Israel-Hamas – live: IDF unleash ‘significant’ airstrikes on Gaza amid major blackout

An Israeli strike on a car in south Lebanon killed three children and their grandmother on Sunday, a Hezbollah lawmaker from the area has said, calling the attack a “dangerous development” for which Israel would pay a price.

Lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said the mother of the three children – girls aged between 8 and 14 – was wounded in the attack which struck the car as it drove between the villages of Aynata and Aitaroun near the Israeli border.

“The enemy will pay the price for its crimes against civilians,” Fadlallah told Reuters in a statement.

Asked about earlier reports from security sources in Lebanon that an Israeli strike had killed three people in a car near Aynata, an Israeli army spokesperson said the army would be a releasing a statement later on Sunday about a strike in Lebanon.

Israel‘s military said its troops engaged a vehicle “identified as a suspected transport for terrorists” in Lebanon on Sunday, and it was looking into reports there were civilians inside.

Lebanese authorities earlier said an Israeli strike on a car in the south of the country killed three children and their grandmother.

You can find more information on those claims earlier in this blog.

Six people have been charged following instances of public disorder and anti-social behaviour during a pro-Palestine march in London on Saturday, the police have said.

A police statement said “the vast majority of people demonstrated peacefully” but there were multiple reports of criminal behaviour.

The Metropolitan Police said they arrested 29 people throughout the day, as well as one further person on Sunday morning, and have since charged six people.

You can read the full report below.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought his diplomatic push on the Israel-Hamas war to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of an intensifying Biden administration drive to reduce the suffering of Gaza’s civilians under Israeli bombardment and to start to sketch out a post-conflict scenario for the territory.

Mr Blinken later flew to Baghdad for talks with Iraqi Prime Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as American forces in the region face a surge of attacks by Iranian-allied militias in Iraq and elsewhere.

US forces shot down another one-way attack drone Sunday that was targeting American and coalition troops near their base in neighboring Syria, a US official said.

President Joe Biden’s top envoy traveled through the West Bank city of Ramallah in an armored motorcade and under tight security.

It was the third day of shuttle diplomacy aimed at trying to limit the destabilizing regional fallout from the war and overcome what has been the Israeli government’s refusal to consider intermittent pauses in its attack on Hamas long enough to rush vital aid to Gaza’s civilians.

“This is a process,” Mr Blinken told reporters. “Israel has raised important questions about how humanitarian pauses would work. We’ve got to answer those questions,” including how pauses would affect some 240 foreign hostages being held by Hamas. “We’re working on exactly that.”

The new US ambassador to Israel has described the bond between the two nations as “unshakeable”.

You can watch his address in Israel below.

Gaza came under its third total communications outage since the start of the war late Sunday, while Israel‘s military announced it had encircled Gaza City and divided the besieged coastal strip into two.

“Today there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters, calling it a “significant stage” in Israel‘s war against the Hamas militant group.

Israeli media reported that troops are expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours.But the “new collapse in connectivity” across Gaza reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmed by Palestinian telecom company Paltel made it even more complicated to share details on the new stage of the military offensive.

“We have lost communication with the vast majority of the UNRWA team members,” UN Palestinian refugee agency spokesperson Juliette Touma told The Associated Press.

The first Gaza outage lasted 36 hours and the second one for a few hours, complicating efforts to share events on the ground.

The chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Forces’ northern command has said they are “ready to attack” Lebanon.

The comments were made during a situation assessment on Sunday.

It comes as Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia in control of southern Lebanon, claimed Israeli airstrikes had killed three children and a grandmother.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken visited the West Bank on Sunday as he claimed the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) should play a central role in the future of the Gaza Strip.

As Israel continued a campaign of air strikes that Gaza health officials say has killed more than 9,700 Palestinians, Mr Blinken rebuffed calls for a ceasefire from Arab officials on Saturday after appealing, unsuccessfully, to Israel for more limited pauses to the fighting a day earlier.

You can read the full wrap-up from today below.

Hezbollah said it fired multiple grad rockets at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona on Sunday in retaliation for an Israeli strike in South Lebanon that it said had killed a woman and three children.

In a statement, the Lebanese militant faction said its attack came in response to Israel‘s “heinous and brutal crime”.

US secretary of state Anthony Blinken has met with officials from the United Nations body for Palestinian refugees.