Middle East crisis live: Israel warned against ‘catastrophic’ Rafah offensive as starvation fears grow
European chief diplomat Josep Borell says 1.4 million Palestinians in southern Gaza city are ‘without safe place to go, facing starvation’
Three people killed in Israeli airstrikes near Damascus, say the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
Israeli airstrikes that targeted a building in an upmarket area near the Syrian capital killed three people early Saturday, reports AFP citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed in the airstrikes but could not immediately confirm whether the dead were fighters.
Rahman added that many other people were injured in the strikes on a neighbourhood hosting “villas for top military and officials.”
The war monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria, earlier reported the “Israeli attack” on “a residential building west of the Syrian capital Damascus”, with the sound of “violent explosions”.
AFP say that state media reported that Syrian air defences responded to an Israeli “air attack”.
State news agency Sana cited a military source saying that at about 1.05 am (10.05pm GMT Friday), “the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of points in the Damascus countryside”.
Air defences responded to the missiles and “downed some of them”, the statement said, adding that the attack caused “some material losses”.
The strikes came hours after an area near a military airport west of Damascus came under missile attack on Friday, the Observatory said, while the defence ministry said drones had entered Syrian airspace from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The Observatory did not say who was behind what it described as a “missile” attack.
“Positions belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other pro-Iran groups are present” in the area, added the Observatory.
Opening summary
We are restarting our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis. Here is an overview of the latest key developments.
Israel’s plans for a military offensive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip are “alarming”, the EU’s foreign policy chief has said.
“1.4 million Palestinians are currently in Rafah without safe place to go, facing starvation,” Josep Borell said on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday.
Many of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have taken refuge in the territory’s southernmost city.
“Reports of an Israeli military offensive on Rafah are alarming,” Borell said, adding it would have “catastrophic consequences”.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Friday that a “massive operation” was needed in Rafah and he ordered Israel’s military to prepare for evacuating the city ahead of an expected invasion.
More on that shortly. In other news:
The head of the Palestinian Authority said Israel’s escalation in Rafah aimed to push Palestinians from their land. The office of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said he held the Israeli and US governments responsible for any effects of the expected invasion and that Israel’s actions threatened regional peace and security.
Civilians in Gaza were at “grave risk of genocide” in response to Israel ordering people in Rafah to evacuate, said Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard.
The Norwegian Refugee Council’s secretary general warned of a “bloodbath” if Israeli operations expanded to Rafah. “No war can be allowed in a gigantic refugee camp,” Jan Egeland said. Aid workers said an Israeli advance into the area could cause mass deaths among those trapped there, with humanitarian aid in danger of collapse.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces had raided the society’s al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, and were searching it. “We’re finding it difficult to communicate with our crews inside the hospital,” the society said on Friday. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
At least 22 people, including children and women, were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Rafah and in central Gaza overnight into Friday. The attacks hit a residential building in Rafah and a kindergarten-turned-shelter for the displaced in the central town of Zuwaida. The dead and wounded were taken to nearby hospitals, where the bodies were seen Associated Press journalists.
Undercover Israeli killings in a West Bank hospital “may be war crimes”, a group of UN experts said. The killing of three Palestinian men in the hospital by Israeli commandos disguised as medical workers and Muslim women last month may meet the threshold for war crimes, they alleged.