Middle East crisis live: 14 security personnel killed in Syria after clash over former prison officer | Syria

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and developments in the Middle East more widely.

Fourteen security personnel from Syria’s new authorities and three armed men were killed in clashes in Tartous province when forces attempted to arrest an officer linked to the notorious Sednaya prison, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Observatory said the clash broke out in Tartous, a stronghold of ousted president, Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority.

Syria’s new interior minister confirmed the fatalities in a message on Telegram, and said that 10 police officers were also wounded by what he called “remnants” of the Assad government. The minister vowed to punish anyone who dared “to undermine Syria’s security or endanger the lives of its citizens”.

The deadly incident comes as demonstrations and an overnight curfew elsewhere marked the most widespread unrest since Bashar al-Assad’s removal more than two weeks ago. One demonstrator was killed and five others wounded in Homs “after security forces … opened fire to disperse” the crowd, Agence France-Presse reported.

The protests took place in several cities around the same time that an undated video was circulated on social media that showed a fire inside an Alawite shrine in the city of Aleppo.

In other developments:

• Five journalists were killed when their vehicle was struck in the vicinity of Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat in central Gaza, health authorities said. Palestinian media and local reporters said the vehicle was marked as a media van and was used by journalists to report from inside the hospital and Nuseirat camp. The journalists worked for the Al-Quds Al-Youm television channel. The Israeli army said its air force attacked the vehicle in a “targeted manner” and that members of the Islamic Jihad militant group were inside.

• In a separate incident, five people were killed and 20 wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood early on Thursday, medics with the Gaza health authorities reported. They warned the death toll could rise as many people remained trapped under the rubble.

• A baby girl has frozen to death in Gaza, the third to die from the cold, in Gaza’s tent camps in recent days, doctors said. The father of three-week-old Sila, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, wrapped her in a blanket to try to keep her warm in their tent in the Muwasi area outside the town of Khan Younis, but it was not enough, he told the Associated Press.

• On Wednesday, Hamas and Israel traded blame over their failure to conclude a ceasefire agreement despite progress reported by both sides in past days.

• Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry. It says more than half the fatalities have been women and children, but does not say how many of the dead were fighters.