Israel-Hamas LIVE: Gaza's largest hospital is turning into a 'cemetery', WHO warns, as President Biden says medical centres 'must be protected' amid heavy fighting between IDF and Hamas terrorists

The Israeli army has confirmed the death of a woman soldier held hostage in Gaza.

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France's Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu is being dispatched as of Tuesday to the Middle East to discuss the Gaza situation and regional security issues at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron, Lecornu said on X.

'This trip will start in Egypt and will continue in the Gulf region. It will end Friday in Israel, the first time a French Defence minister visits the country since 2000,' he said.

Eight Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said today.

Seven Palestinians were killed during an Israeli military raid on the northern city of Tulkarem, the health ministry and a local hospital said.

Witnesses reported clashes in the area and a large deployment of Israeli soldiers seeking to make arrests.

The Israeli army said its forces conducted 'counterterrorism activities' in the city, during which 'engineering vehicles uncovered explosive devices planted on routes to attack the forces'.

In a separate incident near the southern West Bank city Hebron, a 20-year-old Palestinian was killed by 'occupation bullets', the Palestinian health ministry said.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the Hebron incident.

Brazil's president sparked a row on Monday by accusing Israel of 'killing innocent people without any criteria' in the Gaza Strip, deeming its actions there 'as grave' as the October 7 attacks by the Hamas terror group.

'After the act of terrorism provoked by Hamas, the consequences, the solution of the state of Israel, is as grave as that of Hamas,' said Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at a ceremony in Brasilia welcoming Brazilians who had been evacuated from Gaza.

'They are killing innocent people without any criteria,' said Lula. He also accused Israel of 'dropping bombs where there are children, hospitals, on the pretext that a terrorist is there.'

'They are not killing soldiers, they are killing children,' he told journalists at the Brasilia Air Base, claiming the number of women and children killed or missing was unheard of.

Lula, 78, who hugged and kissed the returnees on the tarmac, said he had 'never' seen 'such brutal and inhuman violence against innocent people'.

'This is inexplicable. First you have to save the women and children, then you fight with whomever you want,' Lula said.

But representatives of Brazil's Jewish community denounced his remarks as 'erroneous', 'unfair' and 'dangerous'.

They said the comments 'put Israel and Hamas on the same level', and defended the 'visible and proven' efforts of the Israeli authorities 'to save Palestinian civilians'.

'Our community expects balance from our authorities,' added the Israeli Confederation of Brazil, which claims to represent some 120,000 Brazilian Jews, the second largest community in the region, in a statement.

The director of Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital has said 179 people, including babies and patients who died in the medical centre's intensive care unit, have been buried in a 'mass grave' at the complex.

'We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,' said director Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after hospital fuel supplies ran out.

'There are bodies littered in the hospital complex and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,' he said, as no fuel has entered the Gaza Strip since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

On Tuesday, a man and a woman died in the ICU bringing the number of people who had died in the unit to 29, Salmiyah said.

A journalist inside the hospital who is collaborating with AFP news agency said the stench of decomposing bodies was everywhere in the facility.

Time is running out for 36 newborn babies at Gaza's biggest hospital.

Israeli tanks have taken up positions outside Al Shifa Hospital, which Israel says sits atop tunnels housing a headquarters for Hamas who are using patients as shields.

US President Joe Biden said hospitals in the Gaza Strip must be protected and he hoped for 'less intrusive' action by Israel as tanks advanced on the main gates, while Britain's Rishi Sunak said 'too many civilians' are dying in the coastal strip.

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Last night, Rishi Sunak said ‘too many civilians’ are dying in Gaza and that there needs to be ‘unhindered humanitarian access and urgent and substantive humanitarian pauses’.

The PM told the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London: ‘There are things that Israel must do as part of this response.

‘We’ve been clear that they must act within international law, they must take all measures to protect innocent civilians, including at hospitals, stop extremist violence in the West Bank and allow more aid into Gaza... too many civilians are losing their lives.

‘That’s why I’ve doubled our aid to Gaza and why we continue to press both at the United Nations and directly with Israel for unhindered humanitarian access and urgent and substantive humanitarian pauses.

‘We want aid coming in by air, land and sea, and we’re ready to use our bases in Cyprus as a staging post.’

Israeli tanks were massed near the gates of Gaza's main hospital where Palestinians were trapped in dire conditions on Tuesday as US President Joe Biden pressed Israel to protect the complex.

After days of heavy air strikes around Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital, witnesses said tanks and armoured vehicles were metres from the besieged facility, which has become a focal point of the five-week-old war.

Israel accuses Hamas fighters of using tunnels under the hospital as a command 'node', effectively engaging the sick and injured as human shields. It is a charge that Hamas denies.

Biden called on Israel to use 'less intrusive action relative to the hospital', some of his most pointed comments on Israeli operations to date. 'The hospital must be protected,' he told reporters.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner insisted Al-Shifa was 'central in Hamas's command and control capabilities', but said troops were currently 'stand-offish'.

'The idea is to try to evacuate the people, evacuate as many as possible,' he said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said Gaza's largest hospital is turning into a 'cemetery' where dead bodies are lying on the ground.

After days of heavy air strikes around Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital, witnesses said tanks and armoured vehicles were metres (yards) from the besieged facility, which has become a focal point of the five-week-old war.

'Around the hospital there are dead bodies which cannot be taken care of or not even be buried or taken away to any sort of morgue,' WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said.

'The hospital is not working at all any more as it should. It's nearly a cemetery,' Lindemeier added.