Live updates on Israel's war against Hamas

Israeli settlers set fire overnight to a mosque in a village in the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian official said Sunday, as an AFP journalist saw the structure's entrance scorched and Hebrew graffiti sprayed on its walls.

The settlers also set fire to two houses and a dairy factory, he said, adding the attackers spray-painted Hebrew graffiti on the walls of the mosque.

The Palestinian religious affairs ministry condemned the attack.

In a statement, the ministry described the arson as "a full-fledged terrorist act", accusing Israel's "extremist occupation government" of encouraging settler violence in an effort to displace Palestinians from Masafer Yatta and turn the conflict into "a religious war".

The Israeli military has declared the region around the Gaza Strip a “closed military area,” in effect from 8am local time on Sunday to 8am on Monday, Al Jazeera reported, citing Israeli media.

The Times of Israel reported that the decision comes ahead of a large march to the area by the right-wing Nahala settler group, which supports the re-establishment of Israeli settlements inside the enclave.

The outlet said the closed area “covers the entire Gaza periphery, from Yad Mordechai in the north of the enclave to Route 232 in the east, all the way to Kerem Shalom at its extreme south”.

It also cited a military source as saying that the closure was ordered due to the settler group’s “intention of entering the Gaza Strip illegally”.

Gaza's civil defence and hospitals said Israeli attacks on Saturday killed 11 people across the territory, among them three children and their parents.

A family of five — three children and their parents — were killed when an Israeli strike hit a residential apartment in northwest Gaza City, according to the territory’s civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas.

Three more people were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a group of civilians in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, the agency reported.

Gaza's Al-Ahli Hospital confirmed it had received the body of the woman along with several wounded individuals, including her daughter.

Health officials said two other people were killed elsewhere in Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Gaza's civil defence and hospitals said Israeli attacks on Saturday killed 11 people across the territory, among them three children and their parents.

A family of five — three children and their parents — were killed when an Israeli strike hit a residential apartment in northwest Gaza City, according to the territory's civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas.

"The family's only surviving member is one child, who was not inside the house at the time of the strike," Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the agency, told AFP.

Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital confirmed it had received the five bodies.

The European Union on Friday reiterated its call on Israel to refrain from expanding its settlements in the occupied West Bank.

"The EU reiterates its call on Israel to refrain from further settlement expansion, the legalisation of outposts, land appropriation, demolitions, evictions and other unilateral measures that undermine the viability of the two-state solution," said a statement from the EU's diplomatic service spokesperson.

Earlier this week, Israel's security cabinet approved a budget of 1.3 billion shekels ($427.8 million) for establishing 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Gaza's civil defence agency and a hospital said an Israeli airstrike on Friday killed eight people near a market.

"Eight people were killed after Israeli warplanes struck a gathering of civilians in the Al-Balata market area of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza," the civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas, reported.

The area's Al-Awda hospital said it received the eight dead and 22 people wounded in the strike.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz told his US counterpart Pete Hegseth early Thursday that Israel is determined to keep its forces in "security zones" it has carved out inside Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, Katz's office said the two men spoke overnight and the minister "emphasised Israel's determination to remain in the security zones in Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon in order to protect Israel's borders and the communities near the border from the threats".

"We have never asked the United States to act in our place along our borders," Katz said.

His comments come days after US President Donald Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull Israeli forces out of Syria and Lebanon, according to US news outlet Axios.

Israeli families moved into a new settlement on a mountain towering over the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the settler regional council for the area said.

"This morning, families from the Ebal founding group are transferring their equipment and moving into caravans in the new Ebal settlement, established in Samaria," the Samaria Regional Council said, using the Biblical name for the north of the West Bank.

Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, among some three million Palestinians.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

Hamas official urged the people of Palestine to establish a presence against Israeli settlement expansion, to fight forced displacement, and to confront attacks by Israeli settlers, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday.

"Settler violence will not succeed in breaking the will of the Palestinian people or uprooting them from their land," Hamas official Abdul Rahman Shadid said in a statement.

"Resistance and steadfastness remain the most effective means of confronting Israeli occupation policies and settlement expansion," the Hamas official added.

Shadid concluded that the current situation "requires greater national unity and mobilisation".