another 5000 people who would appear overnight. They don’t have a single toilet, they don’t have a drop of water."

Elder says that a local doctor told him that “safe zones will become zones of disease".

"The only safety in Gaza now is for hell to stop raining down from the sky," Elder says.

As we've mentioned, there are reports suggesting Israel's military could use large pumps to flood seawater from the Mediterranean into tunnels used by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

To give you an idea of the tunnel complex, we have a map of Gaza with red lines showing where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say Hamas’s underground network of tunnels are located.

Following a period of conflict in 2021, the IDF said it had destroyed more than 100km of tunnels in air strikes. Hamas meanwhile claimed that its tunnels stretched 500km (310 miles) and only 5% were hit.

To put those figures into perspective, the London Underground is 402km (250 miles) long and is mostly above ground.

Image source, .

Yolande Knell
BBC Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

Israel has set up large pumps on the coast that could be used to flood tunnels used by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza and drive out fighters, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

I have asked the Israeli military for comment. It says it is checking the report. The BBC has not been able to verify it independently.

However, back in 2015, we saw how Egypt used seawater from the nearby Mediterranean to flood a network of hundreds of tunnels along its border with Gaza and end a flourishing smuggling trade.

Citing US officials, the Wall Street Journal says that the Israeli army completed the instalment of five pumps to the north of Gaza City in the middle of last month. It says that they could flood the vast network of tunnels spanning the Palestinian territory within weeks.

A complicating factor would be the Israeli hostages that Hamas says it has hidden in “safe places and tunnels”.

Attempts to pump salt water into large areas across Gaza could also damage its underground aquifer polluting its main water reserve.

Image source, Reuters

In the West Bank, Israeli forces killed one Palestinian man and injured four others in an overnight raid, the Palestinian Authority ministry of health has said.

One of those injuries is "very critical", it said.

In the last seven days, at least eight Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including two children.

According to a UN count, external, 246 Palestinians, including 65 children, have been killed in the West Bank since 7 October. That figure does not include the two Palestinian brothers that were killed during an attack on civilians at a bus stop last week.

That eight-week toll represents more than half of all Palestinians killed in the West Bank this year.

Yolande Knell
Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

Israel forces say they’re continuing to take “aggressive” action against Hamas and other armed groups in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

In videos shared on social media overnight, loud thuds of explosions can be heard near Khan Younis, apparently from Israeli strikes and shelling.

Yesterday, witnesses in southern Gaza said Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles could be seen approaching the city from the east.

Israel’s army said the main road leading there from the north now constituted “a battlefield”.

With the war spreading, Palestinians and aid agencies warn people are running out of places to flee to.

A local UN official said it was possible an even more hellish scenario was about to unfold – one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond.

While about 100 lorryloads of aid have entered Gaza via the Rafah crossing on each of the past two days, deliveries across the territory are being hindered by the ongoing fighting.

Last night, the main Palestinian telecommunications firm said all phone and internet services were cut once again.

Mohammed Ghalayini, a Manchester scientist currently with his Gazan family in the territory's south, has told the BBC's Newshour programme about what he is experiencing daily.

On Monday he was woken up by an Israeli air strike which shook the foundations of his home, he said.

"At one point we heard screams from the neighbour’s house. The woman screaming had received the news that her brother had been killed in the air strike. He was visiting their friends, sitting outside their home and the Israeli air strike occurred as he was sitting there.

"So I heard the wails of the family receiving the news that their loved one had died," he said.

But he doesn't live in one of the neighbourhoods from where people have been asked to evacuate. He says his aunt and cousin do live in one of those areas - and he's had to help them relocate again.

He says there had been a blitz of strikes right before he spoke over the phone to the BBC.

"It was ongoing - 40 airstrikes in 15 minutes basically," he said. "It's kind of like the kind of carpet bombing Israel conducted in north Gaza.

"Doubtless there will be civilian casualties... because not everyone is able to leave or to able to have the physical ability to journey into the unknown."

Image source, Getty Images

It's just coming up to 09:00 in Israel and Gaza. Here is the latest:

• The US State Department said that the week-long truce agreement between Israel and Hamas fell apart because Hamas refused to free women hostages, as it did not want them to speak publicly about sexual violence
• The UN warned that thousands of people in Gaza could once again be relocating, despite the fact the US urged Israel to avoid further mass displacements. Earlier, the Israeli military published a map on social media telling civilians to leave areas to the north-east of Khan Younis
• The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said the Israeli evacuation orders for Gaza's south created "panic, fear and anxiety" and reasserted the UN claim that any notion of safe zones in Gaza are false
• The Committee to Protect Journalists says this war had led to the deadliest month since records began in 1992, with 63 journalists and media workers killed

• Israel updated its travel warnings, raising the threat level to advise "increased precaution" in many nations in Europe and South America, including the UK, and called for travel to be reconsidered to several nations in Africa and Central Asia

The Committee to Protect Journalists put out their latest death toll update on Monday. The group began recording journalist deaths in 1992 - they say this war has led to their deadliest month on record.

As of December 4:

• 63 journalists and media workers were confirmed dead: 56 Palestinian, 4 Israeli, and 3 Lebanese
• 11 journalists were reported injured
• 3 journalists were reported missing
• 19 journalists were reported arrested, external
• Multiple assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members, external

These killings are among the more than 16,000 killed since the war began on October 7 - with more than 15,800 Palestinian deaths, external in Gaza and the West Bank, and 1,200 deaths, external in Israel.

The deadliest day of the war for journalists was the first day, October 7, with six journalists killed; the second-deadliest day was November 18, when five were killed.

Israel's military has told news agencies AFP and Reuters that it cannot guarantee their journalists' safety - after the agencies had sought assurances their workers would not be targeted by Israeli strikes.

A week-long truce between Israel and Hamas probably fell apart because Hamas refused to free female hostages, according to US state department spokesman Matthew Miller.

"It seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over that they've been holding hostage and the reason this pause fell apart is they don't want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody."

Miller told journalists that the group did not want the women to speak publicly about sexual violence and that the US government had “no reason to doubt” reports of rape.

But Miller provided no evidence to support his claim and also said that he could not say "with a definitive assessment that that is the case".

The remarks come after hundreds protested outside the United Nations headquarters on Monday criticising the organisation for inaction over the mistreatment, abduction and rape of Israeli women.

This happened as a meeting at the UN heard testimonies from Israeli authorities and others who laid out evidence that Hamas had committed sexual violence in its 7 October attack.

An Israeli women's rights campaigner and lawyer recently said that Hamas had had a premeditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war. The group rejected such accusations, calling them lies.

On Monday, Israel ordered Gazans to leave parts of Khan Younis - the main city in the south - indicating they should move towards the Mediterranean coast and Rafah, near the Egyptian border.

The IDF posted a map that ordered residents of six northern and central neighbourhoods - al-Mahatta, al-Katiba, Hamad, al-Satir, Bani Suheila and Ma'in - to leave immediately to "preserve your safety and security".

An estimated 167,000 people live in the area.

The map tells them to move to al-Fukhari, east of Khan Younis, and Rafah's al-Shaboura and Tal al-Sultan neighbourhoods, which are already overcrowded.

The Israeli military said it was "dropping leaflets with QR codes that opens a map guiding Gazans to safer areas".

However, the BBC's Gaza correspondent says he has spoken to Palestinians in the affected areas who are not aware of the map or cannot see it because there is no internet coverage.

The IDF has said it has set up "safe zones" where people can go but UN officials have rejected this description.

"These zones cannot be safe nor humanitarian when unilaterally declared," said Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories.

"What we see today," she added, "are shelters with no capacity, a health system on its knees, a lack of clean drinking water, no proper sanitation and poor nutrition for people already mentally and physically exhausted."

We've reported the UN Secretary-General's comments in the past hours calling on Israel to stop their ground offensive in southern Gaza.

Earlier, the lead UN official for the Palestinian territories had also voiced concerns. Since the truce ended on Friday, Israel's push into the south has forced tens of thousands of people there into "increasingly compressed spaces, desperate to find food, water, shelter and safety," said Lynn Hastings on Monday.

Many Gazans had already fled to the south from the north due to the war these past eight weeks. The UN says about 80% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced.

The Israeli evacuation order for people to move from Khan Younis to Rafah "created panic, fear and anxiety", the head of the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees has said.

In a statement UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini says access to water is limited as the Israeli military operation has blocked access to a desalination facility providing water to more than 350,000 people.

He warns that the largest hospital in south Gaza, where more than 1,000 people are being treated and 17,000 displaced people are sheltering, may soon stop functioning over dwindling supplies and staff.

At least 60,000 more people have been "forced to move to already overcrowded UNRWA shelters", Lazzarini says.

He also asserts that claims of the UN having thousands of tents and plans to set up a refugee camp in south Gaza are false.

Lazzarini goes on to say the fighting's resumption is "further strangling the humanitarian operation", blocking supplies getting in and slowing down aid being distributed around Gaza.

He calls on the Israeli government to reopen a good crossing between Gaza and Israel to allow the "unconditional, uninterrupted and meaningful" delivery of humanitarian aid.

"The failure to do so violates international humanitarian law," Lazzarini adds.

Israel's National Security Council has updated travel warnings for dozens of countries.

In an online statement the council announced that it had raised the threat level in many nations in Western Europe and South America to level 2, including countries such as the UK, Australia, France, Germany and Brazil.

Level 2 countries come with a recommendation to Israeli citizens abroad "to exercise increased precaution" while several nations in Africa and Central Asia had their threat level raised to level 3 which comes with advice for non-essential travel to be reconsidered.

"There is a constant and significant rise in incitement, attempted attacks and manifestations of antisemitism in many countries," the council wrote.

The statement recommended citizens to stay away from demonstrations, to avoid openly displaying "Israeli and Jewish identities and any relevant symbols" and to stay away from Israeli and Jewish gatherings.

The council added that Israelis should also postpone travelling to countries with travel warnings, "particularly Arab and Middle Eastern countries, the North Caucasus, countries bordering Iran and several Muslim countries in Asia".

Countries around the world have been placed into four categories from Level 1 (no travel threat) to Level 4 (high threat level) with a fifth category for mixed travel warnings.

Image source, Israel's National Security Council

Patrick Jackson
BBC News

It has just gone 02:00 in Gaza and Israel, and midnight here in London. Over a live video feed from Israel's boundary with the Gaza Strip we've been hearing what sound like the occasional boom of an explosion and roar of a jet from the direction of the territory.

Israeli tanks and other armoured vehicles are now reported to be operating close to Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip. Here's a look at the other main developments of the day:

• The UN has warned that thousands of people could once again be on the move, despite the fact the US has urged Israel to avoid further mass displacements
• Earlier, the Israeli military published a map on social media, external telling civilians to leave areas to the north-east of Khan Younis
• Israeli authorities denied a claim by the head of the World Health Organization that Israel had given the organisation 24 hours to remove medical supplies from two warehouses in southern Gaza - because "ground operations will put them beyond use"
• Meanwhile, the UN chief has said he is "extremely alarmed" by fighting resuming in Gaza, also noting that that there is "nowhere safe to go" in Gaza - an assertion frequently made by Palestinians too
• An Israeli lawyer and women's rights advocate told the BBC she had seen first-hand eyewitness accounts of sexual violence carried out against women by Palestinian attackers on 7 October - read more on that here

Scotland might be a world away from the Gaza Strip but two Scots have been paying tribute to 29-year-old Dima Alhaj who was killed last month alongside her six-month-old baby, her husband and her two brothers.

She had been working for the World Health Organization, which announced the news of her death on social media.

Roseann Maguire and Gerry O'Hare hosted her for two months while she was studying at the University of Glasgow as part of the Erasmus programme.

Ms Maguire remembered her as a "lovely young woman".