Middle East crisis live: Blinken says ‘maybe the last opportunity’ to get hostages out of Gaza | Israel-Gaza war

Welcome to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and wider crisis in the Middle East crisis. Here’s an overview of the latest.

The US secretary of state has declared it to be “maybe the last opportunity” to get hostages held in Gaza out after he arrived in Israel to push for a ceasefire agreement.

After landing in Tel Aviv Antony Blinken was quoted as saying that it was a “decisive moment” for the truce talks.

Making his ninth trip to the Middle East since October, the top US diplomat is to meet Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders. Blinken aimed “to press any and all parties that it’s important to get the remaining pieces of this across the finish line”, a US official said.

The push comes amid heightened fears of an anticipated Iranian and Hezbollah attack against Israel and the threat of an all-out regional war.

Netanyahu earlier traded blame with Hamas for delays in reaching a ceasefire agreement.

Meanwhile, Israeli strikes killed 19 people in Gaza on Sunday, including six children, Palestinian health authorities said. The children and their mother were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in the central town of Deir Al-Balah, the officials said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

In Israel, police were investigating an explosion that killed one person in Tel Aviv on Sunday, a spokesperson said, reportedly appearing to suggest the incident could have been a militant attack.

“As a result of the explosion, one person, whose identity is still unknown, was killed, and another person was moderately injured.”

In other news:

• An attack at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank on Sunday killed an Israeli man, a hospital said, three days after a deadly raid on a nearby Palestinian village. Doctors made several attempts to save his life, the Beilinson Hospital said. The Israeli military said a “terrorist” had “attacked a civilian, stole his weapon and made his escape” in the Kedumim settlement, in the northern West Bank. Local officials identified the victim as a resident of the settlement which is close to the village of Jit, where the Palestinian health ministry said Israeli settlers had killed a 23-year-old Palestinian man in an attack on Thursday.

• Israeli air force jets attacked Hezbollah military buildings in southern Lebanon in the areas of Aita al-Sha’ab, Beit Leaf and Khula on Sunday night, the Israel Defense Forces said on X. An aerial video accompanied its post on Monday.

• Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel intensified over the weekend, with an Israeli attack on Saturday one of the bloodiest for civilians since fighting began in October. Ten Syrian workers and their family members were killed in what Israel said was a strike on a Hezbollah weapons depot in Nabatieh, south Lebanon. In response, Hezbollah launched a 55-missile barrage at the town of Ayelet HaShahar, in northern Israel. The Israel Defense Forces

• Three Unifil peacekeepers were lightly injured in an explosion on Sunday while on patrol in the Lebanese border town of Yarin. A source in Unifil (UN interim force in Lebanon) said they believed the soldiers were injured by a nearby Israeli airstrike but that they were still investigating the incident.

• Israel is conducting a “robust investigation” of suspects accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian prisoner, the foreign affairs ministry said on Sunday, adding it was committed to upholding international legal standards on the treatment of detainees. The UN special rapporteur on torture on Friday condemned what she called a “particularly gruesome” case of the alleged sexual abuse of a Palestinian prisoner by Israeli soldiers and said the perpetrators must be held accountable. Israeli media reports said the alleged abuse was of a member of an elite Hamas unit at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert in southern Israel.

• A UK Foreign Office official has resigned over the UK’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel because of alleged breaches of international law. Mark Smith, a counter-terrorism official based at the British embassy in Dublin, said he had resigned after making numerous internal complaints, including through an official whistleblowing mechanism, but receiving nothing but pro-forma responses.

• US Central Command said on Sunday its forces destroyed a Houthi uncrewed aerial vehicle in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen.