Israel-Hamas war live: hundreds feared dead in Gaza hospital blast; Biden cancels Jordan visit

US President Joe Biden said Tuesday he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital.

Biden had “directed my national security team to continue gathering information about what exactly happened,” he added in a statement.

Hamas has blamed Israel for the strike, while Israel says a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad Palestinian militants was responsible.

AP: Clashes erupted Tuesday along the Lebanon-Israel border that left five Hezbollah fighters dead, marking the largest number of casualties for the militant group in a single day as tensions with Israel escalate.

Israeli forces and armed groups in Lebanon have engaged in a series of low-level skirmishes since the outbreak of the latest conflict in Gaza between the Israeli military and the Hamas militant group. Hezbollah has announced the death of 10 militants since skirmishes began.

Israeli military Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi threatened that Israel would retaliate aggressively should Hezbollah escalate.

“This is a war on the home,” Halevi said after meeting with Israeli troops near the northern border with Lebanon. “If Hezbollah makes a mistake, it will be annihilated.”

The escalation comes amid fears that the war could spread into Lebanon, where Hezbollah has expressed strong support to the militant Palestinian group Hamas. Israel considers the heavily-armed group in Lebanon an even bigger threat than Hamas. So far, artillery exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel have been limited to several towns along the border.

Israel has threatened that if Hezbollah opens a new front, all of Lebanon will suffer the consequences.

In the wake of the hospital blast, hundreds of Palestinians have flooded the streets of major West Bank cities including Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, where protesters hurled stones at Palestinian security forces who fired back with stun grenades.

Others threw stones at Israeli checkpoints, where soldiers killed one Palestinian, West Bank authorities said.

Hundreds of people joined protests that erupted in Beirut and Amman, where an angry crowd gathered outside the Israeli Embassy.

It is 2am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here is where things stand:

• Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed in a massive explosion at a crowded hospital in Gaza City, in the biggest single loss of life in the blockaded territory in all the five wars between Hamas and Israel since the militants took over the strip in 2007.

• The Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said at least 500 people were killed on Tuesday night in what it said was an Israeli airstrike on al-Ahli al-Arabi, also known as the Baptist hospital. A spokesperson for the Gaza civil defence put the number of killed at about 300.

• The Israeli military reportedly said an initial investigation suggested the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch, before saying it was the result of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket barrage. Islamic Jihad denied the Israeli allegation, and the scale of the blast appeared to be outside the militant groups’ capabilities.

• Reports said violence had erupted between protesters and Palestinian security forces in several cities in the West Bank. In central Ramallah, teargas and stun grenades were fired to disperse protesters throwing rocks and chanting against the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. Reuters reported anger was boiling over after the deadly attack on a Gaza hospital on Tuesday that the authority said was a “cold-blooded massacre” by Israel.

• Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said the UK will work with allies to “find out what has happened” at the Al-Ahli Arabi Baptist hospital in Gaza. Cleverly, posting to social media, described the destruction of the hospital as “a devastating loss of human life” and that the UK has been “clear” that the “protection of civilian life must come first”.

• The White House announced that Joe Biden would no longer travel to Jordan. The decision came after Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said that Jordan was no longer holding a planned summit with the US president and the Egyptian and Palestinian leaders that was scheduled to take place in Amman on Wednesday. Safadi, speaking to Al Jazeera, said the summit was cancelled because “there is no use in talking now about anything except stopping the war”.

• Earlier on Tuesday, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said an Israeli air strike had killed at least six people after striking one of its schools that has been functioning as a shelter for displaced people. Several hospitals in Gaza have become refuges for hundreds of people hoping to be spared bombardment.

• Health authorities in Gaza say at least 3,000 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment since 7 October. At least 940 children and 1,032 women have been killed, the Hamas government media office said. The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has declared three days of mourning following the deadly air strike on Gaza’s Al-Ahli Arabi Baptist hospital.

• Fears are growing that people in Gaza are beginning to dehydrate to death as clean water runs out, with Israeli airstrikes continuing to pound the Palestinian territory of 2.3 million residents amid a total blockade on food, electricity, medicine and fuel.

• Germany’s duty is to “stand up for the existence of the state of Israel”, chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a joint press conference with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Berlin is “doing all it can to ensure that this conflict does not escalate” across the region, he added.

• US president Joe Biden is expected to visit the Middle East on Wednesday, on a whirlwind tour of diplomacy that will take in meetings with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other officials in Tel Aviv. Biden will then move on to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah, the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Amman, Jordan.

• The UN’s culture body, Unesco, warned that the Hamas attack on Israel has led to intense fighting that has resulted in the “deadliest week for journalists in any recent conflict”. Nine journalists have been confirmed killed in the line of duty since 7 October and “the death toll could rise further still”, the agency said.

• The head of Israeli military intelligence said he bears responsibility for the intelligence failures that led to Hamas carrying out its surprise onslaught on 7 October. Maj Gen Aharon Haliva is the latest Israeli defence official to publicly state that they take responsibility for the Hamas attack, after the head of the Shin Bet security agency and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff made similar remarks in recent days.

• The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is set to visit Israel, possibly as soon as Thursday, according to a Sky News report. Meanwhile, the UK foreign office said it has successfully brought back more than 900 people from Israel.

• A British teenager is missing and feared kidnapped after Hamas targeted Israeli kibbutzim was murdered during the attack, relatives have confirmed. Yahel Sharabi, 13, was originally believed missing and possibly taken hostage after the raid on the Be’eri kibbutz two miles from the Gazan border in which her Bristol-born mother, Lianne, was killed. Her sister Noiya, 16, who is a British citizen like Yahel, and their Israeli father, Eli, are still missing.

• The UN’s human rights office said Israel’s siege of Gaza and its evacuation order there could amount to the international crime of the forcible transfer of civilians.

• Hamas said a senior commander and member of its higher military council, Ayman Nofal, has been killed by an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli air force also said he had been killed, stating: “He directed many terrorist attacks against Israel and the security forces, and he directed the targets of Hamas’s rocket fire, specifically targeting areas populated by uninvolved civilians.”

This is Helen Sullivan taking over our rolling coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. I’ll be with you throughout the night.

Lisa O’Carroll

EU prime ministers have vowed to step up their efforts to mitigate a looming humanitarian crisis in Gaza in a bid to present a united diplomatic front after a week of dysfunction and mixed messages from leaders in Brussels.

After an emergency video conference to address the conflagration in the Middle East, the European Council leader, Charles Michel, stressed the need to present “a clear unified course of action that reflects the complexity of the unfolding situation”.

Tuesday’s talks were preceded by a statement by EU leaders on Sunday strongly condemning Hamas’s “terrorist attacks” while mentioning “the importance to ensure the protection of all civilians at all times” and the need for Israel to comply with international law.

Michel spoke of the need to use all the leverage the EU could muster to help the hostages held by Hamas and to persuade Egypt to approve a humanitarian corridor for aid and refugees.

After terrorist attacks in Belgium and France, a heightened concern about the return of hate crime and speech was also a priority, said Michel.

Michel made his remarks after a joint press conference with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who has been the subject of criticism over her failure to emphasize Israel’s obligation to comply with international law while defending itself.

Read the full story here.

A White House statement confirming Joe Biden’s decision to cancel a planned stop in Jordan said:

After consulting with King Abdullah II of Jordan and in light of the days of mourning announced by President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, President Biden will postpone his travel to Jordan and the planned meeting with these two leaders and President Sisi of Egypt.

He looks forward to consulting in person with these leaders soon, and agreed to remain regularly and directly engaged with each of them over the coming days.

The White House said Joe Biden will no longer travel to Jordan as part of his trip.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said earlier that Jordan was no longer holding a planned summit with the US president and the Egyptian and Palestinian leaders that was scheduled to take place in Amman tomorrow.

Safadi, speaking to Al Jazeera, said the summit was cancelled because “there is no use in talking now about anything except stopping the war”.