Israeli troops have "completed the encirclement of Gaza City", says IDF Israeli forces are fighting “with full force” in Gaza and focused on “destroying” Hamas and “making every effort” to bring all of the hostages home, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said. A statement from Hagari on Thursday said IDF troops “completed the encirclement of Gaza City, which is the focal point of the Hamas terror organisation”. Israeli forces are “killing terrorists in close combat, in any place in which fighting is required”, he said. Turkey is ready to take in cancer patients from the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital in Gaza after it went out of service after running out of fuel, Turkey’s health minister, Fahrettin Koca, said. Health officials yesterday said the hospital – the only cancer treatment hospital in the Gaza Strip – had used up its fuel and was out of service. In a social media post, Koca said that if the necessary coordination was done, Turkey was ready to bring both cancer patients and others in need of emergency help to Turkey to continue their treatment. He added: The international community and relevant institutions have unfortunately not taken enough initiative to prevent the attacks on the hospital. Saving the lives of the patients is now a duty that cannot be escaped. On Wednesday, the Palestinian health minister Mai al-Kaila said the lives of 70 cancer patients inside the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital are “seriously threatened”. Gaza’s health ministry said on Thursday that four cancer patients died due to the hospital being out of service. The office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced that ministers have voted to transfer tax funds it had collected for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to Ramallah, but deducted the money earmarked for the Gaza Strip. The decision by Israel’s security cabinet came amid tensions in the government over whether some West Bank tax revenues should be transferred to the PA. “Israel is cutting off all contact with Gaza,” a statement from the office said on Thursday. There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza and the workers who were in Israel on the day the war broke out will be returned to Gaza. Under interim peace accords, Israel’s finance ministry collects tax on behalf of the Palestinians and makes monthly transfers to the PA, which go to pay for public sector salaries and other government expenditure. But Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, had refused to release the funds, accusing the Palestinian Authority of supporting the “horrific massacres of the Nazi terror organisation Hamas”. Antony Blinken will spend the day on Friday in Israel, his fourth visit since 7 October. The White House said the US secretary of state will urge the Israeli government to agree to a series of brief cessations of military operations in Gaza to allow for hostages to be released safely and for humanitarian aid to be distributed, Reuters reported. Blinken will also head to Jordan before heading to Asia next week. Jordan, which was the second Arab nation to make peace with Israel, has withdrawn its ambassador to protest against the “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe” caused by the “ongoing Israeli war”. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, will tell Blinken that Israel must end its war on Gaza when the pair meet in Amman, a Jordanian ministry statement said. The statement accused Israel of committing war crimes by bombing civilians and imposing a siege, adding that Israel’s unreadiness to end the war was pushing the region rapidly towards a regional war that threatened world peace. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said he would seek “concrete steps” from Israel to “minimise harm” to civilians in Gaza amid mounting alarm over soaring casualties in Israel’s bombardment of the territory. Speaking to reporters before departing on his second Middle East trip in less than a month, Blinken said discussions will also focus on the future of Gaza, when and if Hamas is defeated, as well as on getting more humanitarian aid into Gaza and on ways to ensure the conflict does not spread. Speaking a day after Joe Biden said the US wanted Israel to allow humanitarian “pauses” to let through aid and people, Blinken said: When I see a Palestinian child – a boy, a girl – pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, that hits me in the gut as much as seeing a child in Israel or anywhere else. So this is something that we have an obligation to respond to, and we will. The US (and the UK) have stopped short of calling for a ceasefire. A ceasefire would “give Hamas the ability to rest, to refit and to get ready to continue launching terrorist attacks against Israel”, US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said last month. UN experts warned earlier today that “time is running out” as Palestinian people in Gaza find themselves at “grave risk of genocide”. WHO says "almost impossible" to bring humanitarian aid to people in Gaza The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is doing everything it can to ensure that the people of Gaza have access to life-saving health and humanitarian services but that “in the current situation this is almost impossible”. The WHO’s emergencies director, Michael Ryan, said the basic safety of staff on the ground in Gaza could not be guaranteed at the moment, Agence France-Presse reported. It was “unconscionable”, he said. The UN agency had never found it as difficult to establish basic rules of engagement regarding minimum safety guarantees for humanitarians, he added. Getting medical supplies to where they are needed “has not been facilitated, that has not been supported; in fact, if anything, quite the opposite”, he added. WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the situation on the ground in Gaza is “indescribable”. “We are running out of words to describe the horror unfolding in Gaza,” he said. Hospital crammed with the injured, lying in corridors; morgues overflowing; doctors performing surgery without anesthesia. And everywhere, fear, death, destruction, loss. As health needs soar, our ability to meet those needs is plummeting. It is too late to help the dead now. But we can help the living. Ireland’s president, Michael D Higgins, has said “collective punishment” cannot be “something we accept” in the Israel-Hamas war. Higgins said a solution must be found to both deliver “a reasonable security” to Israeli citizens and deliver “the long-neglected rights” of the Palestinians, PA news agency reported. The enlistment of civilians for military purposes on any side has to be recognised and addressed; collective punishment is not something we can accept and claim to be advocates of international law. It is simply unacceptable that hospitals and those being cared for within them are threatened by the basic lack of resources, damaged or indeed threatened with destruction, or those within them forced to be evacuated. Higgins said there must be a push for the independent verification of facts, adding that it was important that those killed in the fighting were “not reduced to competing press releases”. Israeli troops have "completed the encirclement of Gaza City", says IDF Israeli forces are fighting “with full force” in Gaza and focused on “destroying” Hamas and “making every effort” to bring all of the hostages home, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said. A statement from Hagari on Thursday said IDF troops “completed the encirclement of Gaza City, which is the focal point of the Hamas terror organisation”. Israeli forces are “killing terrorists in close combat, in any place in which fighting is required”, he said. Here are some of the latest images we have received over the newswires from Gaza. Amid ongoing debates at the international level about the merits and likelihood of pauses in hostilities, and demands from some quarters for a ceasefire, at this moment Israeli forces are firing into the northern part of the blockaded Gaza. Cable news channel CNN is broadcasting right now images of flares and explosions lighting up the night sky over a portion of Gaza, from the US TV network’s camera positions in Sderot, Israel, at the north-east corner of the border between Gaza and Israel. The channel is speculating that the aerial fire is fresh cover for an increase in Israeli ground troops being sent into the northern part of Gaza. US "not telling Israel how it should conduct this war", says Kamala Harris Kamala Harris refused to comment on Israel’s bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. A Palestinian government media office said at least 195 Palestinians were killed in two rounds of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp on Tuesday and Wednesday. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said a further 20 people were reportedly killed on Thursday after a blast at a school that is being used as a shelter was damaged at the Jabalia camp. The US vice-president, during a trip to London, said: We are not telling Israel how it should conduct this war, and so I’m not going to speak to that. Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf has posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza” and said Scotland “stands ready” to help treat injured civilians from Gaza. He said: “We condemn the recent bombing of Jabalia refugee camp, and reiterate our calls for an immediate ceasefire to allow significant amounts of aid through.” His connection to the crisis is personal as well as political. Last Sunday, Yousaf expressed relief after discovering his parents-in-law, who have traveled to Gaza from Scotland to visit relatives there, are alive, after he had not heard from them during a communication blackout Israel imposed on Gaza. Within the last hour, Yousaf posted a clip of himself stating that “the people of Palestine, of Gaza, are a very proud people. They should not have to leave their land but of course many have been forced to leave … and of course many are lying injured in dying in hospitals”, which are fast running out of fuel and medical supplies. He then said that Scotland was prepared, where possible, to bring such people there for treatment. He said: “There’s not been a request for the UK to receive medical evacuations from Gaza, but we hope that if that does come then the UK, and indeed Scotland, will be ready to play its part.” Yousaf called for an immediate ceasefire. A British surgeon who was stranded in Gaza has described scenes of “absolute chaos” at the Rafah crossing after becoming one of the first British people to cross into Egypt. Abdel Hammad, a 67-year-old transplant surgeon from Liverpool working for a charity in Gaza, told his son, Salim Hammad, that he was stuck on a bus for five hours with 54 others as he waited for approval to cross into Egypt. Salim, a doctor living in Goring, Oxfordshire, said his father finally entered Egypt at about 3.10pm after setting off at 5am. “He’s making his way down with the help of the Foreign Office to Cairo, and then hopefully from there will be able to travel home,” the 34-year-old told the Guardian. I think the overriding emotion is just relief that he’s finally out and safe. I’m just happy to see him soon. Jess Phillips, the Labour frontbencher, said Britons were not getting out quickly enough, arguing that the government’s diplomatic efforts did not appear to be having “much sway”. Another person waiting to be evacuated from Gaza said the Foreign Office had told him that the British government would pay for two nights’ accommodation in Cairo but would not facilitate flights. The Londoner, who did not want to be named, said he received a message saying: “Once you have passed into Egypt, we will provide you transport to Cairo and two nights’ accommodation should you need it. We are not facilitating flights from Egypt at this time.” In another message sent on Thursday afternoon, the rapid deployment team messaged the man saying: “We can offer some support with planning your onward travel but we are not at present facilitating flights from Cairo to the UK – this is at your own cost.” He told the Guardian: I’m just sick that the British government has abandoned us.