Israel-Hamas war – live: Israeli troops reach heart of Gaza

Israel’s ground forces in the Gaza Strip aimed on Wednesday to locate and disable Hamas’s tunnel network beneath the enclave.

Israeli forces said on Tuesday that they have encircled the Gaza City – the territory’s largest town and Hamas’s main stronghold.

Chief Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that Israel’s combat engineering corps was using explosive devices to destroy a tunnel network built by Hamas that stretches for hundreds of kilometres beneath Gaza.

Defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israel had “one target – Hamas terrorists in Gaza, their infrastructure, their commanders, bunkers, communications rooms”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said two of its trucks were damaged when a convoy of its vehicles in Gaza came under fire.

The ICRC vehicles were hit as they were transporting vital medical supplies to hospitals and health facilities in the besieged enclave, the aid group said. A driver was lightly wounded.

“These are not the conditions under which humanitarian personnel can work,” said William Schomburg, the head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Gaza. Officials did not provide further details on the location of the trucks inside Gaza.

A pro-Palestinian demonstration is set to go ahead on Armistice Day after the head of the Metropolitan Police said there is “no absolute power” to ban protest.

In a statement on Tuesday, Sir Mark said intelligence surrounding the potential for serious disorder this weekend does not meet the threshold to apply to prohibit the march.

“The laws created by Parliament are clear. There is no absolute power to ban protest, therefore there will be a protest this weekend,” Sir Mark said.

“The law provides no mechanism to ban a static gathering of people. It contains legislation which allows us to impose conditions to reduce disruption and the risk of violence, and in the most extreme cases when no other tactics can work, for marches or moving protests to be banned.”

The House of Representatives voted to censure Rep Rashida Tlaib for her remarks about Israel and Palestine on Tuesday evening, with some Democrats joining with Republicans.

The censure resolution formally criticised Ms Tlaib for her comments after the 7 October attack on Israel wherein Hamas militants killed 1,400 people in Israel and took at least 230 hostages.

Ms Tlaib, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress in 2019 and the House’s sole Palestinian-American member of Congress, has come under fire for saying that Israel was behind the bombing of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital when US and Israeli intelligence said that a misfired Hamas rocket caused the destruction of the hospital.

US Representative Rashida Tlaib choked up as she condemned a resolution to censure her.

House Republicans have introduced two separate measures to censure the Democrat amid cross-party criticism of her comments on the Israel-Hamas war.

Ms Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, posted a video accusing Joe Biden of supporting genocide in Gaza.

“I will not be silenced and I will not let you distort my words,” Ms Tlaib said on Tuesday.

Benjamin Netanyahu has revealed that Israel will “for an indefinite period” have “overall security responsibility” for the Gaza Strip after the war ends with Hamas.

“When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” the prime minister said in an interview with ABC News.

A Labour frontbencher has resigned over Sir Keir Starmer’s position on the crisis in the Middle East, adding to pressure on the Labour leader over his stance on conflict.

Imran Hussain, MP for Bradford East, said he was quitting his role as shadow minister for the new deal for working people to be able to “strongly advocate” for a ceasefire.

In a letter to Sir Keir, he said he was “deeply troubled” by the Labour leader’s interview on LBC in which he appeared to suggest that the Israeli government had a right to withhold water and power from citizens in Gaza.

A British doctor who found himself stranded in Gaza for weeks has finally returned to the UK to be with his family.

Dr Abdelqader Hammad, a consultant transplant surgeon with the Liverpool University Hospital, traveled to Gaza to carry out the only kidney transplants offered in the region when war broke out.

Hamas has denied that Israeli forces were making any significant military gains or that they had advanced deep into Gaza City.

The Israeli military on Tuesday said they were fighting the militants “in the heart of Gaza City”, following a month of prolonged bombardment that has killed 10,300 civilians in besieged Gaza.

“They never give the people the truth,” Hamas spokesperson Ghazi Hamad.

He added that numerous Israeli soldiers were killed on Monday and “many tanks were destroyed”.

“The Palestinians fight and fight and fight against Israel, until we end the occupation,” said Mr Hamad, who left Gaza days before the attack.