In Gaza, thousands of demonstrators broke into a government compound earlier today. The protest came on the fourth day of a strike called by president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah faction over non-payment of civil service salaries. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civil servants have been on strike since Saturday.

• Palestinian Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi: “The public sector now will be paralysed but this isn’t something really new because we have been witnessing a failure and a paralysis in the working of the government for sometime. But this is an overt paralysis in that the offices will be closed and that the schools, the hospitals and so on will not be providing services.”