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

Israeli air strikes killed 548 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday afternoon. 

This takes the death toll to 10,328 people killed since 7 October, including 4,237 children, 2,719 women and 631 elderly people. At least 25,956 people have been wounded.

Around 2,450 people are still missing in Gaza, including 1,350 children. The vast majority of these people are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.

Additionally, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 161 Palestinians in the West Bank in the same period - a sharp rise from the monthly death toll in the occupied territory.

According to the health ministry, the October deaths take the total number of Palestinians killed this year in the West Bank to over 371.

Scores of people are feared killed or wounded in a fresh Israeli "massacre" in Gaza's Deir al-Balah, the Palestinian ministry of health has said. 

A photo shared by an AFP journalist on Tuesday showed the extent of damage done to the news agency's Gaza office following an Israeli air strike.

The AFP bureau was hit last week amid ongoing Israeli raids across the Gaza Strip. 

AFP called for more explanation by the Israeli military about the attack. The army had said fighter jets struck a building nearby that "might have caused debris". 

However, AFP said the Israeli statement "on its own does not explain the extent of the damage caused to the AFP bureau".

"A strike on the offices of an international news agency sends a deeply troubling message to all the journalists working in such difficult conditions in Gaza," said AFP chairman and CEO Fabrice Fries.

"It is essential that all efforts are made to protect media in Gaza," he added.

 While most of the world's attention has been squarely focused on the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, some major developments have been taking place elsewhere across the Middle East and North Africa. 

In Sudan, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has seized the majority of the western Darfur region in a shock collapse of the Sudanese army that has huge implications for the six-month-old war.

The development comes as talks between the warring parties in Jeddah, held under the auspices of the United States and Saudi Arabia, fail to achieve any breakthroughs.

At Middle East Eye we will continue to bring you the latest updates from Israel and Palestine, as well as other areas across the region. 

To read more on the developments in Sudan, read our story: Almost all of Sudan's Darfur falls to the RSF in severe blow to the army

Russia's foreign ministry suggested on Tuesday that international nuclear inspectors should be sent to Israel after a minister said using a nuclear bomb in Gaza was an option. 

Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman, said the remark by Israeli Heritage Minister Amihay Ben-Eliyahu "raised a huge number of questions".

"Question number one - it turns out that we are hearing official statements about the presence of nuclear weapons?" Zakharova was quoted as saying by state RIA news agency.

If so, she added, then where are the International Atomic Energy Agency and international nuclear inspectors?

Israel does not publicly acknowledge it has nuclear weapons, though the Federation of American Scientists estimates Israel has about 90 nuclear warheads, according to Reuters news agency. 

The number of journalists killed in Gaza by Israel has surpassed 48, Palestinian officials in Gaza said on Tuesday. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) previously said the violence since 7 October has been the deadliest for journalists covering conflict since they began documenting journalist fatalities in 1992. 

Aid that entered Gaza over the last month is equivalent to what used to enter the besieged trip in a single day before the war, a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross has said.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Suhair Zakkout urged an immediate ceasefire and said there was "no justification for bombing hospitals".

A Palestinian official in Gaza said ambulances have been denied entry back to the besieged enclave after transporting wounded people to Egypt last week.

Salama Maarouf, the head of the government media office in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Monday that Palestinian ambulances entered Egypt four days earlier, carrying a small group of critically wounded people.

However, they have not been allowed to return, which is hindering the already strained rescue efforts in Gaza. 

Maarouf said authorities in Gaza contacted their Egyptian counterparts, the World Health Organization, the International Red Cross and the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.

No one has been able to help facilitate the return of the ambulances, Maarouf added.

The Rafah border crossing is under the control of Egypt on one side, and Palestinian authorities in Gaza on the other. 

The Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza entered its second month on Tuesday morning, with the Palestinian death toll reaching the grim milestone of 10,000 people dead, in addition to over 160 killed in the occupied West Bank. 

The shelling has been unprecedented in its intensity and the scale of destruction it's causing, even for the besieged Gaza Strip, which has suffered through many Israeli bombing campaigns in the past, though none of them reached the level of devastation witnessed today. 

The bombardment was coupled with a suffocating Israeli siege, cutting off fuel, electricity, water and food supplies to Gaza. Throughout the bombing campaign, Israel has been given the full support of major western powers, led by the United States and the United Kingdom. 

Israel says it's fighting Hamas, which led a surprise attack into Israel on 7 October that left around 1,400 people killed, according to Israeli officials. 

But the shelling in Gaza has destroyed dozens of homes, hospitals, schools, bakeries, and water tanks - among other civilian infrastructure. The vast majority of those killed and wounded are civilians who were killed while sleeping in their homes, sheltering in schools or queueing up to buy bread. 

On average, a Palestinian child was killed every 10 minutes in Gaza in the past month, in addition to thousands who were wounded. 

As we enter the second month, calls for Israel to scale back its bombardment are growing, but there are no signs such a move will happen soon. Meanwhile, Israeli tanks are operating inside the Gaza Strip, aiming to invade Gaza City, the heart of the small Palestinian territory home to its main hospital and an estimated 400,000 people.

MEE will continue to bring you updates throughout the day on our live blog and social media pages on Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.   

Three members of Lebanese Hezbollah were killed on Monday amid a escalating clashes between the group and Israeli military.

Hezbollah released three separate statements on Monday announcing the death of members killed in clashes with Israel, bringing the total killed since the outbreak of war to 63.

Hezbollah said it bombed five sites along Lebanon’s border with Israel Monday. In retaliation, Israel said it attacked Hezbollah with combat aircraft and artillery fire.

Indonesia denied on Tuesday an Israeli claim that a hospital built in Gaza using Indonesian funding sits atop a network of Hamas tunnels and is located near a launchpad for rocket attacks.

"The Indonesian Hospital in Gaza is a facility built by the Indonesian people entirely for humanitarian purposes and to serve the medical needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza," Indonesia's foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

The statement came a day after Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the Indonesian Hospital had been built at a site that sat on top of a network of Hamas tunnels.

The Indonesian charity that operates the hospital, MER-C, also denied the facility was used by Hamas. 

"What Israel accused us of can be a precondition for them to launch an attack at the Indonesian hospital in Gaza," MER-C chief Sarbini Abdul Murad said in Jakarta on Monday. 

The "IDF's accusation is a precondition to justify attacks against us, therefore we need to debunk it", Murad added.

At least eight people were killed by an Israeli strike on a house in the Ma’an area east of Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip early on Tuesday, according to Arabic media.

The strike comes as Israel moves to split the Gaza Strip in two, dividing Gaza City in the north from Khan Younis in the south.

Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire and continues to pound the Gaza Strip with airstrikes.

China and the UAE have released a joint statement at the United Nations calling for an immediate ceasefire to the fighting in Gaza.

“We call for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire,” China’s Ambassador Zhang Jun said. 

“Civilians in Gaza cannot even find safety in UN facilities, hospitals and refugee camps,” Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, the UAE's ambassador to the UN added. 

“Wars have laws,” she said. “And they must be upheld.”

The joint statement was released after the UN Security Council on Monday failed to reach a resolution to the war.

The US has called for “humanitarian pauses” to stop the fighting, but other members want a “humanitarian ceasefire.”

Explosions were reported in Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, as videos on social media showed a large column of Israeli armoured vehicles moving through the camp.

Israel deployed a drone to strike targets in the camp.. Two young men were injured by fragments of a missile fired by the drone, according to Wafa news.

 Violent confrontations took place between young men and Israeli soldiers, Wafa said.

Meanwhile, an Israeli  bulldozer destroyed parts of the main streets in the camp.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was open to accepting “tactical little pauses” in Gaza  for humanitarian aid flows on Monday. 

His remarks that Israel is open to allowing “an hour here, an hour there” to stop fighting means the pauses discussed with Washington likely fall drastically short of the ceasefire many in the international community have called for to address the humanitarian crisis and spiralling death toll in Gaza.

Netanyahu told ABC news he would continue to reject a wider ceasefire until Hamas releases all of the hostages it is holding.

His comments provide the first detailed insights into how much time Israel might accept as the US presses for pauses in the fighting.