The Palestinian Red Crescent said its operations at Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City face an “imminent threat” after the Israeli military ordered the hospital’s evacuation. The PRCS posted an “urgent appeal” on Friday saying that the hospital was “a sanctuary for over 400 patients and around 12,000 displaced civilians”.
A mother and daughter from Chicago who were seized during the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October and held hostage in Gaza have been released after Qatar brokered negotiations with the militant group. Natalie Raanan, 17, and her mother, Judith, were transferred through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, where they were met by Israeli security forces. They were then taken to an Israeli military base to be reunited with their relatives.
A Hamas spokesperson, Abu Ubaida, said the hostages were released in response to Qatari mediation efforts, “for humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by [President Joe] Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless”.
Most of the approximately 200 people kidnapped in Israel by Hamas and taken to the Gaza Strip are still alive, the Israeli military said on Friday. The military said more than 20 hostages were children, while between 10 and 20 were over the age of 60.
An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said “there’s going to be no break” in his country’s effort to destroy Hamas, amid reports that the US and European governments have been putting pressure on Israel to delay its ground invasion of Gaza to buy time for secret talks underway to win the release of hostages held by Hamas.
Israeli security officials have signaled their readiness to embark on a ground offensive into Gaza that they say will be far more comprehensive and ferocious than any previous conflict with Hamas. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, visited troops on the Gaza border on Thursday, telling them: “You see Gaza now from a distance. You will soon see it from inside. The command will come.”
Gallant also said that after Israel destroys the Hamas militant group, the military does not plan to control “life in the Gaza Strip”. The Israeli defense minister’s comments to lawmakers were the first time an Israeli leader had discussed the country’s long-term plans for Gaza.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, flew to the Sinai peninsula on Friday in an effort to open a humanitarian route into Gaza, with the first aid delivery expected “in the next day or two”. The border crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border had been due to open on Friday. When the crossing opens, the Israelis will allow 20 aid trucks to enter Gaza in an initial convoy under the Biden deal.
Joe Biden said on Friday that he believed trucks carrying much-needed humanitarian aid should enter Gaza “within the next 24-48 hours”. Separately, Rishi Sunak said the Rafah border crossing should reopen “imminently”.
Israel bombarded Gaza early on Friday, hitting areas in the south where Palestinians had been told to seek safety. Palestinians in Gaza reported heavy airstrikes in Khan Younis in the south, and ambulances carrying men, women and children streamed into the town’s Nasser hospital, Gaza’s second largest, which was already overflowing with patients and people seeking shelter.
At least 18 people are reported to have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Greek Orthodox church compound in Gaza on Thursday. Palestinian officials said at least 500 Muslims and Christians had taken shelter in the church from Israeli bombardments. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expressed its “strongest condemnation” of the strike, which it said constituted a war crime.
The Palestinian health ministry says 13 people, including five children, were killed after an Israeli assault on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank. At least 81 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank since the Gaza conflict erupted on 7 October, according to figures from the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah. One member of the Israeli security forces has also been killed in the territory.
Rishi Sunak and Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt agreed world leaders needed to “do everything possible to avoid a contagion of conflict” in the Middle East during their talks in Cairo on Friday, Downing Street said. The UK prime minister praised Cairo’s efforts to allow movement through Rafah as he spoke about the need to ensure aid can get to Palestinians “as quickly as possible”.
Sunak also met with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, during his trip to Egypt on Friday. The two leaders “condemned Hamas’s terrorism and stressed that Hamas do not represent the Palestinian people”, a statement from Sunak’s office said.
More than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, according to an update from the Hamas-run health authority in Gaza on Friday. A total of 4,137 people have lost their lives, it said, while more than 13,000 people have been injured. More than a million people have been displaced in Gaza, with many heeding Israel’s orders to evacuate the northern part of the sealed-off coastal enclave.
Israel has evacuated its own communities near Gaza and Lebanon and announced plans to evacuate Kiryat Shmona, a town of more than 20,000 residents near the Lebanese border.
Joe Biden has drawn a direct, provocative link between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel in only the second Oval Office address of his presidency. The White House on Friday asked Congress for nearly $106bn to fund ambitious plans for Ukraine, Israel and US border security, but offered no strategy for securing the money from a broken Congress.
Western officials are voicing mounting concern over the risk of a regional “spillover” from the conflict between Israel and Hamas, as US forces in the region come under repeated drone attacks, including in Iraq.
A candlelit vigil for Issam Abdallah, the Reuters visuals journalist killed last week while filming Israeli missile attacks at the Israeli-Lebanon border, was held in Beirut on Friday.
Police in London say they have recorded a 1,353% increase in antisemitic offenses this month compared with the same period last year, while Islamophobic offenses were up 140% after the attack by Hamas on Israel.
The UK government has said that pro-Palestine marchers attending demonstrations scheduled to take place around the UK this weekend have a right to protest but should “be mindful” of the “fear and distress felt by many families in this country”.
