Israel has confirmed it carried out airstrikes that destroyed apartment blocks and killed dozens of people at a refugee camp in northern Gaza. At least six airstrikes hit residential areas in the Jabalia refugee camp on Gaza City’s outskirts on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people and injuring about 150 people, Hamas officials said.
The Israeli military said it had targeted the camp to kill Ibrahim Biari – a key Hamas commander linked to the group’s 7 October attack on Israel who, it said, had taken over civilian buildings in Gaza City with his fighters.
At least 8,525 Palestinians, including 3,542 children, have been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to Hamas health ministry figures issued before the strikes on Jabalia. The health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said 130 healthcare staff had been killed, and 15 hospitals were now out of service along with 32 healthcare centres.
Hamas’s armed wing said on Tuesday that it would release a number of foreign hostages in its captivity “in the next few days”. Hamas has so far released four hostages back to Israel.
The Israeli military has raised the number of hostages it says are confirmed held in Gaza by Hamas to 240. In a briefing on Tuesday, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said: “So far, families of 240 hostages have received notification. The number rose to 240 because our identification – as I’ve explained, some of the people are not citizens of Israel, so identification is more complicated. It takes time”. The head of Israel’s national security council said Tuesday he does not see a deal for the release of hostages being close.
The Israeli military said it was making “significant” achievements during the ground operation in the Gaza Strip but it was also “paying a heavy price”, said the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, on Tuesday.
Hagari has also claimed that Israel intercepted a missile from the Red Sea direction. He said: “A surface-to-surface missile that was launched into the territory of the state of Israel from the Red Sea area was successfully intercepted by the ‘Arrow’ long-range defence system.” The IDF also said it had scrambled planes “and intercepted hostile targets flying in the area”. “These drones belong to the state of Yemen,” Abdelaziz bin Habtour, the prime minister of the Houthi government told AFP, claiming the attacks.
Israeli troops on Tuesday destroyed the family home of Saleh al-Arouri, the exiled commander of Hamas forces in the occupied West Bank. Arouri, a veteran Hamas leader who has spent 17 years in Israeli jails, is deputy to the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and among a group of leaders singled out by Israeli officials. His house, which local residents said was not occupied, was blown up in the early hours of the morning.
The al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said it fired anti-tank missiles at Israeli forces early on Tuesday, adding that troops were “invading the southern Gaza axis”. Hamas said it also targeted two Israeli tanks and bulldozers in north-west Gaza with missiles.
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire and urged all sides to respect international humanitarian law. He said he was “dismayed by reports that two-thirds of those who have been killed are women and children.”
A World Health Organization official said on Tuesday that a “public health catastrophe” was imminent in Gaza amid overcrowding, mass displacement and damage to water and sanitation infrastructure. At the same press briefing, a spokesperson for the UN children’s agency warned of the risk of infant deaths due to dehydration with just 5% of normal water supplies available.
The Rafah border crossing will be opened on Wednesday for a number of injured Palestinians to complete their treatment in Egyptian hospitals, according to reports. 81 Gazans with serious injuries will enter Egypt to receive treatment, the General Authority for Crossings and Borders in Gaza said.
The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has resigned from his post, protesting that the UN is “failing” in its duty to prevent what he categorizes as genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment and citing the US, UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”.
The attack by Hamas on Israel will inspire the most significant terror threat to the US since the rise of Isis nearly a decade ago, FBI director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.
Pro-Palestine demonstrators interrupted US secretary of state Antony Blinken at a Senate hearing, covering their hands in red paint and calling on him to push for a ceasefire in Gaza. The protesters stopped Blinken during his testimony several times, with police taking the individuals out of the hall.
The deepening IDF incursion into Gaza came amid dwindling Israeli public enthusiasm for a prolonged occupation. Support has fallen from 65% on 10 October to 46% now, according to a study by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which has monitored the same sample of 1,774 people, with a 4.2% margin of error.
