**British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak landed in Tel Aviv on Thursday, a Reuters witness said, beginning a visit in which he plans to offer condolences to Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu over the Oct 7 Hamas attack and discuss the Gaza war.

With Israel’s counter-offensive against Hamas in Gaza spiraling, Sunak will share his condolences for the loss of life in Israel and in the Palestinian enclave and warn against further escalation, his office said.

Here are the latest updates

• More than 30 people have been killed and at least 21 injured in a pre-dawn air raid carried out by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza Strip.
• Almost 3,480 Palestinians were confirmed killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza, but the death toll does not include the dozens of deaths overnight. Hamas’s attack inside Israel killed more than 1,400 people.
• Israel confirms new attack on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon.
• Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has agreed to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza to allow a first batch of around 20 humanitarian aid trucks through, US President Joe Biden said Wednesday.**
• The shipment would likely not cross until Friday, as the road at the crossing needed repairs, Biden said. “They’re going to patch the road. They have to fill in potholes to get these trucks through. And that’s going to occur – they expect it’ll take about eight hours tomorrow,” he said.
• Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only medical facility that caters to the more than 9,000 cancer patients in the Gaza Strip, running out of medicine and fuel and could face a shutdown. -A senior official at the US State Department issued his resignation on Wednesday evening, citing the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
• British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will travel to Israel on Thursday before heading to other countries in the region in an effort to deescalate the Israel-Gaza conflict, his office has said. The prime minister’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East follow those of US President Joe Biden, who in a trip to the country on Wednesday warned citizens not to be “consumed” by hate over the Hamas assault that killed more than 1,400 people 11 days ago.
• Biden characterized his trip to the war zone as a success and said that while expressing US support for ally Israel, he was “very blunt with the Israelis” on the need to allow aid into Gaza.
• Worldwide protests over deadly strike at Gaza hospital continue with arrests of Jewish anti-war demonstrators reported inside US Congress.