Middle East conflict live: US bombs Yemen, Pentagon says; dozens killed in Israeli strike on Gaza home, officials say | Israel-Gaza war

In the opening summary, we mentioned reports of over 30 people being killed in an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia this morning.

In another deadly airstrike, on the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City, five people were killed, with others still missing in the aftermath, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.

“A number of civilians are still under the rubble,” the agency said.

Contacted by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Israeli military said it was “looking into the reports” of the airstrikes.

A renewed Israeli assault was launched on the northern part of the Gaza Strip last month, with the Israeli military claiming it was to stop Hamas fighters regrouping there.

The blockage of aid and food deliveries and the targeting of civilian infrastructure, however, have led to accusations that Israel is committing the war crime of seeking to forcibly displace the remaining population.

The entirety of northern Gaza is under Israeli evacuation orders but it is unclear how many people remain. Last month, the UN estimated there were about 400,000 civilians unable or unwilling to follow Israeli evacuation orders to the south.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

US warplanes staged multiple airstrikes Saturday night on advanced weapons storage facilities in Yemen belonging to the Houthi militant group, the Pentagon has said.

The facilities contained various weapons used to target military and civilian vessels navigating international waters throughout the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to information provided to AFP by the Pentagon.

The Houthi-run Al Masirah television network reported three American and British raids that targeted the capital Sana’a’s southern Al Sabeen district.

Elsewhere, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reports that 13 children were among 33 civilians who were killed early this morning by an Israeli airstrike that targeted a densely populated home in Jabalia, northern Gaza. The area in northern Gaza has been under a total Israeli siege for weeks and the UN has described conditions there as “apocalyptic”. According to Wafa, a significant number of people injured in the Israeli attack have been transferred to the al-Ahli Baptist hospital for urgent medical care.

Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif posted a report from the scene of Sunday’s pre-dawn strike on X, saying that the massacre was one of the biggest so far in Jabalia and that the victims were mostly women and children. It was not possible to independently verify the report as Israel does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza.

Israel claimed in a post on X that it had “eliminated dozens of terrorists and destroyed terrorist infrastructures and a warehouse of weapons” in Jabalia, without providing any evidence.

More on those developments soon. In other news:

• At least 40 people were killed in strikes across Gaza late on Friday and into Saturday, including two journalist siblings, Ahmad Abu Sakhil and Zahra Abu Sakhil, who were killed together with their father, Muhammad, and three others when Israeli warplanes bombed a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, Al Jazeera reported. Gaza’s media office said their deaths raised the number of journalists killed by Israeli attacks to 188 since 7 October 2023. A day earlier, the local radio journalist Khaled Abu Zir was killed, according to Palestinian media reports.

• Others killed in Israeli attacks included two Palestinians who had been sheltering in the grounds of al-Aqsa hospital in Deir el-Balah and three men who had been released from Israeli detention moments before, Al Jazeera and Palestinian media reported, as well as children who were reportedly targeted by an Israeli airstrike as they tried to collect water in Jabalia, northern Gaza.

• In Lebanon five siblings, three of whom were deaf and mute, were among at least 40 people killed by Israeli strikes late on Friday and on Saturday, local authorities and media reported. Youssef Jundi, a local resident, told the Associated Press that his longtime neighbour and friend, Ghazwa Dabouk, was among the seven people killed in an Israeli strike on the port city of Tyre late on Friday. Dabouk’s sisters Elissar, Rabab and Fidaa, who were deaf and mute, were also killed in the airstrike, together with Dabouk’s brother Ali, who had autism.

• Fifteen people were killed in a raid on the civil defence centre affiliated to the Islamic Message Scouts Association in the Lebanese town of Derqim Ras al-Ain, according to the state-run national news agency. Five people were killed and a number of others injured in an Israeli attack on a house in Hanawiya, southern Lebanon, according to reports.

• The Qatari government has informed the US and Israel it will stop mediation efforts to halt the conflict in Gaza because it no longer thinks the parties are negotiating in good faith. The Gulf state has concluded that talks have become a political football, and its efforts to facilitate them were generating criticism towards it, according to a diplomatic source briefed on the situation. “As long as there is a refusal to negotiate a deal in good faith, they cannot continue to mediate,” the source said.

• Benjamin Netanyahu is set to stay in power in Israel until elections due in 2026 and possibly longer, analysts and officials now believe, after a tumultuous week in which the 75-year-old veteran politician successfully fired his defence minister and was boosted by the results of the US election. Netanyahu’s newly reinforced position could lead to further intensification of Israel’s assault on Lebanon, and prolong its war in Gaza, critics fear – although the incoming US president Donald Trump has said he wants to swiftly end both wars.