Live: Palestinian death toll in Gaza nears 26,000

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the US air strikes on Yemen, saying the attacks revealed what he called the true aggressive nature of the United States, Iran's IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.

Referring to the strikes, Raisi said such actions "are rejected and condemned by the freedom-seeking nations of the world".

Supporting defenceless Palestinians is the principled stance of Iran, Raisi added in a phone call with the head of Yemen's Houthi-led Supreme Political Council, Mahdi al-Masha, it reported.

Hamas' armed wing has been told by "several parties in the resistance fronts that they will expand their strikes on the Israeli enemy in the coming days", a spokesman for the Palestinian Islamist group's armed wing, Abu Ubaida, said.

Hamas armed wing spokesman Abu Ubaida said on Sunday that the fate of many Israeli hostages has become unknown.

In his first televised appearance for several weeks, Abu Ubaida said many of the hostages "may have been killed", blaming their fate on Israel, AFP reported.

"The fate of many of the enemy's hostages and detainees has become unknown in recent weeks and the rest have all entered the tunnel of the unknown due to the Zionist aggression," Abu Ubaida said in the televised statement.

"Most likely, many of them were killed recently, the rest are in great danger every hour and the enemy's leadership and army bear full responsibility."

He added: "Any talks before stopping the Israeli aggression are worthless."

Abu Ubaida also accused Israeli forces of launching a "religious war" by destroying mosques in the Gaza Strip.

"The Zionist enemy, within 100 days, destroyed most of the mosques in the Gaza Strip," he said.

"He desecrated, burned, and bulldozed those that his vehicles reached on the ground, and stopped the call to prayer… in a clear religious war."

The head of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said on Sunday that Israel had failed to achieve its objectives in Gaza and this would force it to negotiate.

"What has the enemy achieved in 100 days, other than killing?" Hassan Nasrallah asked in a televised speech. 

"It has not achieved any real victory or semblance of victory. It has failed in achieving its declared, half-declared and implicit objectives," he added, on the 100th day of the Israel-Hamas war. 

Nasrallah continued: "If this path continues, be it in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq, the enemy government will have no other choice but to accept the conditions of the resistance in Gaza, thereby putting an end to the aggression against Gaza and entering into negotiations."

The Hezbollah leader also denounced air strikes by the US and Britain, which on Friday hit scores of rebel targets in Yemen in response to the Houthis' attacks on shipping.

"What the Americans did in the Red Sea will harm the security of all maritime navigation," Nasrallah said.

Renewed US and British strikes hit the rebel-held port city of Hodeidah in the west of war-torn Yemen on Sunday, the Iran-backed Houthis' media reported.

"Air strikes from the American-British aggression hit Hodeidah," reported the Ansar Allah news website of the rebel group, marking the third consecutive day of reported strikes targeting the group over its attacks on Red Sea shipping.

The Israeli army said its soldiers killed two Palestinians at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Sunday. 

The army said a car had broken through a military checkpoint north of Hebron that led to a chase and an exchange of fire.

The White House spokesperson John Kirby said Sunday that a "lower intensity phase" of Israel's devastating war was "approaching soon".

He made the statement as Israeli fighter jets continued to pound the Gaza Strip with no sign of letting up so far. 

According to the Palestinian health ministry on Sunday, Israeli attacks over the past day killed 125 people and wounded 265 more. 

The Palestinian government media office in Gaza has released figures showing the extent of Israel's devastating "genocidal" war on Gaza, now in its 100th day. 

Here are the key numbers:

• (2,000) Massacres committed by the Israeli army (a massacre refers to an attack that leads to the mass killing of at least three people)

• (31,000) People killed and missing

• (23,968) Deaths recorded by hospitals 

• (10,600) Children killed

• (7,200) Women killed

• (337) Health professionals killed

• (45) Emergency responders killed

• (117) Journalists killed

• (7,000) Missing, 70 percent of whom are children and women

• (60,582) Wounded

• (11,000) Wounded and need urgent travel to receive life-saving treatment

• (10,000) Cancer patients facing the risk of death

• (99) Health professionals detained

• (9) Known journalists detained

• (2,000,000) Internally displaced

• (400,000) Diagnosed with infectious diseases as a result of displacement

• (134) Government offices destroyed

• (95) Schools and universities completely destroyed

• (295) Schools and universities partially damaged

• (150) Mosques completely destroyed 

• (245) Mosques partially damaged

• (3) Churches targeted and damaged 

• (70,000) Housing units completely destroyed 

• (290,000) Housing units partially damaged and made uninhabitable

• (65,000) Tonnes of explosives dropped by the Israeli army

• (30) Hospitals put out of service 

• (53) Health centres put of service 

• (150) Health institutions targeted 

• (121) Ambulances destroyed

• (200) Archaeological and heritage sites destroyed

With the Israeli war on Gaza entering its 100th day, the fear of a full-scale escalation with Hezbollah is growing each day in Lebanon. 

Tensions have been building up steadily in the south of the country since 7 October, but things took a turn for the worse earlier this month when Beirut was struck. 

A suspected Israeli air strike killed senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri in the Lebanese capital, an aggression labelled a red line by Hezbollah. Anticipating a forceful response from the group, a tense atmosphere now fills the city.  

"Until the al-Arouri assassination, the war was taking place in the south, with people dying every day, [but] the rest of Lebanon was pretty much oblivious," Randa Slim, senior analyst at the Washington-based Middle East Institute think tank, told Middle East Eye.

"The Arouri assassination in Beirut brought it home. Then, the mood shifted."

Read more: As war on Gaza passes 100 days, Lebanon faces the unknown

An anti-tank missile fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon has killed two Israelis in the northern town of Kfar Yuval. 

They were identified as Mira Ayalon, 76, and her son Barak Ayalon, 45, a member of the town's security team, according to the Israeli army. 

The Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Sunday that the United States was wrong if it thought the Houthis of Yemen would stop confronting Israel in the Red Sea, saying US actions there would harm the security of all maritime navigation.

Describing US and British strikes on Yemen as an act of stupidity, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Houthis would continue targeting ships belonging to Israel and going to its ports.

"The more dangerous thing is what the Americans did in the Red Sea will harm the security of all maritime navigation, even the ships that are not going to Palestine, even the ships which are not Israeli, even the ships that have nothing to do with the matter, because the sea has become a theatre of fighting, missiles, drones and war ships," he said.

"Security has been disrupted."

Reporting by Reuters

After three months of Israel's war on Gaza, and after months of widespread mass protests against the war and calls for US President Joe Biden to support a ceasefire, Washington ordered air strikes on Yemen, an escalatory move that could push the region into a wider war.

The decision by Biden has exponentially increased the level of anger from lawmakers and progressives who have been working since October to push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

But anger and dissent aren't limited to the progressive camp. Middle East Eye spoke to congressional staffers from several offices across both chambers, as well as several staffers working in the Biden administration who say that frustration towards Biden and Congress has reached a boiling point.

"The level of anger at Joe Biden is now the same as the level of anger at Donald Trump," one progressive Capitol Hill staffer told Middle East Eye on the night the US conducted the first strikes on Yemen.

"The idea that he would do that and then ask us to vote for him is ludicrous," the staffer said. "I don't know what planet they are operating on, but this is not how you win in November."

Read more: 'Appalled': Internal anger with Biden and Congress on Gaza reaches boiling point 

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said the death toll had reached 23,968 on the 100th day of fighting. 

It added that over the past day Israeli forces had killed at least 125 Palestinians and injured 265 others. 

The past 100 days have left thousands of Palestinians dead, homeless and starving as Israel continues its bombing campaign of the besieged enclave. 

Middle East Eye journalist Maha Husseini spoke to Palestinians in Gaza who feel isolated, abandoned and hungry.

Yara Waheidi fled her home from the Central Gaza Strip. She has been displaced multiple times since, and remains in a state of constant limbo.  

"It was still autumn, and in Gaza we start wearing thick and heavy clothes by mid-December," Waheidi told MEE.

"I thought we wouldn't need them because the war wouldn't last until the end of October."

Waheidi said that she is now considering fleeing again as Israel ramps up its air strikes and ground offensive in neighbourhoods adjacent to where she's currently found shelter.

"I cannot believe that after 100 days we're still talking about seeking shelter, where to go, and what place is safe." 

Read More: 100 days of war in Gaza: Besieged Palestinians feel isolated, abandoned and afraid

Haaretz has reported that a Palestinian group in Lebanon called the "Alez al-Islami" brigade has claimed responsibility for entering Israel through the Mount Dov region on Sunday. 

The group confirmed the three gunmen killed by Israel on Sunday morning were killed on the spot by Israeli forces by an unmanned drone. 

Alez al Islami said it staged the attack in response to the targeted assassination of senior Hamas officials in Lebanon.