Satellite image reveals tent build-up at UN sitepublished at 16:26 Greenwich Mean Time 4 December 2023

16:26 GMT 4 December 2023

New satellite imagery shows how displaced people in southern Gaza have been seeking shelter at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) site in Khan Younis.

The image, taken on Sunday, reveals tents and makeshift shelters spreading outwards from Khan Younis Training Centre.

Tents started appearing in its grounds on 18 October but the camp has expanded rapidly in recent days, including into open terrain to its west.

UNRWA says it is housing more than 30,000 people there and the site is "very overcrowded".

Its latest report, published today, says 1.2 million displaced people are now sheltering in UNRWA sites across Gaza.

The IDF has been carrying out strikes in Khan Younis since fighting resumed on Friday.

Image source, .

It's just past 18:00 in Gaza and Israel, and 16:00 here in our newsroom in London. If you're just joining us or need a recap, here are the latest developments so far today:

• The city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza saw heavy bombardment yesterday and overnight - now witnesses and local journalists are reporting Israeli tanks on the outskirts of the city
• One of the hospitals in the city has said it is "overwhelmed" with casualties
• The Israeli military posted a map on social media, external urging civilians to leave an area to the north-east of Khan Younis - it also said a nearby section of Gaza's main north-south road was a battlefield and should be avoided
• An adviser to the Israeli PM rejected the assertion, made frequently by Gazans and aid agencies, that nowhere is safe in Gaza; he said there are "designated safer zones" and civilians are not targets

• The health ministry in Gaza, which is run by Hamas, said 349 people have been killed there since its update yesterday - bringing the total to 15,899 since Israel began its military campaign in retaliation for the 7 October attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed
• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its ground offensive in Gaza is expanding "against Hamas centres in all of the Gaza Strip" and it had struck 200 more targets including "terrorist infrastructure located inside a school"
• Earlier, an Israeli lawyer and women's rights advocate told the BBC she had seen a number of first-hand eyewitness accounts of sexual violence perpetrated by Palestinian attackers against women in the 7 October attacks

Image source, .

Yolande Knell
BBC Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

Witnesses and local journalists in Gaza are reporting that they have seen Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles on the outskirts of Khan Younis in the south.

They say they are to the east, by the areas of Abasan, and Khuzaa, which is nearest to the boundary fence with Israel.

Israel’s military has already air-dropped leaflets in parts of the south, telling Palestinians to move to other areas.

Israel Defense Forces spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, has said wherever there is a Hamas stronghold, the IDF operates.

Since fighting resumed in Gaza with the collapse of last week’s truce, Israeli air strikes have intensified in the south.

Many of the Palestinians recently killed had fled here from fighting elsewhere in the strip.

This morning, Mohammed Eid wiped tears from his bandaged face as he lined up among the mourners by bodies covered in white shrouds outside the Nasser Hospital, wiping tears from his bandaged face.

"We were sleeping safely, minding our own business. Suddenly, a bomb fell on us, and the whole building was destroyed,” he told the BBC.

We've just been listening in to Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who was defending the Israeli military's instructions telling Gazans to evacuate from certain neighbourhoods in the south.

Talking to our colleagues on the BBC News channel, he says: "I don't accept that nowhere is safe." He goes on to say there are "designated safer zones" people can, and should, move to - and that "Israel doesn't consider the civilian population as a target" of its military operation.

Pushed on how long people are given to leave areas before they're targeted by the Israeli military, Regev does not give a clear answer.

But when asked whether Israel's intention is to destroy Hamas or Gaza, he says resolutely that the goal is to destroy Hamas.

Gaza will be better without Hamas, he says, adding "if we're hitting a structure it's because there's Hamas either in or underneath" it.

One of the main telecommunications companies serving Gaza is reporting that all its services "have been lost" in Gaza City and the north of the territory due to the resumed fighting between Israel and Hamas.

In a post on X,, external Paltel blamed losses on a "disconnection of main elements of our network in light of the ongoing aggression".

It said its "technical teams are working relentlessly by all available means to restore the services".

Since the war started in October, Gaza has reported having electrical and communication blackouts for periods of time.

Dalia Haidar
BBC News Arabic

Image source, Mahmoud Aki

Medics working in the Gaza Strip are using a specific phrase to describe a particular kind of war victim, the BBC has been told.

"There's an acronym that's unique to the Gaza Strip, it's WCNSF - wounded child, no surviving family - and it's not used infrequently," says Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, who works with the charity Doctors Without Borders.

Ahmed Shabat is one of those children who was described with the acronym, when he arrived injured and crying at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. The three-year-old survived an airstrike on his home in Beit Hanoun, in mid November. But his father, mother and older brother were killed.

Miraculously he had only minor injuries. Later it was revealed his younger brother Omar, aged two, had also survived the strike. Their uncle Ibrahim Abu Amsha decided to look after the two orphans, along with his own family.

He initially took them to Sheikh Radwan city but said they left after Ahmed was hit by glass fragments from an explosion.

They then went to Nuseirat camp to stay in a UN-affiliated school. But even in their new location, they were hit again, with devastating consequences for Ahmed.

"I ran out of the school's door and saw Ahmed in front of me on the ground, both legs gone," said Abu Amsha. "He was crawling towards me, opening his arms, seeking help."

A family member, who was with Ahmed at the time of the blast, was killed.

Image source, Getty Images

Paul Ley, an orthopaedic surgeon at the European hospital in Khan Younis has told the BBC World Service's Newshour "it is chaotic - we can't absorb any more patients and they keep coming”.

He adds: “As well as patients from the north (of Gaza), we have fresh cases coming from the fighting which is sometimes very close.”

Israel’s army continues with ground operations in southern Gaza, where the hospital is located.

“We have more than 360 people on the operating list, which is impossible to deal with. The hospital is full of displaced people who are taking refuge - we are talking 6,000-7,000 people in the corridors and outside the hospital,” says Ley, who is there working as part of an International Committee of the Red Cross surgical team.

“It is physically and mentally exhausting - local staff are under attack in their homes - I am operating with some surgeons who were evacuated from the north and they are living with the other refugees in plastic tents.”

“Anaesthetics and pain killers are a big problem - we are running out slowly so we are lowering our safety standards.”

"We never leave the hospital and our presence here has been notified to the Israelis, but shrapnel has reached the hospital. So far their notification system has worked - we do not see the fighting but we can hear it."

Jeremy Bowen
International editor, reporting from Jerusalem

Image source, Getty Images

The evacuation situation in Gaza is enormously complicated.

The Israeli military has released maps showing a divided Gaza Strip that's been split into 2,400 blocks, giving civilians conflicting advice about where they're supposed to go.

The map has been circulated online, on X (formerly Twitter) and leaflets which contain QR codes. However, this assumes you have a working smartphone to use.

One area they tried to push people to is al-Muwasi on the coast. According to the people I've spoken to, it has no facilities so now people are being directed elsewhere.

It's hard enough for me in Jerusalem to get my head around the orders, but for people inside Gaza it must be very complex.

These are residents without transportation, who have been displaced and have families to take with them, all of which make it very hard to travel at a moment’s notice to an area that isn't guaranteeing safety.

Israel is under heavy pressure from the US, its most vital ally, to kill fewer Palestinian civilians. That’s why it’s brought in this scheme which it says will preserve lives.

But it seems too complicated and too dependent on working smartphones to be a workable solution in the chaos of Gaza under attack.

The health ministry in Gaza, which is run by Hamas, has announced that 15,899 people have died there since Israel began its military campaign in retaliation for the 7 October attacks.

They say 349 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since their last update on Sunday.

Hamas says 70% of the fatalities are women and children.

Israel says its aim for the conflict is to remove Hamas from the Gaza Strip after Palestinian gunmen crossed the boundary into Israel and killed 1,200 people and took 240 captive.

More than a hundred hostages were released during a seven-day temporary ceasefire which broke down last Friday.

As we reported earlier, the Israeli military announced the deaths of three of its soldiers earlier today.

It brings the number killed since the ground offensive in Gaza began to 75,

One of the three was London-born Binyamin Needham, aged 19, and his sister has been speaking to the Israeli public broadcast Kan News.

She says her brother emigrated to Israel with his family when he was eight years old, and "fitted here like a glove".

"He’d just finished his basic training. He was so proud and happy to be in the army and to be protecting the Jewish people and our homeland. We are so, so proud of him."

She said he was "always smiling, always loving" and the family would "miss him terribly".

Image source, Reuters

As Israeli troops expand their operations further into the Gaza Strip, they have been issuing updated evacuation orders, particularly in the centre and south.

One of the ways it is sharing these instructions is through an online map, external that divides the Gaza Strip into hundreds of blocks.

Residents are urged to monitor developments in the zone where they live and “follow the instructions of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] through various media outlets”.

This morning it used social media to issue new evacuation orders to about 20 areas in southern Gaza., external A map accompanying the post included arrows pointing to areas further south where it said civilians should head to.

The IDF has also dropped flyers over areas ordering people to evacuate, sometimes including QR codes linked to the map, and made bespoke phone calls warning residents of impending attacks.

Its approach has attracted criticism.

Sari Bashi from Human Rights Watch said Israel was asking people “who don’t have electricity or the internet to somehow scan a bar code to see where they’re supposed to go”.

She also said Israel is telling people to flee “when there’s no safe place to go”, and no safe way of getting there.

The UN estimates that about four in five people in Gaza have had to flee their homes due to the war, and the US has issued a warning to Israel to protect civilians - which Israel says it is making "maximum effort" to do.

The Israeli military has said civilians in Gaza should not use a section of the key north-south Salah al-Din Road.

The section, to the north-east of the city of Khan Younis, is highlighted on a map posted on social media, external by IDF Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adree.

He says the area is now a battlefield and is extremely dangerous.

He says the IDF will allow civilians to move southwards from areas to the north of Khan Younis by using the coastal road.

As we reported earlier, the IDF has urged people in a large swathe of the Khan Younis area to head south today.

As a reminder, in the earlier part of the war, Israel told Gazans to evacuate from northern Gaza to Khan Younis for their own safety.

Image source, IDF

Some of the relatives of the hostages taken from Israel by Hamas have been calling for the Israeli government to "return to the negotiating table, and at any price - because you promised us that at any price you would return our hostages".

Daniel Lifshitz, whose grandparents Yocheved and Oded Lifshitz were taken hostage, was among family members speaking at a news conference this morning.

"We call you, the cabinet, to meet in order to not forget them, we feel that you forgot them."

"You have time for everything except the families, ignoring, indifference, lack of attention to us. It's a disgrace," he said.

Image source, Reuters - handout picture

Haim Yitzhak Or, the brother of Avinatan, who was kidnapped from the Supernova festival, told reporters "the families don't think about intervening in the tactical management of war, but they want answers".

"They promised us they would meet with us and that didn't happen. We don't know what to do any more."

The Israeli prime minister's office has responded to the growing frustrations of the families.

"A meeting with the families of the hostages and the war cabinet was already scheduled yesterday for Wednesday - because of the families' requests, the possibility of rescheduling it earlier will be examined".

Hamas in Lebanon has issued a statement calling for young Palestinians to enlist and join the establishment of the “vanguards of Al-Aqsa Flood”, a reference to the 7 October attacks.

The statement calls for the continuation of what they claimed was "achieved" in the attacks, and a victory for the Palestinian people.

Hamas has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK, US and European Union. It killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, when it attacked southern Israel on 7 October and took 240 people hostage - some of whom have since been released.

Hugo Bachega
Reporting from Jerusalem

Khan Younis, a crowded city in southern Gaza, has been a key focus of the renewed Israeli offensive against Hamas. Since it resumed its campaign, after a temporary ceasefire collapsed on Friday, Israel ordered the evacuation of multiple areas around the city.

This is where Israeli authorities believe members of the Hamas leadership could be hiding. Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, is from the city. The ground offensive will without doubt expand from there, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the goal is to eliminate Hamas.

As Israel’s army pushes ahead, there have been growing calls - notably from its main ally, the US - to do more to protect civilians. Hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter in Khan Younis after fleeing fighting in the north - the focus of the initial phase of Israel’s operations.

Israel says it has taken measures to warn the population, including by publishing online maps of Gaza instructing people which areas they should evacuate and where to go. It is a complex system - the territory has been divided into blocks - with residents saying it is difficult to access the information amid limited internet connectivity and electricity.

Amid widespread shortages of basic supplies and limited deliveries of humanitarian aid, it is not clear whether the areas the Israeli army has designated for shelter will be able to accommodate and provide for new waves of displaced residents.

Image source, .

Image source, Reuters

Overnight, Israel carried out heavy bombing across the Gaza Strip.

Salah Al-Arja, who lives in Rafah in the south of the territory, said his house was destroyed while they were sleeping despite believing he was in a safe zone.

"We were asleep and safe, they told us it was a safe area, Rafah and all, but at twenty past 10, they stuck it with barrels, destroying all the block, there were children, women, and martyrs," he told Reuters.

"There is no safe area, neither Rafah, nor Khan Younis, nor Gaza, nor Dier, they are all liars, they say it is a safe area, they let us seek refuge, they evacuated Khan Younis and Gaza and still they bomb, and barrel bombs are dropped on areas that are densely populated.

"They tell you it is a safe area, but there is no safe area in all of the Gaza strip, it is all lies and manipulations."

More now on the BBC's interview with Prof Ruth Halperin Kaddari, who is campaigning for the UN to acknowledge that Hamas and other Palestinian groups used rape as a weapon of war in their 7 October attack on Israel.

Prof Kaddari said she wrote letters to numerous UN entities and asked them to recognise and acknowledge these actions as crimes against humanity.

"Regrettably, until a week ago, none of them said the explicit word 'sexual violence'. It took them more than seven weeks... much too long," she said.

Prof Kaddari said this is due to a a combination of factors, but mostly the reluctance or inability to see Israelis as victims - which she called "the difficulty in stepping out of the conventional framing of Palestinians as the ultimate victims and Israelis as the ultimate aggressors."

"I did expect the international human rights community to be able to rise above conventional politics and recognise that what took place on 7 October was an extreme degree of crimes against humanity in the form of using sexual violence as a weapon of war against Israel," Prof Kaddari said.

One of the aspects of the 7 October attacks that Israelis are continuing to deal with are allegations of sexual violence perpetrated by Palestinian fighters against women.

The process of gathering evidence is in itself traumatic - and there is anger that organisations like UN Women took so long so speak out about atrocities committed by Hamas on Israelis.

Professor Ruth Halperin Kaddari is an Israeli lawyer and women's rights advocate who spent 12 years as a member of a UN convention on discrimination against women.

She told Mishal Husain on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that she saw a number of first-hand eye witness accounts of sexual violence, including from a paramedic who treated a woman that was brought to his ambulance who said she had been raped by four men.

Kaddari said she "saw footage and pictures from numerous locations of bodies" which left her in "no doubt that rape was performed".

She said that the high concentration of cases in such a short span of time and in numerous locations could not have happened "had there not been a pre-meditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war".

Image source, Rami Zarnegar

Yolande Knell
BBC Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

Image source, Reuters

Over the weekend, there was powerful footage of people fleeing from Hamad City in Khan Younis amid the smoke rising from Israeli air strikes. Several entire apartment blocks were reduced to blackened ruins.

The particular significance of this will not have been lost on Qatar – which had just proven unable to mediate an extension to the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas.

The smart housing project with its impressive mosque and gardens was funded by Qatar and named for the former Qatari emir who laid the foundation stone when he visited 11 years ago. He was the first head of state to visit the Palestinian territory after it was taken over by Hamas.

The first flats in the complex had been given to Palestinians whose houses had been destroyed in the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. Now many have lost their homes again.

Islam al-Farah, a municipal official, told the BBC that the number of people living in Hamad City had doubled from 15,000 to more than 30,000 in recent weeks as those displaced from northern Gaza sought shelter.

“Most of the residents are now living in the streets, in tents or parking areas,” he said.

“Recently, we were officially informed through notices to evacuate Hamad City completely, as it will be targeted,” he added.

Image source, Reuters

It's day 59 of the war in Gaza - here's what's been happening so far this morning.

• Israeli forces are pushing towards southern Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces has published a map showing new areas where it is advising civilians to evacuate
• In the crowded south of Gaza, a hospital says it is overwhelmed with casualties, as images show injured people lying in the hallways
• An Israeli man thought to have been among the hostages in Gaza has been reported as dead
• The IDF says it has killed a Hamas battalion commander.
• The Israeli military reported the deaths of three of its soldiers
• Two people have been killed in Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank, and more than 30 Palestinians were arrested