Live updates: Middle East crisis

According to a report by Israel's Haaretz, 70% of Jabalia's infrastructure is completely destroyed from Israeli air strikes.

The news organisation says the refugee camp, shelter to thousands, has become a "ghost town" from the occupation's continuous attacks on the area.

The report added that no other operations in either Lebanon or Gaza "can compare" to what has happened in the camp for the last two and a half months.

96,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from the area, more than 2,000 have been killed and roughly 1,500 were detained from the camp, the report added.

 

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Israel has not succeeded in achieving its goals in Gaza. 

“Were you victorious in Gaza? Is someone a victor if they kill forty-something thousand women and children with bombs and fails to realise even a single one of the goals set out from the start?” he told a gathering of followers in Tehran, as quoted by Al Jazeera. 

“Did you destroy Hamas? Did you free your captives from Gaza?”

“Hezbollah is alive. The Palestinian resistance is alive, Hamas is alive, jihad is alive. You are not victors, you have been defeated," he added. 

At lest 45,259 Palestinians have been killed and 107,627 wounded in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since October 7, 2023, the Gaza health ministry reported on Sunday.

The armed wing of Hamas says on Telegram that a suicide attack hit the tank in the al-Alami area in the central part of the Jabalia refugee camp, Al Jazeera reported.

Clashes have been reported in the camp since the Israeli army tightened its siege of the north of the territory more than two months ago.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a member of the Supreme Political Council of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, says the US strikes "support the terrorism of the temporary Israeli entity to continue the genocide and siege of the people of Gaza".

"The American terrorist attacks confirm the lawless rampage and criminality in the region," he said on X.

"The reckless terrorist actions against Yemen do not stop the support [for Gaza]," the official added.

The Red Sea has seen high military activity for more than a year as the US forces continue to attack the Houthis, who have attacked ships in the region in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.

The US army said it struck drones and missiles of the group over the Red Sea on Saturday and attacked its infrastructure in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

 Six people were killed and others injured in an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza, the civil emergency service reported on Sunday.

Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican's various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.

"Yesterday, children were bombed," said the pope.

"This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart."