Evening recap

Good evening, Middle East Eye readers.

Our live coverage of Israel's war on Gaza will shortly be closing for the evening.

Here are the day's major developments:

• New figures released by the Palestinian health ministry on Sunday showed the death toll in Gaza had risen to 34,683 Palestinians. Alongside the dead, the ministry said that Israeli strikes had injured 78,018 Palestinians since 7 October. 
   
• Israel's cabinet on Sunday voted to shut down Al Jazeera's operations in Israel. The closure followed months of Israeli incitement against the Qatar-based broadcaster, one of the last remaining international media networks reporting on Israel's war on Gaza from the ground.
   
• The move to close Al Jazeera was met with widespread condemnation, with the Foreign Press Association calling it a "dark day for the media" and a "dark day for democracy", Hamas saying it was a "blatant violation of press freedom", and the United Nations Human Rights Office saying "a free and independent media is essential to ensuring transparency and accountability". 
   
• Al Jazeera said in a statement: "Israel's suppression of free press to cover up its crimes by killing and arresting journalists has not deterred us from performing our duty."
   
• Senior Palestinian Authority officials have requested from mediators that Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti be excluded from a potential prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas, a source has told Middle East Eye.
   
• A top UN official on Sunday accused Israel of continuing to deny the United Nations humanitarian access in the Gaza Strip, where the UN food chief warned a "full-blown famine" had taken hold in the north of the enclave.
   
• The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza that Israel said killed three of its soldiers and wounded a dozen others.
   
• An Israeli strike targeting a house in Rafah in Southern Gaza killed nine Palestinians, Gaza health officials said.
   
• Civil defence workers and a security source told Reuters that an Israeli airstrike killed four civilians in a house in a border village in southern Lebanon.
   
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out ending the war on Gaza and said he was willing to pause the fighting for the return of captives held by Hamas.
   
• A Hamas delegation has left Cairo after two days of talks with mediators over a Gaza ceasefire deal, with the head of the CIA travelling to Doha for emergency talks with Qatar's prime minister, with Gaza talks 'near to collapse', according to an official briefed on the talks.
   
• Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant accused Hamas on Sunday of showing signs it was not serious about reaching a ceasefire, and said that if so Israel would launch military actions in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip "in the very near future".
   
• The United States has put on hold an ammunition shipment intended for Israel last week, Axios reported on Sunday.