Image source, EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

At least eight people have been arrested at a pro-Palestinian rally in central London.

One man was detained on suspicion of holding a placard suggesting support for banned organisations, four were arrested on suspicion of public order offences and three on suspicion of breaching conditions put in place for the protest.

Ahead of the rally, Dep Asst Comm Ade Adelekan said more than 1,100 officers were due to be deployed, with 200 coming from forces other than the Met.

Image source, EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Image source, Getty Images

We're hearing that UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has spoken to Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani today about the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

A statement released by Al Thani's office says the call "addressed efforts to ensure the comprehensive implementation of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, including the exchange of detainees and prisoners".

Lammy expressed the UK's "appreciation" for the role Qatar has played in negotiating the Israel-Gaza ceasefire deal.

Image source, Reuters

The head of the UN's food agency, the World Food Programme, has called for her organisation to be given "complete, unfettered, safe access" to Gaza once the ceasefire comes into effect in Gaza tomorrow morning.

Speaking on the BBC World Service's Weekend programme, Cindy McCain says:

"Right now we have waiting, food wise, 50,000 metric tonnes.

"We have had to scale back in terms of the amount of people that we feed because of what's going on. But we have tonnes of food waiting and we are ready to roll in and we can do this job, but we have to make sure that we have safe access to do it."

She adds that Gaza's 2.3 million people are "totally and fully dependent on food aid" are that there is "no food available at all".

"I have to be hopeful. It's too important, people are starving to death... there's lives at stake."

BBC Monitoring

Egyptian ministers have arrived near the Egypt-Gaza border to inspect final preparations for aid to be delivered to Gaza.

Aid agencies say there are thousands of pallets of aid - like food and fuel - held up at Gaza's borders, waiting to get in.

The Egypt-based state-run Al Qahera News reported earlier that the Egyptian ministers of health and social solidarity had arrived in al-Arish city in Sinai, 45 kilometres west of the Egypt–Gaza border, ahead of aid entering tomorrow morning.

Separately, Al Qahera also reported that Egypt was hosting a joint operations room in Cairo, where they will be joined by officials from Qatar, the US and Israel to oversee the ceasefire being implemented.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

• There's now less than 24 hours to go until the ceasefire in Gaza begins - it was confirmed earlier that it will come into force at 08:30 local time (06:30 GMT) tomorrow, 19 January
• It follows a vote approving the deal by the Israeli government cabinet in the early hours of this morning

• The agreement will roll out in three stages and includes an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners
• The first phase will see 33 hostages swapped for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli jails - the Israeli justice ministry confirmed earlier that 737 prisoners are on the list to be released, but details remain unclear
• Meanwhile, two projectiles have been launched from Yemen into Israel today - both were intercepted
• In Gaza, air strikes have reportedly continued in the past day - the Gaza civil defence agency says five people were killed between Friday evening and Saturday morning, while Palestinian news agency Wafa says one person was killed on Saturday in a strike east of Khan Younis
• The Hamas-run health ministry says the number of Palestinian deaths continues to rise - the number stands at 46,899 with 23 reported in the last 24 hours
• The UN is calling for "complete and unfettered safe access" to Gaza after the ceasefire takes effect

• And a joint operations room is being prepared in Egypt to oversee the implementation of the deal, with representatives from the US, Qatar and Israel

Read more on the key events that led up to the historic ceasefire deal.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have reported that another missile has been launched towards Israel from Yemen, following today's earlier attempted strike and interception.

The IDF added that sirens had been sounded in the areas of Eilat and Arava in the south of the country, and that the missile had been intercepted before it could reach Israeli territory.

• For context: The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have launched a number of missile attacks on Israel since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023 - in solidarity, they say, with Palestinians. Israel has carried out retaliatory strikes in Yemen. The Houthis said they carried out an earlier missile strike today, but have not said they carried out this latest one.

Yemen's Houthi rebels have reportedly said they carried out the ballistic missile strike launched into central Israel earlier today.

The Iran-backed group released a statement saying they were targeting the country's ministry of defence in a "specific military operation", AFP news agency reported.

The ministry of defence is based in Tel Aviv, where sirens sounded earlier.

Israel's military said it intercepted the missile, and no injuries were reported.

Image source, Getty Images

We've some comments to bring you now from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which describes the recently announced Gaza ceasefire as a "relief" - but says it has come "too late".

Their statement, external, issued today, says: "The temporary ceasefire agreement in Gaza is a relief, but it arrives more than 465 days and 46,000 lives too late."

MSF also calls on Israel to "immediately end its blockade of Gaza" and urges for a scaling up of humanitarian efforts so that aid is able to reach those in "desperate conditions".

Eight MSF team members have been killed in the fighting, and other medical workers and facilities have been attacked, the statement says.

The organisation outlines its commitment to continue providing care in Gaza but says needs have reached a "catastrophic" level due to the delay in reaching this deal: "The Israeli government, Hamas, and world leaders have tragically failed the people of Gaza, by not agreeing and imposing a sustained ceasefire sooner."

A fragile truce where a lot could go wrongpublished at 13:08 Greenwich Mean Time 18 January

13:08 GMT 18 January

Jon Donnison
Reporting from Jerusalem

Image source, Getty Images

After 15 months of death and suffering, the deal is finally done.

For almost two million Palestinians in Gaza, the homeless and hungry, as well as for the families of some of the Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, it will bring a little hope and relief.

The ceasefire will come into effect at 08:30 local time (06:30 GMT) on Sunday.

Three Israeli hostages held by Hamas should then be handed over to the Red Cross and Palestinian prisoners will be freed in exchange. Israeli forces will begin pulling back from parts of Gaza.

It’s understood Hamas police will manage the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, raising questions about how they will screen for Hamas fighters trying to move north.

And it will be a fragile truce, and a lot could go wrong.

Negotiations for the second phase of the deal which would bring an actual end to the war, are likely to be torturous.

And with less than a day until the deal comes into effect, Palestinians are still being killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza. With some sort of peace in sight, they won’t see it.

Lucy Williamson
Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

Danny Elgarat remembers the last conversation he had with his brother Itzik on the morning of the Hamas attacks, as gunmen broke into Itzik’s saferoom in kibbutz Nir Oz.

"He told me, ‘this is the end’," Danny says.

Fifteen months on, 69-year-old Itzik is one of a dozen hostages from Nir Oz expected to be released in the first stage of the ceasefire deal - starting tomorrow morning.

"It’s just 15 months, but I try sometimes to remember his face or his talk or his laugh. And it's like, you know, I can’t. It's like I forget something," Danny tells me.

Hamas said last year that Itzik had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, but there’s been no confirmation.

Danny says he is bracing himself for the worst but that if his brother was still alive, he would find it hard to understand why younger men were not being freed before him.

"My brother is 69 years old. There are young boys - soldiers - with all their life in front of them. And I think if my brother's sitting there with one of the youngest sitting near him, and they choose my brother, then I think my brother will tell them, ‘take him, not me’."

Many of the communities where hostages were taken - like Itzik’s kibbutz of Nir Oz - are still empty, their burned and silent houses frozen on the day of the attack. Yellow flags mark the homes of those kidnapped - some of whom are now one step closer to returning home. But in the past 15 months, both they and this region have changed

Al-Quds, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which took part in the 7 October attacks, has warned Israel against carrying out more strikes before the Gaza ceasefire deadline.

As we reported earlier, strikes have continued in the territory, with 122 people thought to have been killed since the deal was announced.

The al-Quds Brigades says continued bombing would lead to more hostages being killed - and that hostages' families should tell Israel to stop strikes in order to avoid more deaths.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad is the second largest armed faction in Gaza, after Hamas.

Our colleagues at Radio 5 Live have been speaking to Adam Ma'anit, an Israeli living in the UK, whose cousin Tsachi Idan was taken hostage by Hamas in October 2023.

He says he and his family are feeling anxious as they wait for news of which hostages might come home.

Idan was taken captive by Hamas when a gunman stormed into his kibbutz, also murdering his 18-year-old daughter Maayan. Hamas also filmed the ordeal on Facebook Live.

Ma'anit says the family haven't heard any news of Idan, apart from a hostage video last year when he looked "bleary-eyed and pale and thin, but alive", though Hamas then said he was dead.

"You can imagine the tremendous anxiety and the way that this is also being stage managed by Hamas, because even now we still don't know which of the hostages are alive or dead," he tells the BBC.

Image source, Family handout

Image source, Reuters

As the countdown to the ceasefire continues, Gazans who are temporarily living in camps in Khan Younis have been telling Reuters about how they are hoping to return to their home cities.

"We hope by the name of God, that today is the last day of war," says Mahmoud Sheikh Abed, who had to leave his home in Rafah. But he says he's still concerned the ceasefire may not go ahead, and hopes "there won't be any violations".

Bilal Al-Nahawani, also from Rafah, says: "The people of Gaza are tired, starving. Each house has people martyred or injured or detained. It is enough, people in Gaza suffered a lot."

Another Gazan, Tareq Zumlot, adds: "We hope this ceasefire is real and we will return to our home in Jabalia and check upon our families and friends."

We've just had an update on the number of people who've been killed in Gaza since the fighting between Israel and Hamas began 15 months ago.

Some 46,899 Palestinians are now known to have been killed, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says, adding that at least 110,725 have been wounded.

Yesterday, the figure stood at 46,876.

• As a reminder: Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages. The attack triggered a massive Israeli offensive on Gaza, in a bid to destroy Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and others.

Rushdi Abualouf
Gaza correspondent, reporting from Istanbul

A senior Palestinian official involved in the Doha negotiations has given me previously undisclosed details about a security protocol, agreed as part of the ceasefire deal.

Under this arrangement, Israel will permit Hamas police to operate in their official blue uniforms within designated areas of the Gaza Strip, once the ceasefire takes effect.

According to the official, Hamas police will manage the movement of displaced individuals from southern Gaza to the north while avoiding proximity to Israeli forces, which will maintain a security presence along the eastern and northern borders of the Strip.

It was further agreed that Hamas police personnel will refrain from carrying weapons except when absolutely necessary, with Qatar and Egypt mediating between the two parties to prevent any potential conflicts.

As we reported earlier, sirens went off this morning across central Israel and Jerusalem, after a projectile was reportedly launched from Yemen.

The Israeli military later said it was a missile which they had intercepted. We've received this footage from Reuters news agency of families running for cover as the sirens sounded:

The Israel Defense Forces has just confirmed the timing of the ceasefire - saying it will begin at 08:30 local time (06:30 GMT) on Sunday. The start time had already been announced by Qatar a few hours ago.

In a statement just now the IDF says: "The IDF has been preparing to receive the hostages after their release from Hamas captivity and is operating to provide suitable physical and psychological support, with careful attention to every detail."

It says its armed forces will "continue to operate" to ensure the safety of Israelis in areas near the Gaza Strip.

There's been an increase in the number of people known to have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire was announced on Wednesday - the figure now stands at 122, the Hamas-run civil defence agency says.

Spokesman Mahmoud Basal says those killed include 33 children and that more than 270 people have been injured in the same period.

Israeli air strikes have continued in recent days, with a Unicef worker yesterday telling the BBC she had woken to the "familiar sound of buzzing of drones flying over the skies of Gaza".

Palestinian news agency Wafa also reports this morning that five people were killed in an Israeli strike late on Friday night - in Al-Qarara, southern Gaza. The BBC has not been able to verify this report.

Israel has previously launched air strikes in the run-up to ceasefire arrangements taking effect - most recently in Lebanon, where heavy bombing hit the capital, Beirut, just hours before the ceasefire there in November.

With less than 24 hours to go until the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas comes into effect, here are some of the latest photos from the Middle East:

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

Image source, EPA

We're hearing that sirens have been sounding across parts of Israel in response to what the Israeli military says was Yemen launching a missile at the country.

Sirens were sounded in central Israel and Jerusalem in "accordance with protocol", the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reports.

In a follow-up, the military says it intercepted the missile.

• For context: The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have launched a number of missile attacks on Israel since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023 - in solidarity, they say, with Palestinians. Israel has carried out retaliatory strikes in Yemen. The Houthis have not said they carried out the strike this morning.