Here’s how things stand on Tuesday, January 16, 2024:

Latest updates and human impact

• Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have claimed responsibility for five ballistic missiles that struck the city of Erbil in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. The attack occurred late on Monday night, killing at least four people and injuring another six, according to the Kurdistan government’s security council.
• Israeli attacks killed at least 25 people in Gaza on Monday night, including 11 Palestinians from two families in Miraj, in the north of Rafah, reported Palestinian news agency Wafa.
• At least 24,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, and 60,834 others have been injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
• Hamas appeared to show the bodies of two Israeli hostages in a video released on Monday, claiming that they were killed by Israeli air strikes.
• In the seventh communications blackout since October 7, telecommunication services in Gaza remained shut down for the third consecutive day on Monday, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA).

Diplomacy

• In a post to X on Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for sexual violence claims against Hamas to “be rigorously investigated and prosecuted”.
• Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian described the United States and United Kingdom’s military strikes on Houthi targets as a “strategic mistake” in a phone call on Monday with Guterres, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
• On Tuesday, Prime Minister Masrour Barzani of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region called on Iraq’s federal government to take a “principled position” following Iran’s “cowardly attack” on the city of Erbil. He also said the strike was a “flagrant violation of Iraq’s and the Kurdistan region’s sovereignty”.
• Israel’s cabinet on Monday passed an amended 2024 state budget, adding $15bn for war, said the finance ministry and Prime Minister’s Office.

West Bank raids and violence

• The Israeli army says it has redeployed an elite unit from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, where it says the situation is “spiralling”, reported Al Jazeera correspondent, Hamdah Salhut, on Tuesday.
• Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles at dawn in the town of Sinjil, north of Ramallah after midnight on Monday, reported Wafa.
• On Monday, Israeli soldiers raided the home of Ahmed and Mohammed Zeidat, whom they accuse of carrying out a car ramming and stabbing attack in Raanana, near Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring at least 14 others, according to Al Jazeera correspondent, Ayman Nobani.