In its latest operational update Israel’s military has claimed to have killed “approximately 90 terrorists” and to have “questioned over 300 suspects” at the al-Shifa hospital medical complex in Gaza. It says “an additional 160 suspects have been transferred to Israeli territory for further questioning.”

The IDF describes what it calls “precise operational activity” at the medical centre. Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas uses the hospital as a base, which Hamas has denied.

In the update the IDF claims:

IDF and ISA forces are continuing to conduct a precise operation against terrorists in the area of the Shifa hospital. Over the past day, the troops have eliminated terrorists and located weapons in the hospital area, while preventing harm to civilians, patients, medical teams, and medical equipment.

Thus far, the troops have killed approximately 90 terrorists in the area, the IDF and ISA have questioned over 300 suspects at the compound, and an additional 160 suspects have been transferred to Israeli territory for further questioning.

The claims have not been independently verified.

Palestinian witnesses have described large explosions and firefights taking place in the vicinity of the hospital, where many people, displaced by Israel’s ground offensive and repeated bombardment of Gaza, have been taking shelter.

On Monday one of those detained during the raid on the medical centre was an Al Jazeera journalist, who claims that he was held for 12 hours and severely beaten by Israeli forces.

In the rest of its update, the IDF claimed that on Tuesday “a launch was identified from northern Gaza toward the city of Sderot, which fell in the Gaza Strip. In response, an IAF aircraft struck an operational Hamas terror shaft in the area of the launch.”

Archie Bland

Our First Edition newsletter today sees Archie Bland talking to Jason Burke about the relationship between Israel and Unrwa, the UN refugee agency for Palestinians. Here is an excerpt:

The hundreds of claims in the UN documents reviewed by the Guardian present a bleak picture of Unrwa’s ability to do its work in the West Bank.

They range from allegations of UN staff being beaten and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers to an incident in which an Unrwa health centre was allegedly commandeered by Israeli security forces so they could fire on suspected militants. Six Palestinians, including a 14-year-old, died during that raid. The documents are also heavily critical of how militants fighting the Israelis from the camps are putting civilians and UN staff at risk.

“The Israeli officials I spoke to clearly draw a line between Unrwa in Gaza and in the West Bank,” Jason Burke said. “They were sincere about viewing the work in the West Bank as important. But at the same time, you clearly have others in Israel who take a very different attitude to Unrwa as an institution overall. Some politicians do not make the same distinction.”

“Unrwa is the only actor with sufficient scale to provide anywhere near the support that the population in Gaza needs,” Jason said. He spoke yesterday to Unrwa’s chief, Philippe Lazzarini, who gave the example of the aid being sent to Gaza by maritime corridor: “He pointed out that food is going into Unrwa warehouses, for distribution by Unrwa staff. Without that infrastructure, it would be much harder to get it to people who need it.”

While Israel has long been hostile to Unrwa, the claims against the agency since 7 October have been particularly serious. “It’s very difficult to think of another instance where a major UN agency with decades of work behind it has come under so much pressure,” Jason said.

You can read more here: Wednesday briefing: What you need to know about Israel’s dispute with Unrwa

The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said his country continues to “push Israel to allow more crossings to open and for longer, and for healthcare, water and sanitation to be restored.”

The statement came as the UK said it had provided food for 275,000 people. 1.1 million people have been described as experiencing “catastrophic” food shortages, with a UN-backed report on Monday stating that famine was “imminent” in northern Gaza.

Cameron, the former UK prime minister, said:

It’s crucial that we keep the flow of aid moving into Gaza to end the suffering, and that’s why this latest delivery of aid by the World Food Programme (WFP) is so vitally important. The IPC’s report warns of imminent famine. We need sustained humanitarian access by road to get more aid in. We continue to push Israel to allow more crossings to open and for longer, and for healthcare, water and sanitation to be restored.

The UK Foreign Office said more than 2,000 tonnes of food aid funded by the UK had crossed the border and was being distributed by the WFP.

Mourners held funeral prayers Wednesday morning outside a hospital in central Gaza for 28 people killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on urban refugee camps.

Video footage showed mourners praying over the bodies, which were wrapped in funeral shrouds, before the bodies were taken away in donkey carts for burial.

Nineteen people, including five women and nine children, were killed when a strike flattened a family home late Tuesday in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp. Another person was killed in a separate strike in the camp. A strike in the nearby Bureij camp killed eight people, including three women.

The dead were brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital, the main medical facility in central Gaza. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies and their names in hospital records.

Nuseirat and Bureij are among several dense, built-up refugee camps in Gaza that date back to 1948, when an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the war surrounding its creation, in what is called the Nakba in Arabic.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken is due to return to the Middle East on Wednesday, in a new bid to secure a truce in the Israel-Hamas war.

After a failed attempt to secure a ceasefire in the war in the Gaza Strip by the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a new round of negotiations hosted by key mediator Qatar has begun.

Blinken was due in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and Egypt on Thursday. He had earlier this week said everyone in Gaza was now suffering “severe levels of acute food insecurity”.

More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main news.

• Benjamin Netanyahu has said he remains determined to carry out a ground invasion of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah – where many displaced Palestinians are sheltering – despite the misgivings of US president Joe Biden. Netanyahu told lawmakers on Tuesday he had made it “supremely clear” to the US president “that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah”.

• Israeli restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza may amount to the war crime of deliberate starvation, the UN has said. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, said Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid may amount to “starvation as a method of war”.

• UN staff working with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been subjected to a systematic campaign of obstruction and harassment by the Israeli military and authorities since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza five months ago, according to internal UN documents obtained by the Guardian.

• Canada will halt future arms sales to Israel after a non-binding vote in the house of commons. The foreign affairs minister, Mélanie Joly, told the Toronto Star her government would halt future arms shipments. The decision follows a parliamentary motion, introduced by the New Democratic party, that called on the governing Liberals to halt future arms exports to Israel.

• Qatar has said it remains cautiously optimistic about the Gaza ceasefire talks, but warned that an Israeli operation in Rafah would result in major destruction and “atrocities” that have yet to be seen in the conflict. The head of the Mossad, David Barnea, has left Doha and returned to Israel after talks, but has left a team behind to continue discussions. Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said it was too early to talk of any breakthrough.

• Jared Kushner has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip. The former property dealer, married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, made the comments in an interview at Harvard University on 8 March.

• Syria’s defence ministry said Israel launched missiles at military targets outside the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday. Syrian sources said the attacks were strikes on fortifications of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.