It’s 7:45am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and 8:44am in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. Welcome to our latest blog on the Middle East crisis. I’m Reged Ahmad and I’ll be with you for the next while.

The United States says it conducted strikes against a drone control station and up to 10 unmanned drones in Yemen that were preparing to launch. In a statement posted on X by US central command (Centcom) it said they posed an “imminent threat to US vessels and the US Navy ships in the region”.

A US Navy ship also shot down three Iranian drones and a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile in the Gulf of Aden, according to Centcom. More on that in a moment but first, here’s a summary of the latest events so far:

• A senior Hamas official has told the Reuters news agency that the group is studying a new proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza, presented by mediators after talks with Israel. The ceasefire proposal followed talks in Paris involving intelligence chiefs from Israel, the United States and Egypt, with the prime minister of Qatar.

• In its latest operational update, Israel’s military says it continues to operate in the central and northern Gaza Strip, and claims its forces are “conducting targeted raids on terrorist infrastructure and eliminating dozens of terrorists”. In al-Shati in the north, it claims to have killed ten people and to have “located large quantities of weapons, as well as documents and military equipment belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation”. The IDF has announced that three soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday.

• The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) has vowed the country is not afraid of war with the US. The commander-in-chief, Maj Gen Hossein Salami, said: “We hear some threats from American officials about targeting Iran. We tell them that you tested us and we know each other. We do not leave any threat unanswered, and we do not look for war, but we are not afraid of it. This is the well-known truth.”

• Security forces in Sweden have found a suspicious object at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. A controlled detonation is to be carried out.

• Israeli media reports several protesters have been detained by police at the Kerem Shalom border crossing where for days a group has been gathering attempting to prevent humanitarian aid crossing into the Gaza Strip while Hamas still holds people hostage.

• The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Wednesday he was hopeful it could be decided later in the day which member state could lead the forthcoming EU mission to protect vessels in the Red Sea, adding the operation could be launched before mid-February.

• The head of Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd shipping company has said he does not expect disruption to Red Sea voyages caused by Yemen’s Houthis to end anytime soon.