Live Blog Update| Israel's genocide in Gaza
This is an entry from: Live: Palestinian death toll in Gaza nears 26,000

Evening recap

21 January 2024 23:20 GMT

Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war will shortly be closing for the evening.

Here are the day’s key developments.

Israel has killed at least 25,105 Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Sunday. In the same period, at least 62,681 Palestinians have been wounded. 

About 178 Palestinians had been killed and 293 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

Palestinian group Hamas said on Sunday that its 7 October attacks in southern Israel were a "necessary step" against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

But the group admitted in a 16-page report about the attack that "some faults happened… due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza".

US intelligence agencies estimate that Hamas has lost only 20-30 percent of its fighters since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza on 7 October.

The estimates, the first since the war, fall short of Israel's stated goal of "destroying" the Palestinian group, which was the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip before Israel's latest invasion. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected conditions presented by Hamas to end the war and release hostages that would include Israel's complete withdrawal and leaving Hamas in power in Gaza.

Other news from Sunday included:

  • Two Hezbollah members were killed in a suspected Israeli drone strike on a vehicle in southern Lebanon.
     
  • A strike on Damascus targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Syria spy chief and blamed on Israel killed 13 people, a war monitor said in an updated toll. "The death toll has risen to 13," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of Saturday's strike.
     
  • The Israeli army said that it was investigating the explosion of the Israa University in Gaza following widespread condemnation and questions from the Biden administration. Last week, footage widely shared on social media showed a large blast at the university campus.
     
  • Around 1,000 people from Gaza have been treated in a French field hospital aboard a ship off the coast of Egypt, its captain said, providing care for some as health infrastructure in the war-devastated enclave collapses. 
     
  • Support for Israel around the world has plummeted dramatically since its assault on Gaza began, a new survey has found. According to figures published in Time magazine, the percentage of people viewing Israel positively after subtracting the percentage viewing it negatively, dropped an average of 18.5 percentage points globally between September and December. Out of 43 countries surveyed on all six continents, support for Israel dropped in all but one.