🔴 Live: First international UN staff member killed in Gaza strike

Palestinian children walk through a nearly deserted school used as a shelter by displaced people who fled Rafah after Israeli forces launched a ground offensive in the eastern part of the city, on May 13, 2024. © Mohammed Salem, Reuters

A UN security services member was killed in an attack on a vehicle in Gaza on Monday, a spokesperson said, adding the death was the first international UN employee killed in the Palestinian territory since the war began. Read our liveblog for all the latest developments.

Summary:

• An international UN security employee was killed on Monday after their vehicle was struck in Rafah, southern Gaza. UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said it was the first international UN employee to be killed in the enclave since October 7.
• Israeli tanks, under cover from heavy fire from air and ground, pushed further into Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, residents and Hamas media said, while air strikes hammered Rafah in the south.
• An all-out Israeli offensive on the Gaza city of Rafah would provoke "anarchy" without eliminating Hamas, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday, as Washington stepped up a pressure campaign against such an assault.
• Israel’s leaders commemorated Memorial Day on Monday, a usually sombre holiday that this year was almost entirely absorbed by the ongoing war in Gaza.
• At least 35,091 Palestinians have been killed and 78,827 wounded in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. Some 1,170 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks and 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli figures, with 132 still missing.

Yesterday's key developments:

• Israel sent tanks into the Jabalia area of northern Gaza Sunday to try to stop Hamas from re-establishing its military presence in a zone the Israeli army claimed to have cleared months ago.
• Israeli forces also pushed deeper into Gaza's southern city of Rafah. 
• Egypt on Sunday said it will formally support South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Sunday an immediate halt to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the return of hostages and a "surge" in humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian territory.
• US President Joe Biden said Saturday that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war was possible as soon as "tomorrow" if the militant group released its hostages.

About casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry:

Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent. For more on the health ministry’s casualty figures, click here.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, Reuters, AP)