Middle East crisis live: Israeli military tells 100,000 people in Rafah to evacuate | Israel-Gaza war

The Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at an Israeli base in the Golan Heights, the AFP news agency has said.

Lebanese official media also said three people had been wounded in an Israeli strike earlier on Monday in the country’s east, with the Israeli army saying it had struck a Hezbollah “military compound”.

Hezbollah fighters launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” targeting “the headquarters of the Golan Division… at Nafah base”, the group said in a statement, saying it was “in response to the enemy’s attack targeting the Bekaa region”.

If a Rafah offensive takes place it would lead to “the collapse of the aid response” that is reliant on the Rafah hub to distribute aid throughout that area of Gaza, the Norwegian Refugee Council has warned.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military have been dropping leaflets in the Rafah area. Maram Humaid of Al Jazeera English has this:

If you’re just joining us now, here’s a summary of the latest developments in the Israel-Gaza war and the Middle East crisis ahead of an expected Israeli offensive on the Gazan city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million people are sheltering

• Israel’s military has issued a call for residents and displaced people to evacuate eastern neighbourhoods of Rafah and head to an “expanded humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that it was making the call to evacuate through “announcements, text messages, phone calls and media broadcasts in Arabic”.

• Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has told his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, that military action in Rafah was required due to Hamas’ refusals of mediated proposals for a Gaza truce under which the Palestinian Islamist group would free some hostages. Gallant had claimed Hamas wasn’t serious about a deal and warned of “a powerful operation in the very near future in Rafah.”

• Israel wants the evacuees to head to al-Mawasi, a barren stretch of coastline that it has designated as a “humanitarian zone” since early on in the war. The area has however been repeatedly bombed by Israel.

• Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing, one of the main crossings used to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza, after a rocket attack claimed by Hamas killed three soldiers. The armed wing of Hamas said it fired rockets at an Israeli army base next to the crossing. The closing of Kerem Shalom came shortly after the head of the UN World Food Programme asserted there was “full-blown famine” in devastated northern Gaza.

• Israeli authorities shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera on Sunday, hours after a government vote to use new laws to close the satellite news network’s operations in the country. Critics called the move a “dark day for the media” and raised new concerns about the attitude to free speech of Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government.

• Senior Israeli officials ramped up pressure on Hamas on Sunday, saying Israel would refuse any permanent end to hostilities and threatening a new onslaught “in the very near future” if the militant organisation did not accept recently proposed terms for a ceasefire. In a televised address, Benjamin Netanyahu once more rejected Hamas’s demands for a definitive end to the war in Gaza, saying that any permanent ceasefire would allow the group to remain in power and pose a continuing threat to Israel.

• Hamas reiterated its demand for an end to the war in exchange for the freeing of hostages. In their second day of truce talks in Cairo with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, Hamas negotiators maintained their stance that any truce agreement must end the war, Palestinian officials said.

• Israel used a US weapon in a March airstrike which killed seven healthcare workers in southern Lebanon, according to a Guardian analysis of shrapnel found at the site of the attack, which was described by Human Rights Watch as a violation of international law. Seven volunteer paramedics, aged between 18 and 25, were killed in the 27 March attack on an ambulance center belonging to the Lebanese Succor Association in the town of al-Habariyeh in south Lebanon on 27 March.

This is Ben Quinn taking on the blog now

Before the news of the evacuation orders broke, CIA chief William Burns, a main mediator in the ceasefire talks, was reportedly due to meet with Netanyahu on Monday. It is not clear if that meeting is still scheduled to take place.

An Israeli offensive on Rafah would be “devastating” for the 1.4 million people living there, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa has warned, adding that it will not be evacuating.

The warning came hours after Unrwa boss Philippe Lazzarini said he had been denied entry to Gaza for the second time since the war began.

“The Israeli authorities continue to deny humanitarian access to the United Nations,” he said on Sunday.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has told his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, that military action in Rafah was required due to Hamas’ refusals of mediated proposals for a Gaza truce under which the Palestinian Islamist group would free some hostages.

It was not clear if a military operation had begun in Rafah.

A statement from the US defence department earlier said only that Austin “reaffirmed his commitment to the unconditional return of all hostages and stressed the need for any potential Israeli military operation in Rafah to include a credible plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians and maintain the flow of humanitarian aid.”

An anonymous Israeli official with knowledge of the ceasefire negotiations has told the New York Times that the two sides were close to a deal a couple of days ago but that comments by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Rafah pushed Hamas to harden its demands in a bid to protect the city from an Israeli ground invasion.

On Tuesday Netanyahu vowed that Israel would proceed with an offensive on the southern city even if renewed efforts at internationally brokered talks with Hamas result in the release of hostages and a ceasefire.

Speaking in Jerusalem, the Israeli prime minister said:

The idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there – with or without a deal, in order to achieve total victory.

The official said that Hamas and Israel had switched to playing a “blame game.”

Reuters is quoting witnesses in Rafah as saying that some Palestinian families have already begun leaving areas east of Rafah on Monday.

The Israeli military says it needs to move about 100,000 people from Rafah in its “limited scope” evacuation, but has not confirmed this is the beginning of a broader invasion of the city. Associated Press reports:

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said some 100,000 people were being ordered to move to a nearby Israel-declared humanitarian zone called al-Mawasi.

He said Israel was preparing a “limited scope operation” and would not say whether this was the beginning of a broader invasion of the city.

But last October, Israel did not formally announce the launch of a ground invasion that continues to this day.

The move comes a day after Hamas militants carried out a deadly rocket attack from the area that killed three Israeli soldiers.

Shoshani said Israel published a map of the evacuation area, and that orders were being issued through leaflets dropped from the sky, text messages and radio broadcasts.

He said Israel has expanded humanitarian aid into al-Mawasi, including field hospitals, tents, food and water.

Israel has been telling Gaza residents to evacuate to the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone”, a narrow strip of barren coastline at the southernmost end of the territory, since the war broke out in Gaza.

Despite its designation as a safe zone by the Israeli military, al-Mawasi has not been spared the violence.

Safety there “is only relative to the rest of the territory”, Guardian reporters Jason Burke, Aseel Mousa and Malak A Tantesh reported back in March. They wrote:

In January, a suspected Israeli airstrike hit a residential compound in al-Mawasi hosting medical teams and their families from the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians, two NGOs working in Gaza.

Last month, during a military operation, an Israeli tank reportedly fired on a house where staff from Médecins Sans Frontières and their families were sheltering, killing two and injuring six.

There are multiple other reports of other injuries in al-Mawasi, most attributed to Israeli bombardment or airstrikes.

The IDF has issued a new update to journalists, describing the Rafah operations as “limited scope”.

This morning … we began a limited scope operation to temporarily evacuate residents in the eastern part of Rafah.”

Troops will continue to pursue Hamas militants “everywhere in Gaza until all hostages that they are holding in captivity are back home”, the statement said.

The prospect of an invasion in Rafah has, in recent months, triggered alarm from aid groups and world leaders. US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Friday said Israel had yet to present “a credible plan to genuinely protect the civilians who are in harm’s way”, and without such a plan Washington “can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah.”

Soon after the war in Gaza began on 7 October, Israel told Palestinians living in the north of Gaza to move to “safe zones” in the territory’s south – including Rafah.

But Rafah has been repeatedly bombed from the air and Palestinians regularly say that no area of Gaza is safe.

The evacuation announcement comes hours after one of the main crossings used to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza was closed after a rocket attack claimed by Hamas killed three soldiers.

Israel’s military said 10 projectiles were launched from Rafah towards the area of the Kerem Shalom crossing. The crossing was closed soon after, but other crossings remained open.

The armed wing of Hamas said it fired rockets at an Israeli army base next to the crossing, but did not confirm where it fired them from. Hamas media quoted a source close to the group as saying the commercial crossing was not the target.

Shortly after the Hamas attack, an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah, killing three people and wounding several others, Palestinian medics said.

Israel’s military said it believed Hamas was targeting soldiers massed on the Gaza border in preparation for a possible Rafah invasion.

More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

On Sunday, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant warned that military action in Rafah could begin in the “very near future.”

In a statement, Gallant said Hamas seemed not to be serious about reaching a truce in ongoing ceasefire talks.

This means strong military action in Rafah will begin in the very near future, and in the rest of the Strip.”

The Guardian currently has no information from on the ground in Rafah.

Israel has been warning for months it plans to send troops into the southern city bordering Egypt where more than a million displaced Gaza residents have taken refuge.

Israel believes thousands of Hamas fighters are holed up in the city, along with potentially dozens of hostages. Western leaders have expressed alarm at the prospect of such an operation and the potential for a high number of casualties.

The IDF says it has expanded the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, in Rafah.

The IDF is calling on residents in the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to temporarily evacuate to the expanded humanitarian zone.

The expanded humanitarian zone includes field hospitals, tents and increased amounts of food, water, medicine and other supplies.”

The statement from the IDF says it will “continue pursuing Hamas everywhere in Gaza until all the hostages that they’re holding in captivity are back home.”

Israel’s armed forces have issued a call for residents and displaced people of “eastern neighborhoods of Rafah” to evacuate, a day after Israeli leaders reiterated a promise to launch an attack on the southern city.

In accordance with the approval of the political echelon, the IDF is calling on the population, which is under the control of Hamas, to temporarily evacuate from the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to the expanded humanitarian space. This matter will progress in a gradual manner according to ongoing situation assessments that will take place all the time.”

The IDF said in its statement that it was making the call to evacuate through “announcements, text messages, phone calls and media broadcasts in Arabic.”

Israel has been warning for months it plans to send troops into Rafah, the southern city bordering Egypt where more than a million displaced Gaza residents have taken refuge.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.

An IDF spokesperson has issued an “urgent appeal to all residents and displaced people” to evacuate a number of neighbourhoods of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah.

IDF Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee, said the Israeli army called on people in the Al-Salam, Al-Jeneina, Tabet Ziraa and Al-Byouk neighbourhoods to immediately evacuate to the “expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi.”

More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.

• Israeli authorities shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera on Sunday, hours after a government vote to use new laws to close the satellite news network’s operations in the country. Critics called the move a “dark day for the media” and raised new concerns about the attitude to free speech of Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government.

• Senior Israeli officials ramped up pressure on Hamas on Sunday, saying Israel would refuse any permanent end to hostilities and threatening a new onslaught “in the very near future” if the militant organisation did not accept recently proposed terms for a ceasefire. In a televised address, Benjamin Netanyahu once more rejected Hamas’s demands for a definitive end to the war in Gaza, saying that any permanent ceasefire would allow the group to remain in power and pose a continuing threat to Israel.

• Hamas has reiterated its demand for an end to the war in exchange for the freeing of hostages. In their second day of truce talks in Cairo with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, Hamas negotiators maintained their stance that any truce agreement must end the war, Palestinian officials said.

• Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, accused Hamas of showing signs it was not serious about reaching a truce, and said that if this was the case Israel would launch military actions in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip “in the very near future”.