Live updates: Middle East crisis

Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 21 people were killed Thursday in an Israeli air strike on a school serving as a shelter for people displaced by the war.

"So far, 21 people have been killed as a result of an Israeli air strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City," Mahmud Bassal, the agency's spokesman, told AFP.

The United Nations envoy for Syria on Thursday condemned Israel's "repeated and intensifying military escalations" in the country, warning that such actions were destabilising Syria at a sensitive time.

Geir Pedersen called on Israel in a statement "to cease these attacks which could amount to serious violations of international law and respect Syria's sovereignty and existing agreements, and also to cease unilateral actions on the ground".

The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Thursday urged Hungary to arrest visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in accordance with an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant over alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

"The ministry calls on the Hungarian government... to comply with the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant by immediately handing Netanyahu over to bring him to justice," the Ramallah-based PA's foreign affairs ministry said in a statement hours after Hungary announced it would withdraw from the ICC.

Hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans sought shelter on Thursday in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah, part of a newly announced "security zone" they intend to seize.

A day after declaring their intention to capture large swathes of the crowded enclave, Israeli force pushed into the city on Gaza's southern edge which had served as a last refuge for people fleeing other areas for much of the war.

Pakistan on Thursday denounced Israel’s latest military offensive aimed at establishing new security corridors, including the illegal seizure of the Morag Corridor and further annexation of Palestinian land.

“The deliberate targeting of a UN-run clinic in Jabalia, which sheltered over 700 displaced civilians, demonstrates Israel’s blatant disregard for international law and humanitarian principles. These actions, coupled with Israel’s clear intent to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland, constitute war crimes under international law,” Foreign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said in a statement.

A spokesperson from the Israeli army has ordered residents of the Shujayea area and the neighborhouds of Al-Jadida, Al-Turkman, Tasbeeh and eastern Zeitoun to leave their homes, reported Al Jazeera.

At least nine civilians were killed and several injured in an Israeli bombardment, the provincial government in southern Syria’s Deraa governorate has said, reported Al Jazeera.

The shelling near the city of Nawa came after an “Israeli incursion”, with “the occupation [Israeli] forces advancing for the first time to this depth”, it said in a statement on Telegram.

Lebanon’s National News Agency now reports that the Israeli military has carried out more attacks on Naqoura, including a strike on a home in the centre of the town, and a second on the town’s outskirts, according to Al Jazeera.

A very bloody day here in the northern Gaza Strip where the Israeli army committed a horrific massacre against the displaced families who used to shelter in the UNRWA health facility in the Jabalia refugee camp – the most densely populated area, reported Al Jazeera.

Many Palestinians were killed in this attack, including children, and we are talking here about displaced families who were forced to move from eastern areas to the Jabalia refugee camp – from Beit Hanoon, Beit Lahiya and other places in the northern Gaza Strip – and were forced to shelter in this place.