Israel-Palestine live: Thousands in state of panic as Israel continues to strike hospitals

Israeli bombardment intensified across the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening, as all internet and communications were cut off in the besieged enclave for the third time since the war began a month ago. 

Several of those attacks focused on Gaza City and its surrounding area, while Israeli shelling also took place in northern Gaza, near the Indonesian Hospital as well as the Jabalia refugee camp. 

Elsewhere on Sunday, an Israeli strike on a car near Bint Jbeil, in southern Lebanon, killed three children and their grandmother, according to Lebanese media and lawmakers. 

Click the link below to read our wrap story on Sunday's developments. 

Read more: Israel intensifies Gaza bombardment, as Blinken meets Abbas

Benny Gantz, an opposition leader who joined Israel's war cabinet as part of an emergency government, has called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to retract reported comments on the need to check if a pre-war protest among army reservists pushed Hamas to carry out its 7 October attack.

Several Israeli news outlets, including Channel 12, reported that Netanyahu said there may be a need to examine whether months of protests against his government's controversial judicial reforms, including by reservists who said they would no longer report for regular duty, added to Hamas' motivation. 

Gantz wrote on X: "Over 100% reporting for reserve duty and extraordinary mobilisation of the entire Israeli society – they are the overwhelming answer to all our enemies.

Evading responsibility and slandering during wartime is an insult to the State. The Prime Minister must retract his worlds clearly and unambiguously. I would like to strengthen again all those who serve – from every place. Thanks to you – We will win."

In a statement, Netanyahu denied the reports. 

"Contrary to what was published, the prime minister did not in any way say that the (reservists') refusal was what led Hamas to attack Israel," his office said on Sunday. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was working hard to ensure that the conflict in Gaza does not spread, during an unannounced visit to Iraq on Sunday.

Blinken landed in Baghdad on Sunday evening for talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

Iran-backed paramilitary group Kataib Hezbollah issued a warning on Saturday night that Blinken's visit would be met with "an unprecedented escalation."

Rocket and drone attacks on US troops and its allies in Iraq and Syria have seen an uptick since war broke out on 7 October, according to US officials.

"It was very important to send a very clear message to anyone who might seek to take advantage of the conflict in Gaza to threaten our personnel here or anywhere else in the region: Don’t do it," Blinken told reporters in Baghdad.

Sudani has pledged to pursue the perpetrators of rocket attacks on three military bases in Iraq hosting international coalition advisers.

Blinken said that US officials were working to secure a humanitarian pause in Gaza, adding that 100 trucks of aid were moving into the besieged enclave, but that it was "grossly insufficient". 

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has lost all contact with its teams in Gaza following the cutting of internet and telecommunications for the third time since the war began.

"We hope they are safe and well," it wrote in a statement on X. 

Hezbollah said on Sunday that it fired multiple grad rockets at Kiryat Shmona, a town in northern Israel, in retaliation for an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon that it said had killed a woman and three children.

In a statement, the Lebanese group said its attack came in response to Israel's "heinous and brutal crime". 

Rocket shrapnel fell in Kyriat Shmona, setting fire to a vehicle. There were no reported casualties, according to Israeli police and medics.

Israel's military is carrying out "intense bombings" near a number of hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip. 

“For more than an hour, intense bombings have been taking place around hospitals,” Salama Maarouf, head of the government’s media office in Gaza, told reporters. 

According to the Wafa news agency, Israeli bombardment on Sunday evening had killed and injured scores of Palestinians in the vicinity of Gaza City. 

The Palestinians communications and information ministry confirmed that Israel had cut all internet and communications for the third time since the war began. 

Lebanon will submit a complaint to the UN over an Israeli strike in south Lebanon which killed four civilians, including three children.

Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told Reuters on Sunday that Beirut was collecting information and pictures and will likely submit its complaint on Monday.

An Israeli strike on a car near Bint Jbeil, in southern Lebanon, killed three children and their grandmother, according to Lebanese media and lawmakers. 

Protesters filled the streets of Washington DC on Saturday afternoon calling for a ceasefire, in what attendees and observers said was the largest pro-Palestine protest in US history.

Organisers said in a press statement on Sunday that the turnout was over 300,000.

Several in attendance told MEE that the ongoing Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza, which has so far killed more than 9,000 Palestinians, had triggered an awakening in the country's public consciousness. 

"I've posted different things on my Instagram, and people would DM me asking me what this is all about. Then [sic] they learn about it," Tone Trump, a Muslim artist from Philadelphia, told MEE.

"It's waking up the world, and not just their hearts but their minds. Even myself, I have been learning so much over the past few weeks."

You can read MEE journalist Umar A Farooq's full report from the Washington protest below. 

Read more: Washington sees largest pro-Palestine protest in US history

An Israeli air strike on a car near Bint Jbeil, in southern Lebanon, killed three children and their grandmother, according to a Lebanese lawmaker.

The three children were aged between eight and 14 according to Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah parliamentarian who represents the Bint Jbeil area. 

"The enemy will pay the price for its crimes against civilians," Fadlallah told Reuters. 

He added that the mother of the three children was also wounded in the attack. The Israeli army said it would be releasing a statement later on Sunday about a strike in Lebanon. 

Israeli air strikes have intensified across the Gaza Strip over the past hour, at the same time as a complete internet and communications blackout.

Several of those attacks have focused on Gaza City and its surrounding area, according to media reports. The city is where al-Shifa hospital is located, the largest hospital in Gaza which Israel has suggested it may bomb.

Attacks also took place in northern Gaza, near the Indonesian Hospital as well as the Jabalia refugee camp, Al-Jazeera reported.

In the refugee camp, Israeli strikes targeted and destroyed the main water source, in an apparent attempt to cut all sources of survival for civilians and force them to leave to the south.

Israel has ordered more than one million Palestinians in the north to move south, but has repeatedly bombed areas in the southern Gaza Strip, as well as targeting roads linking the north and south.

Sunday evening's intense bombardment marks the third time Israel has totally cut internet communications while intensifying its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

All internet and communications in the besieged Gaza Strip have been cut again, according to Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel. 

"We regret to announce a complete disruption of all communication and internet services within the Gaza Strip, due to the main routes, which had been recently reconnected, being disconnected once again by the Israeli side," Paltel said in a statement on Facebook. 

Communications were previously completely cut off by Israeli air strikes last Friday, before returning in some parts of the enclave.

Turkish police had allowed pro-Palestine protesters to hold a demonstration in a designated area near an airbase that houses US forces, but some allegedly tried to enter the facility, according to Turkish media.

The Incirlik airbase in southeast Turkey is owned by Turkey but is also used by the US Air Force and occasionally the UK's Royal Air Force, providing them with strategic access to large parts of the Middle East.

Turkish police on Sunday used teargas and water cannon to disperse the pro-Palestinian rally.

More here: Turkish police fire teargas, water cannon at pro-Palestine protesters

An Israeli air strike on a car in southern Lebanon has killed three children and their mother, according to media reports. 

Lebanon's Al Mayadeen news channel said an Israeli drone strike hit a civilian car in the Bint Jbeil area near the border with Israel. 

Hassan Fadallah, a Lebanese lawmaker representing Bint Jbeil, told Reuters that the three children killed were aged between eight and 14. 

Fadallah, who is aligned to Hezbollah, added that the attack was a "dangerous development" which would have reprecussions.

Turkish police used teargas and water cannon after hundreds of people protested on Sunday outside a southern Turkey airbase that houses US troops.

The protest was led by the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a Turkish aid agency, which organised a convoy to travel to the Incirlik airbase in Adana province to protest against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and US support for Israel.

It came just hours before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due in Ankara for talks on the Israel-Palestine war.

Footage shared online showed protesters toppling barricades and throwing plastic chairs and rocks at police, who fired smoke bombs at crowds. The demonstrators waved Turkish and Palestinian flags.

IHH president Bulent Yildirim addressed the crowds in Adana, urging them not to attack police.

"Friends, it is wrong to throw rocks or do similar things because both the police and soldiers would want to go to Gaza and fight and they will go when the time comes," Yildirim said.

"Our rage is huge. We cannot hold it in. But Turkey is doing what it can," he added.

The aid agency ended its rally early due to the confrontations with police.