Israel-Hamas LIVE: WHO chief 'appalled' by Israel attack on Indonesian Hospital as 28 premature babies are transferred from Al Shifa hospital to Egypt

Turkey will not allow the issue of Israel's nuclear weapons to be dropped from the global agenda, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday, while attributing European support for Israel to what he called 'the shame of the Holocaust'.

Speaking after a cabinet meeting, Erdogan said the West was trying to 'vindicate' what he said were Israel's war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, adding Western countries had a 'fraternity of lies' with Israel which he called 'shameful'.

'The shame of the Holocaust has literally taken European leaders hostage,' he said. 'We, as Turkey, will not allow the issue of Israel's nuclear to be forgotten,' Erdogan added.

A UN protectorate in Gaza would not solve the conflict there, the body's Secretary-General said Monday, calling instead for a 'transition period' involving Arab nations and the United States and leading to a two-state solution.

• Antonio Guterres said it was 'important to be able to transform this tragedy into an opportunity' - which, for him, meant moving 'in a determined and irreversible way to a two-state solution.'
• This means, after the current war between Israel and Hamas fighters in Gaza ends, 'a strengthened Palestinian Authority, assuming responsibilities in Gaza,' he said.
• But the Palestinian Authority cannot go into Gaza backed by Israeli tanks, he added - meaning the 'international community needs to look into a transition period.'
• 'I do not think that a UN protectorate in Gaza is a solution,' however, Guterres said.
• Instead, he called for a 'multi-stakeholder approach' that would see the US act as the 'main guarantor' of Israel's security, while Arab nations are 'essential' to support Palestinians.

The families of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza have tearfully pleaded with Israeli lawmakers not to advance legislation that would permit the death penalty for convicted Palestinian militants, including those involved in Hamas' Oct. 7 assault on Israel.

• The families, who represent some of the 240 people abducted by Hamas and other militants that day, told far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that the legislation risked angering Hamas and putting the lives of their relatives at risk.
• 'Not now, when the lives of our loved ones are on the line, when the sword is on their necks,' Gil Dikman, whose cousin is believed to be held hostage in Gaza, said Monday during an emotional hearing at the Knesset, Israel's parliament.
• The National Security Committee hearing devolved into a screaming match between nationalist lawmakers and hostage families. After the hearing, Ben-Gvir wrote on X, formerly called Twitter, that the legislation is an important tool for increasing pressure on Hamas. 'In the Middle East, you don't blink, you hit your enemy with every tool and bring them to their knees,' he said.
• Ophir Katz, the head of the government coalition and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, told reporters that the amendment to the penal code would not come up for a vote until it was vetted by senior Cabinet members and Netanyahu.

Pakistan caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-haq Kakar on Monday described the killing of children in Israeli strikes in Gaza as a massacre.

Kakar made the comment in a televised speech on World Children's Day, which he said made him think of children in Gaza.

'They are being brutalized, mutilated and massacred by the Israeli forces,' Kakar said.

He said professional armies never target civilians, innocent children or women, and only fight against other armies.

'The massacre of innocent children and women in Gaza is a clear violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, human rights, women's rights,' he said.

Kakar asked the United Nations and the international community to help stop Israeli strikes on children and women in Gaza.

The father of a nine-year-old girl who has been held hostage by Hamas for six weeks says he's terrified that his daughter is enduring 'sheer terror' in the airless Gaza tunnels.

Emily Hand turned nine years old as a Hamas prisoner on Friday, exactly six weeks after the terror group launched a surprise incursion into Israel and slaughtered 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Her father, Irish-born Thomas Hand, previously believed that she had died after a unit of Hamas terrorists killed over 130 at Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7, where she was staying for a sleepover at her friend's home.

At a press conference in London today, Hand said he believed she was facing 'sheer terror and panic every hour of every day.'

'She must be saying every day: "Where's my daddy? Where's my daddy, why isn't be coming to save me?".'

For the full report, please click the link below.

The president of Cyprus says his country is ready to begin shipping significant quantities of humanitarian aid to Gaza using shallow-draft vessels able to reach Gazan shores once conditions on the ground allow it.

• President Nikos Christodoulides said Cyprus' initiative for a maritime corridor to Gaza from the Cypriot port of Larnaca, about 230 miles (370 kilometres) away, is the 'only one currently being discussed on an international level' as a feasible way to supplement the trickle of assistance reaching Gaza's Palestinian population through Egypt's Rafa checkpoint.
• He said in an interview Monday that planning for the aid link is essentially completed and assistance can begin to flow when a pause in fighting is declared.
• Christodoulides, who has been in regular contact with the Israeli government about the plan, said getting a go-ahead for the start of the aid shipments is a complicated matter involving Israeli military operations in Gaza and intricate negotiations over the hostages being held by Hamas.
• He said a key Israeli sensitivity about the security of the shipments has been addressed through an invitation to officials from Israel, the U.S. and European countries to join Cypriot agents in vetting all aid earmarked for Gaza so nothing reaches the territory that could be weaponized by Hamas.

The head of the World Health Organisation said on Monday he was "appalled" by an attack on the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza that he said had killed 12 people, including patients, citing unspecified reports.

'Health workers and civilians should never have to be exposed to such horror, and especially while inside a hospital,' he said on social media platform X.

Lebanon's Hezbollah movement said it targeted troops in northern Israel with drones, artillery and missiles today, claiming a string of new attacks.

The Israel-Lebanon border has seen daily exchanges of fire since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

Hezbollah fighters targeted soldiers west of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel 'with three attack drones', the Iran-backed group said in a statement, adding shortly after that it had also targeted troops in the area with artillery fire.

Both statements claimed the attacks were 'direct hits'.

Israel's army said 'three UAVs (drones) were identified striking adjacent' to an army post, without specifying where. It added that 'no injuries were reported'.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will take part in a virtual summit of the BRICS group of nations on Tuesday to discuss the Israel-Hamas war, the Kremlin said.

'On November 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin will participate in an extraordinary BRICS summit (via videoconference) to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,' the Kremlin said in a statement Monday, referring to the influential bloc that includes Brazil, India, China and South Africa.

Palestinian officials are saying that a field hospital sent by Jordan has entered the Gaza Strip - the first since the war between Israel and the territory's rulers Hamas erupted on October 7.

'The hospital will be established in Khan Yunis, to receive the wounded and the sick, under catastrophic conditions which southern hospitals are experiencing, with the influx of hundreds of wounded each day and continued aggressive aerial and artillery strikes,' said Mohammed Zaqout, director-general of Gaza hospitals.

There are around 30,000 wounded people across Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Gaza's Hamas government said on Sunday the death toll from Israel's aerial bombardment of the Palestinian territory, and fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants, had reached 13,000 since hostilities began on October 7.

The Hamas government said more than 5,500 children were among the dead, alongside 3,500 women, with 30,000 more people wounded.

Its health ministry has previously said it can no longer give exact tolls as intense fighting has prevented bodies from being recovered.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said Monday Israeli forces had struck the Indonesian Hospital and killed at least 12 people, including patients, in the north of the war-torn Palestinian territory.

Dozens more were wounded and around 700 people remained trapped inside the 'besieged' medical centre, said Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman of the ministry.

Israel did not immediately comment.

The latest reported blow to Gaza's devastated health sector came as hopes rose that 31 premature babies evacuated from another hospital, Al-Shifa, would be taken from a Gaza clinic to safety in Egypt through the Rafah crossing.

At least 14 Palestinians were killed in two Israeli air strikes on houses in the town of Rafah, near the border with Egypt, health officials said.

Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels said yesterday that they had seized in the Red Sea a ship owned by an Israeli businessman and rerouted it to Yemen's coast.

The Iran-backed rebels in Yemen seized the Galaxy Leader on Sunday.

The vessel is operated by a Japanese firm, prompting Tokyo to intervene and 'directly' approach the rebels.

The announcement came days after the rebel group threatened to target Israeli vessels in the waterway over Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ship 'was hijacked with Iran guidance by the Yemenite Huthi militia'.

In response, Iran's foreign ministry said the Israeli accusations were 'invalid' and 'projection meant to escape from the situation they are facing'.

'We have repeatedly announced that the resistance groups in the region represent their countries and make decisions and act based on the interests of their countries.

'The Zionist regime (Israel) cannot accept that it suffered a major defeat in Palestine and wants to find a justification for the defeat it suffered by accusing the Islamic Republic of Iran,' Kanani added.

Thousands of family members of the roughly 240 hostages held in Gaza streamed into Jerusalem last night, criticising the Israeli government.

They castigated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his management of the war with Hamas, and pleaded with the government to do whatever it takes to bring their loved ones home.

As public pressure mounted, Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel's War Cabinet would meet with representatives of the families this week.

'I am marching with you. The Israeli people are marching with you,' he said. 'I promise, when we have something to say, we will inform you.'

The march capped a five-day trek from Tel Aviv and represented the largest protest on behalf of the hostages since they were dragged into Gaza by Hamas on October 7 as part of the terrorists' deadly attack in southern Israel.

Emily Hand turned nine on Friday. Like many little girls the world over, she loves to sing and to dance like Beyonce.

But unlike those other girls, Emily 'spent her birthday in the Gaza tunnels', one of the scores of hostages snatched by Hamas during its deadly October 7 attack on Israel, according to her father Thomas Hand.

'She wouldn't even know it was her birthday. She doesn't know what day it is, and what date it is,' Irish-born Hand told AFP news agency Sunday, making a heart-rending appeal to the UK to bring Emily home.

Based on initial information, the 63-year-old thought his daughter was dead.

'But that was mistaken identity,' he said on the sidelines of a protest for the release of the more than 200 people being held by the Palestinian Islamist group.

The DNA tests didn't match, he added.

Watch Mr Hand speak outside Downing Street on Sunday:

'Later on we had an eyewitness... (who) saw her being led away by the terrorists, into a van off to Gaza' after the attack on the Beeri kibbutz, Mr Hand said.

For the father, who moved to Israel at the age of 32, Beeri had been idyllic. 'Seriously it was paradise on earth... until it all came crushing down' on that 'terrifying day'.

The Beeri kibbutz saw some of the worst atrocities when Gaza-based Hamas militants stormed across the militarised border, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Reporting by AFP.

Israeli tanks are positioned around a hospital in north Gaza where 12 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded, the territory's health ministry has said today.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Israeli military of the reports from the Indonesian Hospital but the Palestinian news agency WAFA said the facility had been hit by artillery fire.

At the other end of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, at least 14 Palestinians were killed in two Israeli air strikes on houses in the town of Rafah, health officials said.

Rafah is near the border with Egypt.

The Israeli military issued a statement with video of air strikes and troops going house-to-house, saying it killed three Hamas company commanders and a squad of Palestinian fighters, without giving specific locations.

Hello and welcome to MailOnline's live coverage of the on-going conflict in the Middle East between Israel and the Hamas terror group.

Israel launched its offensive against Hamas after a wave of brutal cross-border raids on October 7 left 1,200 people dead, the majority of them civilians.

The Hamas government says the death toll from Israel's aerial bombardment and ground operations in Gaza has reached 13,000, thousands of them children.

Six weeks into the war, Israel is facing intense international pressure to justify its bloody toll. Israel officials have warned a 'window of legitimacy' for the war to rout Hamas may be closing.

Here's what else you need to know on day 44 of the war:

• Qatari mediators have said they are inching closer to a deal to free some of the 240 hostages held by Hamas terrorists inside Gaza.
• Meanwhile, Israeli troops have today been 'expanding its operational activities in additional neighbourhoods', warning residents Gaza's largest refugee camp Jabalia and a nearby coastal camp to evacuate.
• A Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed in twin strikes on Jabalia on Saturday, including on a UN school sheltering displaced people.
• UN rights chief Volker Turk on Sunday condemned the purported strike on the school as 'horrifying', adding that 'the horrendous events of the past 48 hours in Gaza beggar belief.'
• Israel on Sunday presented what it said was evidence Hamas gunmen used Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa, to hide foreign hostages and to mask underground tunnels.
• The Israeli military released what was said to be CCTV footage from October 7 of two male hostages from Nepal and Thailand being brought into the hospital. 'We have not yet located both of these hostages,' army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters.
• Israel also accused the Palestinian militant group of executing a 19-year-old Israeli soldier Noa Marciano at Al-Shifa and presented images of what it said was a 55-metre-long underground tunnel under the hospital.
• Israel has repeatedly claimed that Al-Shifa doubles as a base for Palestinian militants, a charge Hamas and hospital administrators deny.
• The World Health Organization has called the hospital a 'death zone'.
• Over the weekend, hundreds of people fled Al-Shifa hospital on foot as loud explosions were heard around the complex. Columns of sick and injured were seen leaving with displaced people, doctors and nurses.