Live. Israel Hamas war: US funding for Israeli military, aid waiting at Gaza border, invasion imminent

The Israeli Defence Ministry has announced the evacuation of residents in the Israeli town Kiryat Shmona, near the border with southern Lebanon. 

More than 20,000 people live in Kiryat Shmona, just 2km from the border. 

Fire has increased since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, and the order may be a response to this.

Nearly 30 of around 200 hostages thought to be held by the Hamas militant group in Gaza are children, the Israeli military said.

More than 10 are over the age of 60, it said in a statement.

Authorities have no information about the location of more than 100 missing Israelis, it added.

(AP)

The war between Israel and Hamas is pushing the Middle East to the "edge of an abyss", UN agency chief Philippe Lazzarini has warned. 

Interviewed by the BBC, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East warned violence could spill into other countries

"The world is now losing its humanity", he told the British broadcaster.

Lazzarini warned about the grim situation facing civilians in Gaza, saying humanitarian aid corridors into the territory needed to be set up. 

Speaking in Jerusalem, Lazzarini condemned Hamas's attack on Israel, calling it a "horrific and barbaric massacre".

It had created a "national trauma, a collective trauma in Israel," he added. 

"But this event still does not justify that the war is conducted without any restraint," Lazzarini said. "And I do not believe that killing even more civilians is in the interest of the future security and peace here in the region."

The US president has paralleled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel, urging Americans not to walk away from their role as “a beacon to the world”.

In only the second Oval Office address of his presidency,