Israel-Hamas war LIVE: Israeli air force strikes 600 targets in a day as IDF expands ground assault into northern Gaza

An installation called ‘Empty Beds’ to represent the more than 200 people who are being held hostage by Hamas terrorists has been set up in Jerusalem.

The installation was initiated by survivors of Kibbutz Nir Oz and the families of hostages held in Gaza.

A knife-wielding Palestinian stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli police officer before being shot dead in annexed east Jerusalem on Monday, police said.

• ‘A terrorist from east Jerusalem armed with a knife arrived at the Mandelbaum gas station in Jerusalem,’ police said in a statement. ‘The terrorist stabbed a border police officer, and after grabbing his gun and trying to shoot it, fled the scene.’
• ‘Border police officers at the scene neutralised the terrorist with gunfire,’ it said, without giving the attacker’s identity. Police were pictured at the scene covering the alleged attacker’s body.
• Shaare Zedek hospital said it received a man in his 30s who had sustained ‘stab wounds to the torso’, describing his condition as ‘serious but stable’.
• Israeli forces have stepped up their ground offensive in Gaza as part of the military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks that officials say killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, with another 239 people taken hostage.
• The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 8,000 people, mainly civilians, mostly civilians and more than half of them children, have since been killed in Israeli air and ground strikes.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is to chair an emergency Cobra meeting today amid fears that the conflict between Hamas and Israel could have increased the domestic terror threat in Britain.

The PM will assemble police and national security officials and Home Secretary Suella Braverman in Downing Street on Monday morning, Whitehall sources said.

Education minister Robert Halfon stressed before the meeting that the Government has to ensure British citizens are ‘safe and secure from the threat of terrorism’.

He declined to say whether the terror threat level might be raised. It currently stands at ‘substantial’ in England, Wales and Scotland, meaning an attack is likely.

Screaming parents and their crying children were forced to run the gauntlet through an angry anti-Semitic mob that had stormed a runway in Russia last night to hunt down Jews after their flight from Israel landed in a Muslim-majority region.

Terrifying footage shows hundreds of thugs descending onto the runway of Makhachlaka airport in the Dagestan region in a sea of black as they screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ while waving Palestinian flags last night.

As families started to disembark the flight from Tel Aviv, an aviation official screamed at them to get back onto the aircraft as he saw the angry mob running towards them.

The captain of the plane warned his passengers to remain on the aircraft or they would ‘be crushed’ by the angry crowd, with some attempting to board the plane by climbing on its wings and roof.

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Britain is trying to arrange a temporary cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip so that more humanitarian aid can be delivered to the besieged Palestinians, foreign minister James Cleverly said on Monday.

• Aid supplies to Gaza have been choked since Israel began bombarding the densely populated Palestinian enclave in response to a deadly attack by the militant group Hamas on October 7.
• Cleverly said that humanitarian aid was trickling into Gaza but the volume needed to be increased significantly.
• ‘We’re working extensively with the Egyptians, with the Israelis, and others to try and have a humanitarian pause, temporary pause so that we can get that humanitarian aid to the people that need it,’ Cleverly said.
• However, he stopped short of calling for a full ceasefire in the conflict.
• Israel has so far rejected international calls, including by the United Nations, for a humanitarian pause to its bombardment of Gaza that has displaced one million people and killed more than 8,000, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting Monday afternoon on Israel’s ground incursion in Gaza and the dire humanitarian plight of Palestinians at the request of the United Arab Emirates.

• The UAE, the Arab representative on the council, is one of 10 elected council members working on a new Security Council resolution on the Israel-Hamas war which is still in discussion.
• The council has rejected four draft resolutions – one vetoed by the United States, one vetoed by Russia and China, and two that failed to get the minimum nine ‘yes’ votes.
• The Gaza meeting will take place after the council meets first on Western Sahara and then on Colombia.
• The General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, adopted a resolution Friday by a vote of 120-14 with 45 abstentions calling for humanitarian truces leading to a cessation of hostilities.
• Security Council resolutions are legally binding. General Assembly resolutions are not but they are an important barometer of world opinion.

Israel was ‘gradually moving ahead according to plan’ in the Gaza Strip, chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said during a regular press briefing on Monday.

Hagari said the forces killed dozens of Gaza militants overnight but refused to confirm the location of the ground forces after images on social media appeared to show Israeli tanks advancing on a main road in Gaza.

Israeli tanks have entered the edge of Gaza City and cut a key road from the north to the south of the war-torn Palestinian territory, witnesses told AFP news agency.

The witnesses said tanks were seen in the Zaytun district.

‘They have cut the Salahedin road and are firing at any vehicle that tries to go along it,’ said one resident.

Israeli forces have stepped up a ground offensive in recent days as part of its military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said ‘thousands of people’ broke into several of its warehouses and distribution centres in Gaza, grabbing basic items like flour and hygiene supplies yesterday.

‘This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down,’ it said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society on Sunday said Israel was repeatedly bombing around Al-Quds hospital in central Gaza, putting civilians at risk.

• Aside from the patients, some 14,000 people displaced by the war are sheltering there, the aid group said.
• The UN said there had also been weekend shelling near Gaza City’s Shifa hospital and the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, and that all 10 hospitals operating there had been told to evacuate by Israel in recent days.
• The World Health Organization chief said calls to evacuate Al-Quds hospital were ‘deeply concerning’.
• ‘It’s impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives,’ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.

Israel expanded its military assault deeper into the northern Gaza Strip as the UN and medical staff expressed fears over airstrikes hitting closer to hospitals where tens of thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter alongside thousands of wounded.

• Israeli forces killed ‘dozens’ of militants in overnight clashes in Gaza, the military said on Monday.
• Hamas terrorists also reported ‘heavy fighting in Gaza on the third night of Israel’s expanded ground raids into the war-torn territory with tanks and troops.

The Israeli Air Force said it had attacked 600 targets in Gaza, including weapons warehouses, hiding places and gatherings of Hamas operatives and anti-tank positions.

In one incident, a fighter jet targeted a building ‘with over 20 Hamas terrorist operatives inside,’ the military said. In another, a fighter jet was guided to an anti-tank missile launching post in the area of Al-Azhar University.