Israel-Hamas war live: Egypt-Gaza crossing set to open for aid, says Blinken; 24 hours’ more fuel at Gaza hospitals, says UN

Israel “has no interest” in occupying Gaza but will do “whatever is needed” to eliminate Hamas, the country’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, has told CNN.

His comment came after US President Joe Biden warned in a 60 Minutes interview that it would be a “big mistake” for Israel to occupy the Strip, as it masses its troops on the enclave’s border in preparation for an expected ground invasion.

Erdan said:

We have no interest to occupy Gaza or to stay in Gaza, but since we are fighting for our survival and the only way, as the president [Biden] himself defined is to obliterate Hamas, so we will have to do whatever is needed to obliterate their capabilities.

Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the US, also told CNN on Sunday that Israel did not intend to occupy Gaza after the conflict ends. He said:

We have no desire to occupy or reoccupy Gaza. We have no desire to rule over the lives of more than 2 million Palestinians.

Hospitals in Gaza only have about 24 hours of fuel left, the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) said in its latest update (several hours ago now). It said:

Fuel reserves at all hospitals across Gaza are expected to last for about additional 24 hours. The shutdown of backup generators would place the lives of thousands of patients at risk.

OCHA also said that heavy Israeli bombardments of Gaza, from air, land and sea, had continued “almost uninterrupted”. As of 10pm on Sunday, 455 Palestinians had been killed and 856 injured in the previous 24 hours, it said, citing the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.

It also said that “mass displacement” of Palestinians had continued, after the Israeli military told Gazans to move to the south of the enclave on Friday.

By Saturday afternoon, nearly 600,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) were hosted in the central and southern parts of Gaza alone, in increasingly dire conditions; since then, this figure has raised significantly.

The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza is set to reopen to allow humanitarian aid in, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said, following a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.

“Rafah will be reopened. We’re putting in place with the United Nations, with Egypt, with Israel, with others, a mechanism by which to get the assistance in and to get it to people who need it,” Blinken said, without giving any further specifics.

US media have reported that the crossing will reopen at 9am (0600 GMT) on Monday for several hours. Aid convoys are already queuing to get in. Some foreign passport holders are also expected to be evacuated via the crossing.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt is set to reopen, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said, ahead of his expected return to Jerusalem on the next leg of an international round of diplomacy aimed at preventing the conflict from spreading.

Speaking after a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Blinken did not give any specifics about when the crossing would reopen, saying only that humanitarian aid would be allowed through. US media have reported that it will open at 9am for several hours. The Guardian has not been able to confirm those reports.

As the Israeli military prepares for an assault on Gaza, there are fears that the already daunting Palestinian death toll will rise and provoke an intervention by Iran or its proxies. Blinken is expected to hold a second round of talks in five days with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

In other key developments:

• UNRWA, the UN’s agency supporting Palestinian refugees, said on Sunday that Israel’s deadly strikes on Gaza have led to an “unprecedented human catastrophe” as Gaza’s death toll rises to 2,670 with 9,600 injured. Speaking to reporters, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, said: “If we look at the issue of water, we all know water is life and Gaza is running out of water and Gaza is running out of life.”

• Over 1,000 people were missing under the rubble of buildings in Gaza that have been targeted by deadly Israeli airstrikes, the Palestinian civil defence said on Sunday. In a statement, the civil defence team said many others were pulled alive out of the rubble, 24 hours after buildings were struck.

• Gaza health officials have started to store bodies in ice-cream freezer trucks because moving them to hospitals is too risky and cemeteries are running out of space. Videos posted online showed bodies wrapped in white cloth stacked inside the empty trucks.

• Israeli officials said they were restoring limited water supplies to southern Gaza, amid a wider water crisis, after a call between US President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

• Reserves of fuel at all hospitals across the Gaza Strip are expected to last only about 24 more hours, the United Nations humanitarian office (OCHA) said on Monday. “The shutdown of backup generators would place the lives of thousands of patients at risk,” OCHA said on its website.

• US and Israelis officials are discussing the possibility of a visit to Israel soon by Biden at the invitation of Netanyahu, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday. A potential visit by Biden would follow similar visits from other high-ranking US officials including secretary of state Antony Blinken and defense secretary Lloyd Austin. Blinken is due to return to Israel on Monday for a second round of talks with Netanyahu.

• Biden, speaking to CBS, said he is “confident” Israel will act under the rules of war in its conflict with Palestine, and added deploying US troops is not necessary. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Biden said that while he believes Hamas must be eliminated entirely, there must be a path for a Palestinian state. And he cautioned that the threat of terrorism in the United States had increased due to unrest in the Middle East.

• More than 600,000 Gazans have so far moved to the southern part of the Gaza strip near the Egyptian border city of al-Arish, before an expected Israeli ground offensive. International aid workers in Gaza described an unprecedented situation of “humanitarian collapse”.

• The US has warned that the war between Israel and militant group Hamas could escalate, as American warships headed to the area amid growing clashes on the country’s northern border with Lebanon. “There is a risk of an escalation of this conflict, the opening of a second front in the north and, of course, Iran’s involvement,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS.
  US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced deployment of a second aircraft carrier group late on Saturday, calling it a sign of “our resolve to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war.”

• Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said the US would suffer “significant damages” if the war in Gaza spills over into a larger conflict, Al Jazeera reported on Sunday. “We have conveyed our message to the Zionist regime through its allies that if they do not cease their atrocities in Gaza, Iran cannot simply remain an observer,” Iranian state media cited Amir-Abdollahian as telling the network.

• UN secretary-general António Guterres called on Hamas to release hostages without conditions and called on Israel to allow for rapid and unimpeded humanitarian aid access to Gaza. “Each one of these two objectives are valid in themselves. They should not become bargaining chips and they must be implemented because it’s the right thing to do,” Guterres said. The Middle East is on the brink of an “abyss”, he said.

• The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, has said that he spoke by phone to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Sunday regarding the situation in Gaza. Maduro told Abbas that Venezuela would send 30 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza in the next few days, Reuters reports.

• Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the actions and policies of Islamist group Hamas do not represent Palestinian people, according to official news agency Wafa, although it later removed direct references to Hamas from its report. In a phone call with Maduro, “the president affirmed his rejection of the killing of civilians on both sides and called for the release of civilians, prisoners and detainees on both sides,” added the news agency.

• Amnesty International has verified six videos of an attack on Salah al-Din road – a supposedly “safe” route for Palestinians feeling Gaza – that killed at least 70 people. It went on to condemn Israel’s forced evacuations of Palestinians from Gaza, saying: “Israel’s order to ‘evacuate’ is NOT compliant w/ [international humanitarian law] & must be rescinded.”

• France has warned Iran “against any escalation or extension of the conflict” between Israel and Hamas, the French presidential office announced on Sunday. During a phone call between the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi, Macron warned against any conflict spillover into Lebanon.

• Leaders from the EU’s 27 member states have issued a statement outlining their position on the situation in the Middle East. “The European Union condemns in the strongest possible terms Hamas and its brutal and indiscriminate terrorist attacks across Israel and deeply deplores the loss of lives,” the European Council said.

• In a call with the Vatican, Israel’s foreign ministry said it expected the “Vatican to be more attentive to the suffering to Israelis.” The country’s foreign minister also called for a clear Vatican condemnation of deadly terrorism against Israelis and reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself.