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Summary
It is shortly after 7am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here is where things stand:
The United Nations says it has been told by the Israeli military that some 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours, a request it considers to be impossible “without devastating humanitarian consequences.” “The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation,” the UN spokesperson said. Dujarric said the order by the Israeli military also applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities, including schools, health centres and clinics.
The Israeli air force has dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza since Saturday, it said late on Thursday. “Dozens of fighter jets and helicopters attacked a series of terrorist targets of the Hamas terrorist organisation throughout the Gaza Strip. So far, the IAF has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets,” the IAF said on X. The attacks have killed 1,500 Palestinians, a third of them children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. 6,600 have been wounded.
The UN called for $294m for ‘urgent needs’ in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The United Nations has issued an emergency appeal for $294m to address “the most urgent needs” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where more than 400,000 Palestinians have fled their homes in recent days. The funds would be used to help more than 1.2 million people, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, adding that recent fighting in the region had left aid groups without adequate resources.
Israel’s parliament approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency unity government on Thursday, including a number of centrist opposition lawmakers, to display its determination to fight the war with Hamas in Gaza.
As Israel’s unity government was sworn in, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech in which he promised, referring to hostages taken by Hamas, “We will not slacken in the effort to bring them back home.” Referring to Hamas, he called for countries that “maintain their presence” to face sanctions. As he ended the speech, he said, “Difficult days await us”.
More than 1,300 people, including 222 soldiers, have been killed in Israel, according to the military. The majority of the dead were killed in a single day, when Hamas fighters broke through the border and attacked Israeli civilians. Scores of Israeli and foreign hostages were taken back to Gaza. Israel says it has so far identified 97 of them.
Israeli bombing has destroyed eleven mosques, damaged 90 schools, according to the UN. It has also destroyed 752 residential and non-residential buildings, comprising 2,835 housing units, the UN says, citing numbers from the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing. Another nearly 1,800 housing units have been damaged beyond repair and rendered uninhabitable, it said. The UN agency also voiced alarm at the significant destruction of civilian infrastructure damaged in the shelling.
More than 423,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said, following heavy Israeli bombardments in retaliation for Hamas’s attacks. As of late Thursday, the number of displaced in Gaza rose by 84,444 people to reach 423,378, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement sent on Friday.
Hundreds of Australians are preparing to get on repatriation flights out of Israel, with two planes to depart Tel Aviv for London in the next 24 hours. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said 1600 people had registered in Israel or the West Bank, including 19 in Gaza, for repatriation in what was an “extraordinary logistical exercise”.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, warned that the “continuation of war crimes against Palestine and Gaza” could open a new front of war, and that Israel will be “responsible for the consequences”.
Updated
Israeli envoy says 'UN’s response to Israel’s early warning to the residents of Gaza is shameful'
Back now to the IDF warning the UN that 1.1 million people should leave north Gaza in the next 24 hours.
Israel’s military did not immediately provide comment on the warning, which came as it amassed tanks near the Gaza border and pounded the enclave with air strikes.
But appearing to confirm a warning took place, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, told Reuters: “The UN’s response to Israel’s early warning to the residents of Gaza is shameful.”
Erdan said the UN should focus on condemning Hamas and supporting Israel’s right to self-defence.
The UN response that he refereed to was a statement from UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, saying, “The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” and that, “The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation”.
Kirby also told CNN that the US speaking to the Israeli military hourly about the hostages taken by Hamas.
“I can tell you that we are in literally hourly contact with our Israeli counterparts about the hostage situation, we’ve offered expertise and counsel, of course, they know how to do hostage recovery very, very well,” he said.
“We’re mindful of the delicate nature of this hostage situation, because they’re most likely being held somewhere in Gaza. It’s a war zone, it’s a combat zone that greatly complicates efforts to find them and to and to work on their release.”
White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby has told CNN that the US is “working very hard hour by hour” to make sure that there is a way for Palestinians to leave Gaza safely.
“Whether or not there’s a ground incursion — and I’ll let the Israelis speak to their operations — we want to make sure that there’s a way for people who live in Gaza who want to get out to do it, and to do it safely and quickly, so we’re working on this very, very hard hour by hour,” Kirby said.
“We believe that there should be an opportunity for civilians in Gaza to leave now, yesterday, I mean, immediately.”
The Israeli military says it is preparing for a possible ground operation in Gaza but that political leadership has not yet decided on one. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told reporters Thursday that forces “are preparing for a ground maneuver if decided.”
However, the evacuation order, if true, appears to indicate that a ground offensive may be imminent.
The military has invested tremendous resources for such a scenario, the Associated Press reports, even building a training base in its southern desert meant to replicate Gaza’s urban landscape.
Forces operating inside Gaza might have a better chance of killing top Hamas leaders and rescuing hostages, but such an assault all but guarantees far higher casualties on both sides. And it would involve street-by-street battles with Hamas militants who’ve had years to prepare tunnels and traps, AP reports.
IDF Spokesperson Jonathan Conricus will deliver a situational update at 7:40am local time, just under an hour from now.
🔴 Join us pic.twitter.com/rhw21lVuQP
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 13, 2023
The New York Times reports, “Israeli military officers conveyed the information to the leaders of the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Department of Safety and Security in Gaza just before midnight local time on Friday, the UN statement said. The UN was told that the marker dividing the north from south was Wadi Gaza, the statement said.”
Meanwhile the President of Brazil, which holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, has appealed to his Israeli counterpart for the establishment of a humanitarian corridor to enable people in the Gaza Strip to flee to Egypt, he said Thursday.
The comments by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva add Brazil to the voices of European foreign ministers and the World Health Organization that have called for the establishment of a route to either allow people to flee the Palestinian enclave or let humanitarian aid flow in.
He did not appear to be speaking in response to the IDF order saying 1.1 million people should evacuate in the next 24 hours.
“I recently spoke on the phone with the President of Israel Isaac Herzog,” Lula said on X, formerly Twitter. “I conveyed my call for a humanitarian corridor so that people who want to leave the Gaza Strip through Egypt can be safe.”
A Hamas official has told Reuters that the relocation warning is “fake propaganda” and has urged Gazans “not to fall for it”, the news agency reports.
Updated
More now on that news, via Reuters:
Israel’s military informed the United Nations late on Thursday, New York time, that the 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours, a UN spokesman said, in what Palestinians fear could be a precursor to a planned Israeli ground offensive.
The Israeli military did not immediately provide comment on the warning, which came as Israel amassed tanks near the Gaza border and pounded the Palestinian enclave with air strikes following a deadly Hamas militant attack in Israel.
“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation,” he said.
Dujarric said the order by the Israeli military also applied to all U.N. staff and those sheltered in UN facilities, including schools, health centres and clinics.
Israel’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Updated
IDF request is 'impossible' says UN
If you’re just joining us, Reuters is reporting that the United Nations says it has received an order from the Israeli Defence Forces saying that “the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza should relocate to southern Gaza within the next 24 hours.”
This amounts to 1.1 million people, according to the report.
The UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric has reportedly said in a statement, “The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
Reuters correspondent for the UN, Michelle Nichols, is also reporting the news that the UN has been informed by the IDF that 1.1 million people should evacuate from northern Gaza in the next 24 hours, a task the UN spokesperson said was “impossible”.
This is what Axios reports that it has been told by UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric:
“Today, just before midnight local time, team leaders of the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Department of Safety and Security in Gaza were informed by their liaison officers in the Israeli military that the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza should relocate to southern Gaza within the next 24 hours,” Dujarric told Axios.
“This amounts to approximately 1.1 million people. The same order applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities – including schools, health centers and clinics,” Dujarric said.
“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” Dujarric added.
“The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”
We are working to find out as much as we can about the reported evacuation order for 1.1 million people in Gaza.
Axios is reporting the news of that the IDF has notified the UN that all Palestinians and UN staff north of Wadi Gaza must evacuate – and that this means 1.1m people.
It appears that Axios has spoken directly to UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, the news organisation also reports that it has spoken to “another source with direct knowledge”.
It is unclear if the Reuters report is based on a statement seen by Reuters.
Axios interpreted the order as a sign that Israel would shortly launch a ground offensive.
The Guardian has not seen a statement from the UN Secretary General’s spokesperson or from the IDF confirming that this order was received.
More shortly.
Israeli military has told 1.1 millions Gazans to move to south, UN says
Reuters reports that the United Nations says it has been told by the Israeli military that some 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours.
“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation,” he said.
Dujarric said the order by the Israeli military also applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities, including schools, health centres and clinics.
Updated
In a further show of support for Israel, a US official has confirmed that defense secretary Lloyd Austin plans to visit on Friday, a day after secretary of state Antony Blinken was in Israel to meet with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Earlier the defence department said Austin had spoken by phone with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant on Thursday “to receive updates on Israel Defense Forces operations to defend the Israeli people and territory from Hamas’ terrorist attack.”
The Secretary underscored his commitment to ensuring Israel has it what it needs to defend itself and reiterated his commitment to deterring actors that may seek to escalate this conflict.
Among those killed in Israeli strikes on the Shati refugee camp, the AP reports, was Yasser al-Masri, whose body arrived along with those of his wife and infant daughter. Medics circulated photos of al-Masri and his daughter, covered in filth in the same body bag.
His friends shared his final Facebook post before Israel’s warplanes struck.
“I only have a few hours before my phone dies because we’re without electricity,” he wrote. “There is no light at night except the moon. Please forgive me. I forgive all of you.”
The Associated Press has spoken to Palestinians at hospitals in Gaza. Here is what they are experiencing:
“It is not possible, under any circumstances, to continue this work,” said Mohammad Abu Selim, Shifa Hospital’s general director. “The patients are now on the streets. The wounded are on the streets. We cannot find a bed for them.”
With resources stretched thin, clinics understaffed and ambulances taking hours to get victims to medical care because airstrikes have ravaged the streets, some say it’s not worth the trip.
“We know that if a case is critical, they just won’t survive,” said Khalil Abu Yehiya, a 28-year-old teacher whose neighbour’s home was bombed in Thursday’s airstrikes on the Jabaliya refugee camp.
When more heavy bombardment hit the Shati refugee camp just north of Gaza City along the Mediterranean coast, a new wave of wounded streamed into the hospital complex — toddlers with bruises and bandages, men with makeshift tourniquets, young girls with blood caked on their faces. Because Shifa’s intensive care unit was full, some lay in the hospital corridors, pressed up against the walls to clear aisles for staff and stretchers.
“I’ve been to many places and seen horrors and shelling. Not this level of insanity,” said 36-year-old local photojournalist Attia Darwish as he watched the wounded pour into the hospital.
US law enforcement agencies have escalated security measures to safeguard Jewish and Muslim communities ahead of global pro-Palestinian protests expected on Friday, Reuters reports, but have urged members of the public to go about their daily routines.
Police in the two most populous US cities - New York and Los Angeles - said they would step up patrols, especially around synagogues and Jewish community centers, though authorities insisted they were unaware of any specific, or credible threats.
“There’s no reason to feel afraid. No one should feel they have to alter their normal lives,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a news briefing on Thursday.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his office had directed city police to “surge additional resources to schools and houses of worship to ensure they are safe and that our city remains a place of peace.”
Adams said extra police patrols were being deployed in Jewish and Muslim communities alike.
UN calls for $294m for 'urgent needs' in Gaza, occupied West Bank
The United Nations has issued an emergency appeal for $294m to address “the most urgent needs” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where more than 400,000 Palestinians have fled their homes in recent days.
The funds would be used to help more than 1.2 million people, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, adding that recent fighting in the region had left aid groups without adequate resources.
Netanyahu: 'Difficult days await'
As Israel’s unity government was sworn in, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech in which he promised, referring to hostages taken by Hamas, “We will not slacken in the effort to bring them back home.”
“At the same time, we are united in the same great determination against the abhorrent and murderous enemy,” he said.
Referring to Hamas, he called for countries that “maintain their presence” to face sanctions.
As he ended the speech, he said, “Difficult days await us”.
Here is some of the speech:
Strength of will and endurance are synonyms for the Jewish people. We will also meet this current test, even though it is almost too difficult to bear. The Shabbat of the 7th of October will be etched as a cursed and dark day in the annals of nations. For us, the Jewish people, it is the most harrowing day since the Holocaust.
…
We will find these accursed murders […] with full force and we will defeat them. We will wipe them off the face of the earth. The time will come when we will rebuild the destroyed communities. We will rebuild the area around the Gaza Strip and we will restore it as a flourishing and prosperous area.
…
My friends, difficult days await us but we will not be deterred and we will not give in.
Israeli death toll stands at 1,300
More than 1,300 people, including 222 soldiers, have been killed in Israel, according to the military.
The toll has not been seen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria that lasted weeks, Reuters reports.
The majority of the dead were killed in a single day, when Hamas fighters broke through the border and attacked Israeli civilians.
Scores of Israeli and foreign hostages were taken back to Gaza. Israel says it has so far identified 97 of them.
In Australia, police in the state of New South Wales, home to Sydney, have applied for “extraordinary powers” to search protesters without reason and arrest and charge people who refuse to identify themselves at Sunday’s planned pro-Palestinian rally.
The acting commissioner, David Hudson, said he believed the threshold for using the powers introduced after the 2005 Cronulla riots had been met and he would seek to have them enabled before the rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park.
“These powers are extraordinary – these powers are seldom used,” he said on Friday.
Hudson urged people against attending the planned protest and warned against a repeat of Monday night’s march in which some people chanted antisemitic slurs and let off flares on the steps of the Opera House.Hudson said the force was getting legal advice over its ability to use the powers, which included provisions to lock the city down.
“Just because they’re available, does not necessarily mean they have to be used and we will not use the full extent of the powers which can lock the city down,” he said.
Israeli bombing has destroyed eleven mosques, damaged 90 schools
Israel’s bombing campaign has destroyed 752 residential and non-residential buildings, comprising 2,835 housing units, the UN says, citing numbers from the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing.
Another nearly 1,800 housing units have been damaged beyond repair and rendered uninhabitable, it said.
The UN agency also voiced alarm at the significant destruction of civilian infrastructure damaged in the shelling.
At least 90 educational facilities, including 20 UNRWA schools and 70 schools run by the Palestinian Authority, have also been struck and damaged, with one of the schools completely destroyed.
“Eleven mosques were targeted and destroyed, while seven churches and mosques sustained damage,” OCHA said.
Water and sanitation facilities have been also hit, it said, adding that since the hostilities began, six water wells, three water pumping stations, one water reservoir, and one desalination plant serving more than 1,100,000 people were damaged by air strikes.
More than 423,000 people displaced in Gaza: UN
More than 423,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said, following heavy Israeli bombardments in retaliation for Hamas’s attacks.
As of late Thursday, the number of displaced in Gaza rose by 84,444 people to reach 423,378, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement sent on Friday.
“Heavy Israeli bombardments, from the air, sea and land, have continued almost uninterrupted,” OCHA said in its update.
“Multiple residential buildings in densely populated areas have been targeted and destroyed during the past 24 hours.”
Israel has dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza since Saturday
The Israeli air force has dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza since Saturday, it said late on Thursday.
“Dozens of fighter jets and helicopters attacked a series of terrorist targets of the Hamas terrorist organisation throughout the Gaza Strip. So far, the IAF has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets,” the IAF said on X.
The attacks have killed 1,500 Palestinians, a third of them children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. 6,6000 have been wounded.
The Washington Post has spoken to military experts who have called the number of strikes “staggering”. The number of munitions is more than the US used in a month of its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and almost what the US used in its most intensive year of strikes in Afghanistan:
‘Israel is dropping in less than a week what the US was dropping in Afghanistan in a year, in a much smaller, much more densely populated area, where mistakes are going to be magnified,’ said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser at the Dutch organisation PAX for Peace and a former UN war crimes investigator in Libya.
The highest number of bombs dropped in one year during the war in Afghanistan was just over 7,423, Garlasco said, citing public records from US Air Forces Central Command. During the entire war in Libya, NATO reported dropping more than 7,600 bombs and missiles from planes, according to a UN report.
During the air campaign against the Islamic State in 2014 through 2019, the US-led coalition dropped 2,000 to 5,000 munitions per month across all of Iraq and Syria, military affairs journalist Wesley Morgan pointed out Thursday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, citing a Rand Corp. report.
Updated
Here is video footage from Gaza, as Israel mounts wave after wave of attack on what it claims are Hamas targets.
Since Saturday, 1500 Palestinians have been killed, a third of them children:
Scalise drops out of House Speaker race
And in breaking news from the US: Congressman Steve Scalise has said he is ending his bid to become the House speaker after failing to secure enough votes to win the gavel.
Scalise told his fellow Republican colleagues at a closed-door meeting late on Thursday of his decision.
Next steps are uncertain as the House is now essentially closed, while the Republican majority tries to elect a speaker after ousting Kevin McCarthy from the job.
The move followed a day of closed-door meetings that moved Scalise no closer to overcoming the entrenched divisions imperiling his quest for the speakership.
The House is entering its second week without a speaker and is essentially unable to function. Lawmakers want Congress to deliver a strong statement of support for Israel in the war with Hamas, but a bipartisan resolution has been sidelined by the stalemate in the House.
Updated
Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, has urged Australians wanting to leave Israel not to delay.
“This is a very difficult situation ... the United States and other parties are seeking to establish humanitarian access, humanitarian corridors, and Australia supports those efforts,” she told reporters in Adelaide.
Hundreds of Australians preparing to catch repatriation flights
AAP: Hundreds of Australians are preparing to get on repatriation flights out of Israel, with two planes to depart Tel Aviv for London in the next 24 hours.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said 1600 people had registered in Israel or the West Bank, including 19 in Gaza, for repatriation in what was an “extraordinary logistical exercise”.
The government has organised two Qantas flights that are due to depart Ben Gurion International Airport on Friday for London. A third flight has also been chartered.
From there, the government will look at what assistance can be provided to get people back to Australia, with Mr Albanese flagging that Qantas is exploring the option of adding flights home via Singapore.
“The first flight from Qantas will leave to London, it will carry 220 passengers ... we’re doing all that we can, this is an extraordinary logistical exercise while a war is going on,” he told Nine’s Today Show on Friday.
An estimated 10,000 Australians citizens are in Israel, including dual citizens and tourists.
Updated
Meanwhile in the US, the House of Representatives remained without a speaker on Thursday, as the fractious Republican majority refused to unite behind their party’s chosen nominee, congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
A day after narrowly becoming House Republicans’ candidate for speaker in a secret ballot vote, Scalise appeared no closer to overcoming the entrenched divisions imperiling his quest for the gavel.
The House is entering its second week without a speaker and is essentially unable to function, and the political pressure increasingly is on Republicans to reverse course, reassert majority control and govern in Congress.
Action is needed to fund the government or face the threat of a federal shutdown in a month. Lawmakers also want Congress to deliver a strong statement of support for Israel in the war with Hamas, but a bipartisan resolution has been sidelined by the stalemate in the House.
The White House is expected to soon ask for money for Israel, Ukraine and the backfill of the US weapons stockpile.
Israel’s parliament approves national unity government
In case you missed this earlier: Israel’s parliament approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency unity government on Thursday, including a number of centrist opposition lawmakers, to display its determination to fight the war with Hamas in Gaza.
The government, approved after Saturday’s attack by the militant Islamist group Hamas that governs the Gaza Strip, underlines the suspension of normal political rules during one of the most serious crises in Israel’s history.
Gaza hospitals 'in a critical situation'
“We are in a critical situation,” Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, has told the Associated Press.
“Ambulances can’t get to the wounded, the wounded can’t get to intensive care, the dead can’t get to the morgue.”
Gaza morgue has run out of room
The morgue at Gaza’s biggest hospital overflowed Thursday as bodies came in faster than relatives could claim them, the Associated Press reports:
The morgue at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital can only handle some 30 bodies at a time, and workers had to stack corpses three high outside the walk-in cooler and put dozens more, side by side, in the parking lot. Some were placed in a tent, and others were sprawled on the cement, under the sun.
“The body bags started and just kept coming and coming and now it’s a graveyard,” Abu Elias Shobaki, a nurse at Shifa, told AP, referring to the parking lot.
“I am emotionally, physically exhausted. I just have to stop myself from thinking about how much worse it will get.”
Lines of white body bags — soles of bare feet sticking out from one, a bloodied arm from another — brought the scale and intensity of Israel’s retaliation on Gaza into sharp relief. Hospital officials asked stricken family members to identify their loved ones. Some peered into the body bags, then collapsed into tears or screams.
Israel and White House condemn Trump remarks
In case you missed this earlier, Israel and the White House on Thursday condemned remarks by Donald Trump in which he praised the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Hamas attack.
Trump called the Lebanese Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel, “very smart” and accused Netanyahu of being “not prepared” for the Hamas attack, which also killed 22 Americans.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said Trump’s comments to supporters and in a television interview on Wednesday night showed he could not be relied on.
It is “shameful that a man like that, a former US president, abets propaganda and disseminates things that wound the spirit of Israel’s fighters and its citizens,” Karhi told Israel’s Channel 13.
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates called Trump’s comments “dangerous and unhinged.”
“It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organisation as ‘smart’,” Bates said.
Democratic President Joe Biden has condemned the Hamas attack as “an act of sheer evil” and declared his unwavering support for Israel.
Will Hezbollah join the war?
AP has taken a look at whether Lebanon’s Hezbollah is likely to join the war.
Hezbollah, which like Hamas is supported by Iran, has so far been on the fence about joining the fighting between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Islamic militant rulers.
While Israel’s political and military leaders weigh the next move, they are nervously watching Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and have sent troop reinforcements to the area. Hezbollah, with an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets and missiles capable of hitting virtually anywhere in Israel, is viewed as a far more formidable foe than Hamas.
Israel is anxious that opening a new front in the country’s north could change the tide of the war, with Hezbollah’s military caliber far superior to that of Hamas. But the fighting could be equally devastating for Hezbollah and Lebanon.
Israel is especially worried about Hezbollah’s precision-guided missiles, which are believed to be aimed at strategic targets like natural gas rigs and power stations.
Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese analyst close to the group, said Hezbollah “will not allow Hamas’ destruction and won’t leave Gaza alone to face a ground incursion.”
“When the situation requires further escalation, then Hezbollah will do so,” he told The Associated Press.
But the possibility of a new front in Lebanon also brings back bitter memories of a vicious monthlong war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 that ended in a stalemate and a tense detente between the two sides. Lebanon is in the fourth year of a crippling economic crisis and is bitterly divided between Hezbollah and its allies and opponents, paralyzing the political system.
UK Prime Minister speaks to Netanyahu
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday evening to reaffirm the country’s support for Israel following Hamas’ attack, a Downing Street spokesperson said on Thursday.
The leaders discussed Israel‘s response against Hamas in Gaza and Sunak confirmed the UK had authorised the sending of a significant support package to the region, including RAF surveillance aircraft, two Royal Navy ships, and three Merlin helicopters.
This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
Summary
It’s 2am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s where we stand:
Israel began the long and sorrowful process of burying the victims of the weekend’s attacks by Hamas. The most recent death toll in Israel stands at 1,200. Israel’s military spokesperson said the government has been able to confirm the identities of 97 people taken hostage into Gaza during the attack by Hamas. More than 100 are believed to have been taken.
More than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes since Saturday, Gaza’s health ministry said on Thursday. Among them are 500 children and 276 women, it said. A further 6,612 were wounded in Israeli airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave, the ministry said.
More than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the UN said on Thursday, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.
The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, said Gazans must “stay steadfast and remain on their land” amid growing calls for Cairo to allow safe passage to civilians fleeing Gaza. The only viable exit for Gazans to flee is through the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, but Egypt has rejected any move to set up safe corridors for refugees fleeing Gaza.
The World Health Organization said it has documented 34 attacks on health care in Gaza since last Saturday that have resulted in the death of 11 health workers, 16 injuries, and damages to 19 health facilities and 20 ambulances. In a statement on Thursday, the WHO warned that the health system in the Gaza Strip is “at breaking point”, and that “time is running out to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe”.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said the situation in the Gaza Strip is “dire” and “devastating” and warned that crucial supplies were running dangerously low after Israel imposed a total blockade on the territory. Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, said no power, water or fuel will be allowed into Gaza until Israeli hostages are returned home.
Human Rights Watch said it had concluded Israel used white phosphorus in military operations over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border this week. Israel’s use of white phosphorus in crowded civilian areas “poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering” , the organisation warned.
A ground offensive will be launched on Gaza “when opportune and fit for our purposes”, the IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said in an update early on Thursday.
Israeli strikes have killed three journalists so far, and two others died as a result of gunshot wounds, according to Reporters without Borders. Some 12 workers with the UN Palestinian refugee agency have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the organisation has said.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, spoke to the king of Jordan, Abdullah II, on Thursday. Abbas stressed “the rejection of … killing civilians or abusing them on both sides” and called for the release of civilians, prisoners and detainees.
Two police officers were wounded after a shooting attack near the Herod’s Gate entrance to the Jerusalem old city, Israeli police said. The gunman used a makeshift submachine gun in the attack, according to police. Officers returned fire and “neutralised” him, police said.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the attacks by Hamas had “harrowing echoes” of Nazi massacres, as he stood alongside the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem in an act of public solidarity. Blinken vowed that the US would stand for ever alongside Israel, and said he would use his tour of the region to urge all parties, especially Hezbollah, not to broaden the conflict or open a second front. The death toll of US citizens in Israel now stands at 27, the White House said on Thursday. The number of Americans unaccounted for is 14.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, warned that the “continuation of war crimes against Palestine and Gaza” could open a new front of war, and that Israel will be “responsible for the consequences”. Abdollahian arrived in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Thursday, where he was received by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Hamas.
Syria said Israeli forces launched simultaneous missile attacks on the airports in its capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday. “Bursts of missiles” hit the two airports at the same time, a Syrian military source was cited as saying in what he said was a bid to distract the world’s attention from Israel’s war with Hamas militants in Gaza.
The UK will deploy patrol and surveillance aircraft and two Royal Navy ships to the eastern Mediterranean “to support Israel”, the government said. Maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft will begin flying in the region “to track threats to regional stability”, Downing Street said.
The US and Qatar have agreed to deny Iran’s access to any of the $6bn (£4.9bn) funds that were part of a prisoner swap deal between the Biden administration and Tehran last month, the US deputy treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo, reportedly told House Democrats.
Emmanuel Macron said France is “doing everything possible” for the citizens missing in Israel, in a televised address on Thursday evening. “France will never abandon its children,” the French president said. Thirteen French citizens were killed in Hamas attacks on Israel at the weekend. Another 17, including children, are reported missing. Several are believed to be being held hostage in Gaza.
The British government is organising flights to repatriate British nationals from Israel, with the first due to leave from Tel Aviv on Thursday. British nationals will be invited to take up seats on the flights along with dual nationals, and dependants if travelling with a British national normally resident in the UK.
The British children of elderly hostages abducted by Hamas pleaded for their return as they described the invasion of Israel as a “second Holocaust”. Seventeen British nationals are feared dead or missing after the weekend’s atrocities.
Officials across Europe scrambled to curtail any spillover of tensions from the Israel-Hamas war, with Germany pledging a “zero tolerance” approach to antisemitism and France banning pro-Palestinian protests amid concerns for public order.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, warned that antisemitic acts and defending terrorism would be dealt with “severely” in France, in a televised address on the Israel-Palestine crisis on Thursday evening.
Two Jewish schools in north-west London are set to close temporarily because of safety fears after the crisis in Israel and Gaza, as ministers announced £3m for a charity that helps protect Jewish community sites.
Iran warns crimes against Palestinians could open 'a new front' in war
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, warned that the “continuation of war crimes against Palestine and Gaza” could open a new front of war, and that Israel will be “responsible for the consequences”.
Speaking through a translator in televised remarks on Thursday, Abdollahian said:
Some Western officials have questioned if there is an intention to open a new front against the Zionist entity. Of course, in light of the continuation of these circumstances that are war crimes.
The Iranian minister said the displacement of Palestinians and cutting water and electricity to the Gaza Strip are considered war crimes. He added:
The continuation of war crimes against Palestine and Gaza will receive a response from the rest of the axis. And naturally, the Zionist entity and its supporters will be responsible for the consequences of that.
Abdollahian arrived in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Thursday, where he was received by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hamas, among other pro-Iran groups. He is scheduled to meet Lebanese officials on Friday before heading to Damascus, AFP reported.
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Hungary has evacuated a further 65 citizens from Israel, foreign minister Péter Szijjártó said.
The evacuated Hungarians are en route by ship to Cyprus, from where they will be flown back to Hungary, he said in a statement.
Earlier this week, Hungary had evacuated 325 people, including 46 children, from Israel by air. Szijjártó said in an earlier statement on Thursday:
We would like it if they could come home as soon as possible.
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Egypt's Sisi says Gazans must 'remain on their land' amid calls to allow civilians to leave
The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, said Gazans must “stay steadfast and remain on their land” amid growing calls for Cairo to allow safe passage to civilians fleeing Gaza.
Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip since Saturday and appears poised to send ground troops into the Hamas-controlled enclave where 1,500 Palestinians – including 500 children – have been killed in the past few days.
The only viable exit for Gazans to flee is through the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, the only passage in and out of the enclave that is not controlled by Israel.
Egypt has long restricted the flow of Gazans on to its territory, and previously insisted the two sides resolve conflicts within their borders.
Cairo has discussed plans with the US and others to provide humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing, but rejected any move to set up safe corridors for refugees fleeing Gaza.
Egypt is committed to ensuring the delivery “of aid, both medical and humanitarian at this difficult time”, Sisi said in a speech at a military ceremony on Thursday. But Gazans must “stay steadfast and remain on their land”, he said.
The Rafah crossing has been closed since Tuesday after Israeli bombardments hit on the Palestinian side, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing officials in Gaza and Egyptian sources.
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Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Israel’s denial of entry of aid to Gaza was a breach of “humanitarian values and principles” and called for a lifting of the siege.
Safadi, in comments on state media and quoted by Reuters, said ending the siege of the Palestinian enclave was the responsibility of the international community.
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Israel used white phosphorus in attacks in Gaza and Lebanon, says Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch said it had concluded Israel used white phosphorus in military operations in Lebanon and Gaza this week.
In a statement, HRW said it had verified videos from Tuesday and Wednesday “showing multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus” over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border. The organisation said it also interviewed two witnesses of the Gaza attack.
Israel’s use of white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon “puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries”, it said.
White phosphorus has a “significant incendiary effect” that can “severely burn” people, HRW warned. The use of white phosphorus in Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated areas, “magnifies the risk to civilians and violates the international humanitarian law”, it added.
Lama Fakih, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director, said:
Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering.
White phosphorus is “unlawfully indiscriminate” in populated urban areas, where it “can burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians”, they added.
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Drone footage shows large areas of neighbourhoods in the Gaza Strip reduced to rubble by Israeli airstrikes.
Israel has pummelled Gaza with bombs, killing more than 1,500 Palestinians, and has announced a siege of the strip in retaliation to a deadly attack by Hamas militants last weekend.
Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro came under fire today from US and Israeli diplomats after making comments comparing Israel’s bombardment of Gaza to human rights atrocities carried out by the Nazis.
“We were shocked to see Colombian President [Gustavo Petro] compare the Israeli government to Hitler’s genocidal regime,” tweeted Deborah Lipstad, the US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism.
Petro had replied to a statement by Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Monday in which Gallant announced a “complete siege” of Gaza in a fight against “animals”.
“This is what the Nazis said of the Jews,” Petro responded on the platform.
Petro has refused to condemn the human rights atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel and has published more than 100 posts on the conflict in the past five days.
Petro’s refusal to condemn the human rights atrocities committed by Hamas while criticising the Israeli occupation of Palestine is drawing strong criticism at home and abroad.
When Israel’s ambassador to Colombia, Gali Dagan, asked the Colombian president to condemn the “terrorist attack against innocent civilians”, Petro replied “terrorism is to kill innocent children, whether it be in Colombia or in Palestine.”
Twelve Colombian former foreign ministers signed an open letter on Thursday condemning Petro’s partisan stance on the regional conflict which they said is damaging Colombia’s ability to play a role in resolving the conflict.
“The messages from the President of the Republic and the Colombian Foreign Office are a radical break from our country’s tradition of respect for international law and multilateralism,” the former diplomats said.
Updated
Gaza's health system 'at breaking point' after 34 attacks since Saturday, says WHO
The World Health Organization said it has documented 34 attacks on health care in Gaza since last Saturday that have resulted in the death of 11 health workers, 16 injuries, and damages to 19 health facilities and 20 ambulances.
In a statement, the WHO warned that the health system in the Gaza Strip is “at breaking point”, and that “time is running out to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Hospitals have only “a few hours of electricity each day” as they are forced to ration depleting fuel reserves and rely on generators to sustain the most critical functions, it said. Even these functions will no longer be able to work “in a few days”, when fuel stocks are due to run out.
The impact would be devastating for the most vulnerable patients, including the injured who need lifesaving surgery, patients in intensive care units, and newborns depending on care in incubators.
The WHO called for an end to hostilities and the protection of health care and civilians against attacks, as well as the establishment of a humanitarian corridor for health and humanitarian supplies.
Without the immediate entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza – especially health services, medical supplies, food, clean water, fuel, and non-food items – humanitarian and health partners will be unable to respond to urgent needs of people who desperately need it. Each lost hour puts more lives at risk.
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Israel's public affairs minister resigns
Israel’s public affairs minister, Galit Distel Atbaryan, announced she has resigned from her post.
In a social media post, she said other governmental ministries were better equipped to handle Israel’s diplomatic efforts.
The Times of Israel reports that critics of Distel Atbaryan had said her ministry had no real powers or justification, and that what little it had produced had been widely mocked.
בתחילת השבוע, ראש מערך ההסברה החליט למנות את משרד התפוצות לאחראי על פעילות ההסברה של מדינת ישראל בזירה הבינלאומית לצד הפעילות השוטפת של משרד החוץ.
— Galit Distel Atbaryan - גלית דיסטל אטבריאן (@GalitDistel) October 12, 2023
אני מכבדת את ההחלטה הזאת.
למשרד התפוצות יש הרבה יותר משאבים, כוח אדם, סמכויות ויחידות סמך מאשר למשרד ההסברה שקיבל את התקציב הראשוני…
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More than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the UN said, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.
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Brazil has sent one of its presidential planes to Europe in the hope of rescuing about 20 citizens who are trapped in the Gaza Strip, where more than 1,500 Palestinians have now been killed.
The Embraer aircraft took off from Brazil on Thursday afternoon and is heading to Rome, where it will wait for permission to continue to Egypt in case a humanitarian corridor is opened, allowing citizens of the South American country to flee across that country’s tightly controlled border with Gaza.
Brazilian diplomats have reportedly asked Egyptian authorities to help 20-or-so of its citizens leave the Palestinian territory. Thirteen of the Brazilians, including several children, are currently sheltering in a Catholic school in Gaza which Brazilian authorities have asked Israeli officials not to bomb.
“Our goal right now is to save lives,” Celso Amorim, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s top foreign policy advisor, told the newspaper O Globo.
Nearly 500 Brazilians have so far been evacuated from Israel on three government flights.
On Wednesday the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called for an end to “the insanity of war”.
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There are reports of sporadic episodes of violence or aggression occurring in other parts of Israel and other Palestinian territories further afield from Gaza and that southern region.
In Jerusalem, it appears that a Palestinian gunman began shooting near Herod’s Gate in the Old City that leads to and from the Muslim Quarter.
Two border police officers were wounded and the fate of the gunman is not yet established, the Guardian’s Beth McKernan reports.
Two Palestinian media outlets reporting a Palestinian gunman opened fire near Herod's Gate in the Old City, injuring two border police officers. Attacker was either injured or killed.
— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) October 12, 2023
And in Masafer Yatta, a group of Palestinian hamlets in the southern portion of the occupied West Bank, south of Jerusalem and Hebron, Beth has relayed an ominous report from Palestinian journalist Basel Adra that Jewish settlers have donned uniforms as cover to then attack Palestinian residents.
Basel is a fantastic journalist in Masafer Yatta that i trust. There have been several reports of settlers donning fatigues or reservists uniforms and entering Palestinian villages in WB today. Sharing this as an FYI for people there and reporter colleagues for their safety https://t.co/2LGc7hAla8
— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) October 12, 2023
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Hamas hints Iran, Hezbollah not involved in decision to attack Israel
Hamas just gave an unprecedented briefing in English to world media, via Telegram, the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Beth McKernan is reporting on the hop, via X/Twitter.
Hamas just gave unprecedented briefing in English to world media on Telegram. I won't go into details but main news points:
— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) October 12, 2023
- no hostage file will be opened until aggression on Gaza stops
-commitment to treat prisoners in accordance with IHL (hmm)
She says that the militant group that controls Gaza said that “the decision to launch a military operation was entirely Palestinian.”
The subtext appears to be that Hamas allies Iran and the Lebanese group Hezbollah were not involved in Saturday’s surprise and merciless assault on Israel by militants breaking out of Gaza to launch their attack.
Oh and I forgot last point -- "decision to launch a military operation was entirely Palestinian" ie Iran and Hezbollah not involved
— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) October 12, 2023
Bethan also reports that Hamas made spurious claims that Israeli civilians weren’t deliberately targeted and that the attacks were aimed entirely at Israeli Defence Force (IDF) bases.
- Saturday was a "defensive action" in which only IDF bases were targeted. "We would like to stress there were clear instructions to avoid targeting civilians and killing them. Civilians were caught in the middle" (clearly untrue)
— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) October 12, 2023
Updated
Palestinian death toll rises to more than 1,500 in Gaza
The number of Palestinians killed has risen to 1,537, according to Gaza’s health ministry. That includes 500 children and 276 women, it said.
A further 6,612 were wounded in Israeli airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave, the ministry said.
The latest count is up from 1,417 Palestinians and 6,238 wounded earlier today.
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Joe Biden and Donald Trump continued to clash over the Israel-Hamas war on Thursday as a White House spokesperson rebuked the former US president for what he called “dangerous and unhinged” comments about the conflict.
Speaking in Florida on Wednesday, Trump, the Republican frontrunner to take on Biden next year, called Hezbollah – a Lebanese group also backed by Iran and supportive of Hamas – “very smart” and the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, “a jerk”.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had been “hurt very badly”, Trump said, adding:
He was not prepared. He was not prepared and Israel was not prepared. And under Trump, they wouldn’t have had to be prepared.
Those comments prompted a stern reaction from the White House. “Statements like this are dangerous and unhinged,” said Andrew Bates, the deputy White House press secretary.
It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organisation as ‘smart’ or have any objection to the United States warning terrorists not to attack Israel.
The US will arrange charter flights from Friday for American citizens seeking to leave Israel, the White House confirmed.
The Biden administration will provide charter flights to cities in Europe, said John Kirby, spokesperson for the national security council, adding: “We know there is a demand signal out there.”
A US state department email, seen by Reuters, said it plans to offer transit options beginning on Friday “but it will take some period of time to schedule everyone seeking to depart”. The email also says:
Americans will be asked to sign an agreement to repay the US government prior to departure and should be prepared to arrange your own lodging and onward travel from Greece, Germany or Cyprus to your final destination.
Updated
Number of US citizens killed in Israel rises to 27
The death toll of US citizens in Israel now stands at 27, the White House said on Thursday.
The number of Americans unaccounted for is 14, John Kirby, spokesperson for the national security council, said at a White House briefing.
Earlier today, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said at least 25 Americans were confirmed killed.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images sent over the news wires from Israel and Palestine.
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Two Jewish schools in north-west London are set to close temporarily because of safety fears brought about by the crisis in Israel and Gaza, as ministers announced £3m for a charity that helps protect Jewish community sites.
The extra support for the Community Security Trust (CST) was announced after a roundtable discussion in Downing Street involving ministers, police and the charity, which recorded a quadrupling of antisemitic incidents in the UK since Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The meeting was chaired by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, who asked police leaders to consider using their existing section 14 powers under the Public Order Act “where appropriate” to stop people blocking roads, including outside Jewish monuments and buildings such as the Israeli embassy.
No 10 said the additional money – which brings the total funding for Jewish community protection for 2023-24 to £18m – would enable the CST to place additional guards at schools it supports and allow for additional security staff outside synagogues on Friday nights and Saturday mornings when Jewish communities are marking the sabbath.
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Emmanuel Macron’s address came after Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the country on the grounds that they were a threat to public order.
In a message to local prefects – official state representatives – Darmanin said organisers of such banned demonstrations, protests or marches should “face arrest”.
On Thursday morning, Darmanin said there had been more than 100 “antisemitic acts” reported in France since Saturday. These were mostly graffiti-based, but also included physical attacks and people having been arrested with weapons in front of Jewish schools and synagogues. Police have arrested 24 people, he added.
He added there had been an “outpouring of hatred” on the internet, the worst of which was being investigated by police.
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Macron: France 'doing everything possible' to find 17 missing citizens in Israel
Emmanuel Macron warned that antisemitic acts and defending terrorism would be dealt with “severely” in France, in a televised address on the Israel-Palestine crisis on Thursday evening.
The French president said the country should not give in to “any form of hate” and remain united. “Let us not add national divisions to international divisions,” he said.
Macron said the conflict was not between Israel and Palestine, but between “terrorists and a country with democratic values”.
While offering his “firm and complete” support to Israel, which he said had every right to respond, he said that response had to be “strong and fair”.
Israel has the right to defend itself … but with targeted actions that preserve the civilian populations. That is the duty of democracies.
Thirteen French citizens were killed in Hamas attacks on Israel at the weekend. Another 17, including children, are reported missing. Several are believed to be being held hostage in Gaza.
“My thoughts are with the families this evening. I want to tell them that France is doing everything possible alongside the Israeli authorities and our partners to bring them back safely to their homes,” Macron said.
France will never abandon its children.
Updated
The EU has sent a second missive to Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, over the alleged spread of illegal “terrorist and violent content” on the platform in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel on Saturday.
The letter comes just hours after the X chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, responded to a letter two days ago giving it 24 hours to demonstrate how it was complying with new laws that make platform owners responsible for their content in the EU.
Those that don’t face a fine or a complete ban in the EU.
The EU commissioner Thierry Breton gave X two deadlines to return with evidence and warns that if the commission is not satisfied it can launch formal proceedings under the Digital Services Act, which came into force in August.
Yaccarino told Breton that X had taken down “hundreds of Hamas affiliated accounts” and had responded to 80 take-down notices from within the EU since the conflict erupted in Israel.
Updated
Summary
It’s 9.30pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s where things stand:
Israel began the long and sorrowful process of burying the victims of the weekend’s attacks by Hamas. The most recent death toll in Israel stands at 1,200. Israel’s military spokesperson said the government has been able to confirm the identities of 97 people taken hostage into Gaza during the attack by Hamas. More than 100 are believed to have been taken.
More than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes since Saturday, Gaza’s health ministry said on Thursday. Among them are 447 children and 248 women, it said.
Israeli strikes have killed three journalists so far, and two others died as a result of gunshot wounds, according to Reporters without Borders. Some 12 workers with the UN Palestinian refugee agency have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the organisation has said.
More than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the UN said on Thursday, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said the situation in the Gaza Strip is “dire” and “devastating” and warned that crucial supplies were running dangerously low after Israel imposed a total blockade on the territory. Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, said no power, water or fuel will be allowed into Gaza until Israeli hostages are returned home.
A ground offensive will be launched on Gaza “when opportune and fit for our purposes”, the IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said in an update early on Thursday.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, spoke to the king of Jordan, Abdullah II, on Thursday. Abbas stressed “the rejection of … killing civilians or abusing them on both sides” and called for the release of civilians, prisoners and detainees.
Two police officers were wounded after a shooting attack near the Herod’s Gate entrance to the Jerusalem old city, Israeli police said. The gunman used a makeshift submachine gun in the attack, according to police. Officers returned fire and “neutralised” him, police said.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the attacks by Hamas had “harrowing echoes” of Nazi massacres, as he stood alongside the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem in an act of public solidarity. Blinken vowed that the US would stand for ever alongside Israel, and said he would use his tour of the region to urge all parties, especially Hezbollah, not to broaden the conflict or open a second front.
Syria said Israeli forces launched simultaneous missile attacks on the airports in its capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday. “Bursts of missiles” hit the two airports at the same time, a Syrian military source was cited as saying in what he said was a bid to distract the world’s attention from Israel’s war with Hamas militants in Gaza.
The UK will deploy patrol and surveillance aircraft and two Royal Navy ships to the eastern Mediterranean “to support Israel”, the government said. Maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft will begin flying in the region “to track threats to regional stability”, Downing Street said.
The US and Qatar have agreed to deny Iran’s access to any of the $6bn (£4.9bn) funds that were part of a prisoner swap deal between the Biden administration and Tehran last month, the US deputy treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo, reportedly told House Democrats.
The British government is organising flights to repatriate British nationals from Israel, with the first due to leave from Tel Aviv on Thursday. British nationals will be invited to take up seats on the flights along with dual nationals, and dependants if travelling with a British national normally resident in the UK.
The British children of elderly hostages abducted by Hamas pleaded for their return as they described the invasion of Israel as a “second Holocaust”. Seventeen British nationals are feared dead or missing after the weekend’s atrocities.
Officials across Europe scrambled to curtail any spillover of tensions from the Israel-Hamas war, with Germany pledging a “zero tolerance” approach to antisemitism and France banning pro-Palestinian protests amid concerns for public order.
Updated
The British children of elderly hostages abducted by Hamas have pleaded for their return as they described the invasion of Israel as a “second Holocaust”.
The parents of Sharone Lifschitz, 52, and the mother of Noam Sagi, 53, were abducted after Hamas gunmen stormed the Nir Oz kibbutz near the border with Gaza on Saturday.
At an emotional press conference in London, Sagi said:
People who survived the Holocaust find themselves facing another one … We are bleeding, we are in pain, we are hurting and we are in disbelief.
US and Qatar agree to deny Iran access to $6bn fund
The US and Qatar have agreed to deny Iran’s access to any of the $6bn (£4.9bn) funds that were part of a prisoner swap deal between the Biden administration and Tehran last month, US deputy treasury secretary Wally Adeyemo told House Democrats, according to multiple reports.
Adeyemo told lawmakers that those funds would not be touched anytime soon, CNN reported, citing a congressional source.
Joe Biden had been under pressure to refreeze $6bn of Iranian oil revenues released last month amid accusations that Iran played a key role in last weekend’s deadly attack on Israel by Hamas.
The US president faced bipartisan calls to freeze the funds, even as US intelligence sources have sought to dampen speculation of close Iranian involvement.
Finance ministers from the G7 group of leading industrial nations who have been meeting in Morocco delayed a press conference amid a dispute over language around the Israel-Hamas war.
A G7 source said Japan – the current G7 chair – was at odds with the group’s other members, the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Canada.
Officials at the event in Marrakech were trying to come up with a form of words acceptable to all.
The Japanese finance minister, Sun’ichi Suzuki, said that because the Israel-Hamas conflict was not on the original agenda there were different views about what to say and it had taken longer than expected to craft a response.
When the statement was eventually released it was strongly supportive of Israel, saying:
We unequivocally condemn the recent terror attacks by Hamas on the state of Israel and express our solidarity with the Israeli people.
Updated
Police officers injured in shooting attack in Jerusalem
Two police officers have been wounded after a shooting attack near the Herod’s Gate entrance to the Jerusalem old city, Israeli police said.
The gunman used a makeshift submachine gun in the attack, according to police. Officers returned fire and “neutralised” him, police said.
One police officer was seriously injured and the other was slightly injured, they said.
פיגוע ירי לעבר תחנת משטרה בירושלים – שוטרים נטרלו את המחבל: לפני זמן קצר מחבל חמוש בנשק מסוג קרלו ביצע ירי לעבר שוטרים בכניסה לתחנת המשטרה 'שלם'. לאחר הירי המחבל ניסה להימלט מהמקום, ושוטרי מחוז ירושלים חתרו למגע ונטרלו אותו בירי (בתמונות: זירת הפיגוע והנשק בו השתמש המחבל) pic.twitter.com/CX6Xmf7Hgo
— משטרת ישראל (@IL_police) October 12, 2023
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Sunak says UK deployment will 'ensure regional stability and prevent further escalation'
In a statement, the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said:
We must be unequivocal in making sure the types of horrific scenes we have seen this week will not be repeated. Alongside our allies, the deployment of our world-class military will support efforts to ensure regional stability and prevent further escalation.
Our military and diplomatic teams across the region will also support international partners to re-establish security and ensure humanitarian aid reaches the thousands of innocent victims of this barbaric attack from Hamas terrorists.
Updated
Here’s more on the announcement that the UK will send surveillance aircraft and two Royal Navy ships to the eastern Mediterranean “to support Israel”.
The military package includes P8 aircraft, surveillance assets, two Royal Navy ships – RFA Lyme Bay and RFA Argus – three Merlin helicopters and a company of Royal Marines.
Maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft will begin flying in the region from tomorrow to track threats to regional stability, including monitoring activity such as the “transfer of weapons to terrorist groups”, Downing Street said.
A Royal Navy task group will be moved to the eastern Mediterranean next week as a contingency measure to support humanitarian efforts, it said.
The British armed forces will be on standby to “deliver practical support to Israel and partners in the region, and offer deterrence and assurance”, Downing Street said.
Updated
UK to send Royal Navy ships and aircraft to support Israel
The UK will deploy patrol and surveillance aircraft and two Royal Navy ships to the eastern Mediterranean “to support Israel”, the government confirmed.
Maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft will begin flying in the region “to track threats to regional stability”, according to No 10.
The Times first reported the news.
Updated
Two Jewish schools in London to close 'for safety of children' – report
Two Jewish schools in London will close for the safety of children, Sky News is reporting, after a spike in reported incidents of antisemitism in Britain after the outbreak of war in Israel.
Torah Vodaas primary school and Ateres Beis Yaakov primary school, both in north London, informed parents on Thursday that they would not reopen until Monday, it said.
The report cites Rabbi Feldman, of Torah Vodaas in Edgware, as saying that while there was “no specific threat to our school”, it was “not a decision that has been taken lightly”.
Updated
Blinken: World seeing 'new evidence of Hamas' depravity and the inhumanity every day'
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says the US is working “as hard as we can” to ensure there will not be a second or third front to the conflict.
He reiterates a warning by the US president, Joe Biden, that no state or non-state actor should take advantage of the situation.
Blinken says it is “vitally important” that democracies like the US and Israel respect and follow international humanitarian law. “It’s what distinguishes us from terrorist organisations like Hamas, which have absolutely no regard for the rule of law, for humanitarian rules and rights for any basic standards of human decency,” he says.
Asked about the photographs and videos that Israeli officials showed him, Blinken said he had an opportunity to see some of them but “unfortunately there are many, many others”.
Every day, the world is seeing new evidence of the depravity and the inhumanity of Hamas. Depravity and inhumanity directed at babies, at small children, young adults and elderly people, people with disabilities. The list goes on.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says he and Israel’s leadership discussed ways to address the humanitarian needs of the people living in Gaza.
Hamas is using civilians in Gaza as human shields and is intentionally putting them in harms way to protect themselves, he says.
Blinken says civilians should not be used as targets of military operations while Israel “conducts its legitimate security operations to defend itself from terrorism”.
He says they spoke about possibilities for safe passage for civilians out of Gaza. “That’s a discussion that we will pursue in the coming days,” he says.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says Israeli officials showed him photographs and videos of people killed by Hamas.
“It’s hard to find the right words. It’s beyond what anyone would ever want to imagine,” he said.
A baby, an infant, riddled with bullets. Soldiers beheaded. Young people burned alive in their cars … I could go on, but it’s simply depravity in the worst imaginable way.
Updated
Blinken: US stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel
US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says he has seen up-close the “genuinely inspiring” solidarity of the Israeli people in response to the Hamas attack.
Everywhere he has visited during his trip to Israel, he has met people who have been touched in one way or another by the attack, he says.
We’ve encountered a nation knit together by grief, but also a nation united. The United States shares that resolve. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel.
He says he will go on to Jordan where he will meet its king, Abdullah II, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and will later visit with leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Qatar.
Blinken says he will continue to press countries during each of these engagements “to help prevent the conflict from spreading” and to discuss how “to continue to make real our affirmative vision for a region that’s more peaceful, more prosperous, more secure, more integrated”.
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Blinken: US is doing everything it can to secure release of hostages
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is speaking from Tel Aviv after meetings with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, its president, Isaac Herzog, and members of the country’s new emergency government.
Blinken says he discussed in detail what Israel needs in order to defend itself, its people and how the US can help to meet those needs. The US is delivering on those needs, he says.
He says he met with families of US citizens who were killed or taken hostage last weekend. “Their loss is immeasurable,” he says. “No one should have to endure what they’re going through.”
He says the US is “doing everything we can” to secure the release of the hostages taken by Hamas, and that the US deputy special envoy for hostage affairs, Steve Gillen, will stay on the ground to support the efforts.
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Britain will send two Royal Navy vessels to the eastern Mediterranean and begin surveillance flights over Israel in a show of military support designed to reassure Israel, the Times is reporting.
Two Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels, RFA Argus and RFA Lyme Bay, will be sent to the region as part of a littoral response group, the paper writes.
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Political turmoil in Washington has left the US without key diplomats across the Middle East and raised concerns that years of congressional dysfunction are taking their toll on US leadership.
A devastating weekend attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen has shaken the region and come at a moment when there is no US ambassador in place in Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon or Oman.
In addition, the US Agency for International Development (USAid), which leads the government effort to help countries recovering from disaster, has been lacking an assistant administrator for the Middle East for nearly three years. The role is critical for dispatching emergency economic and humanitarian aid to the region. The state department’s coordinator for counter-terrorism, who spearheads efforts to defeat terrorism overseas, has also been awaiting confirmation for the better part of two years.
Such devastating vacancies in US government have been thrown into stark relief by what one senator called “an all-hands-on-deck moment in history”, but come against the backdrop of worsening obstruction, budget showdowns and Republican infighting on Capitol Hill.
Read the full report by our Washington DC bureau chief David Smith.
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The first military plane evacuating Canadians out of Israel has left Tel Aviv, the Canadian defence minister, Bill Blair, has said. About 130 passengers are on board, he added.
The Canadian government is working to retrieve its citizens, permanent residents and their families from Israel.
Planes will take passengers to Athens, ministers said earlier in the week. From there, commercial flights will be able to return them to Canada.
We’re working tirelessly to assist Canadians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
— Bill Blair (@BillBlair) October 12, 2023
I can confirm that the first @CanadianForces evacuation flight has departed from Tel Aviv with approximately 130 passengers on board.
We will continue to be there for Canadians who need help.
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As part of our coverage of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, we would like to hear from people in the UK who have family there.
Do you have relatives in Israel or Gaza, and are you in contact with them? How has your family been affected?
Updated
The US “hopes and expects” the Israeli military to “do the right things” in prosecuting its war against Hamas, but will not place any conditions on its security assistance to Israel, US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said.
“In terms of conditions that we would place on the security assistance that we’re providing to Israel, we have not placed any conditions on the provision of this equipment,” Austin said at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Thursday.
This is a professional military, led by professional leadership, and we would hope and expect that they would do the right things in the prosecution of their campaign.
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'The situation is devastating': UN warns food and water in Gaza will run out 'very soon'
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) called the situation in the Gaza Strip “dire” and warned that crucial supplies were running dangerously low after Israel imposed a total blockade on the territory.
The situation is “devastating” at the moment in Gaza, the WFP’s Palestine country director, Samer Abdeljaber, said in an interview on Thursday.
We’re seeing shortages of fuel, of water [and] electricity. We are seeing our shelters that are overcrowded. We don’t have capacity.
He added:
The bakeries are not going to be able to provide food for tomorrow. So tomorrow is going to be a very difficult situation for the people in the shelters and the people outside the shelters.
#Gaza
— WFP Media (@WFP_Media) October 12, 2023
"The situation is devastating. We are seeing shortages of fuel, water and electricity. We are seeing overcrowded shelters."@SamerWFP on @CBCNews Power and Politics about the devastating situation in Gaza and the #WestBank. pic.twitter.com/g9cwpDE8lc
“It’s a dire situation in the Gaza Strip that we’re seeing evolve with food and water being in limited supply and quickly running out,” Brian Lander, deputy head of emergencies at WFP, told Reuters.
We’re providing food to thousands of people that have sought shelter in schools and elsewhere across the territory. But we’re going to run out very soon.
He urged Israel and Egypt to create secure corridors for agency workers to be able to bring supplies into Gaza and to make sure UN staff could work safely in the area.
We’ve seen a number of sites that are considered humanitarian, or clinics and schools that have been hit by the strikes. So … we again … we are calling on the parties to the conflict to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said fuel for hospital generators in Gaza would run out shortly, adding that its stocks of aid and medicine within Gaza were stranded for want of safe passage.
Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, said earlier today that no power, water or fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza until Israeli hostages are returned home.
Updated
Here are more photos from Gaza and Israel today:
Updated
Warning sirens have sounded in northern Israel.
The military said it “launched an interceptor following an aerial identification” and was investigating the cause.
The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, will travel to Israel tomorrow.
Updated
Here’s a video of the press conference earlier in Tel Aviv with US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Updated
Palestinian president 'rejects' civilian killings, hostage taking, on both sides
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has spoken to the king of Jordan, Abdullah II.
Palestine’s main news network, Wafa, cited Abbas as stressing “the need to move to political action to end the occupation and achieve peace, stressing the rejection of practices related to killing civilians or abusing them on both sides, calling for the release of civilians, prisoners and detainees, and stressing the need to stop settler terrorism against our people in Palestinian cities, villages and camps in the West Bank”.
Updated
Two Palestinian rights groups have released a statement accusing Israel of killing 24-year-old Attiya Fathi Al-Nabaheen, along with 12 members of his family, in a “targeted airstrike”.
Adalah, a Palestinian-run human rights group focusing on legal issues, and the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said they were previously pursuing a lengthy legal battle on his behalf against the Israeli state for shooting him in 2014 – an incident that left him paralysed from the neck down.
“At approximately 11.30 a.m on Sunday, 8 October 2023, Israeli warplanes targeted–without prior warning – the four-storey house of the Al-Nabaheen family, situated to the east of the Al-Bureij refugee camp, in Gaza’s Middle Area District,” the statement said.
“The attack also resulted in the complete destruction of the Al-Nabaheen family’s house. According to Tamir Al-Nabaheen, Attiya’s brother, who survived the targeted airstrike, the attack occurred while his children were playing with their cousins at the building’s entrance. Tragically, Tamir’s three children, as well as their cousins, were killed in the attack.”
The statement added: “Attiya Fathi Al-Nabaheen was the victim of two grave war crimes perpetrated by Israeli forces.”
Updated
Gaza health ministry says 447 children and 248 women killed in Israeli strikes
We reported earlier that the Gaza health ministry said 1,400 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli strikes since Saturday. The ministry has now provided more details:
447 children and 248 women are among the 1,417 killed by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, it said.
Updated
The international non-profit, Reporters Without Borders, has said Israeli strikes have killed three journalists so far, and two others died as a result of gunshot wounds. The group did not say who shot the two.
Eleven workers with the UN Palestinian refugee agency have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the organisation has said.
Updated
Gaza health ministry says Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,400 Palestinians
The health ministry in Gaza just released the updated toll from the Israeli airstrikes that began on Saturday after the Hamas attack.
It said the Israeli bombings had killed 1,417 Palestinians and wounded 6,238 since Saturday.
Updated
Diplomats in Brussels have said that defence ministers at today’s Nato meeting were left stunned after the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, showed them “shocking” and “horrific” video from the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.
Reuters reports that Gallant, who remotely attended the one-hour Nato session about Israel, briefed ministers on the attack and showed them an “uncensored video of Hamas atrocities”.
“It was horrific. It brought home to everyone the reality of what happened,” one western diplomat said.
Another source spoke of “graphic and shocking footage” and described Nato allies as united in their support for Israel.
The video had “graphic elements” with “some blurring to protect the dignity of victims”, an official in the room said.
My colleague Lili Bayer is live blogging the details of the Nato meeting here.
Updated
Iran’s foreign minister accused Israel of seeking “genocide” by enforcing a siege against Gaza, according to Iranian state TV, before a visit to Iraq’s capital on Thursday.
“Today, the continuation of war crimes by Netanyahu and Zionists against the civilians of Gaza, besieging, cutting off water and electricity, and denying entry of medicine and food, has created conditions where the Zionists are seeking a genocide of all people in Gaza,” Reuters reports Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said.
“The war we witness today in the Gaza Strip is not just the Zionists’ war against Hamas, it is the Zionists’ war against all Palestinians.”
Updated
Damascus and Aleppo airports reported out of action after Israeli attacks
Citing Syrian state media, Reuters has reported that following Israeli attacks, both Damascus and Aleppo airports are out of action.
More details soon …
The Football Association in England has announced that there will be a period of silence held before kick-off at Wembley on Friday before England’s match with Australia, to “remember the innocent victims of the devastating events in Israel and Palestine”.
In a move which has already invited criticism, the FA’s statement also says that “following discussions with partners and external stakeholders, we will only permit flags, replica kits and other representations of nationality for the competing nations inside Wembley Stadium for the upcoming matches against Australia and Italy”.
Updated
Reuters has a quick snap that Germany is also planning evacuation flights – with an announcement that two flights are planned from neighbouring Jordan for Sunday.
First UK evacuation flight to depart from Tel Aviv later today
The British government is organising flights to repatriate British nationals from Israel, with the first due to leave from Tel Aviv today.
The move, announced by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), comes after a series of airlines serving the UK and Israel suspended services.
British nationals will be invited to take up seats on the flights along with dual nationals, and dependants if travelling with a British national normally resident in the UK.
The flights are paid commercial flights costing £300 ($369/€348) each, which would be charged to the family or individual taking up the seat. It added that “the children and other dependants of British diplomats will also be given seats, as we have a duty of care to our staff”.
A Rapid Deployment Team has also been sent to Israel to assist British citizens on the ground, the FCDO said in a statement.
“Vulnerable British nationals will be prioritised for these flights. At this stage we will contact those who are eligible for the flights directly and British nationals should not make their way to the airport unless they are called,” it said.
Updated
Blinken says 25 Americans killed in Hamas attacks
In the press conference, Blinken confirmed that at least 25 Americans had been killed in the attack by Hamas militants.
Updated
Syrian state news says Israel launched air attacks on Damascus and Aleppo airports
Reports are coming out now …
Local media in Syria had earlier reported air defences were used at the airports against attacks.
There are fears among governments that the violence could descend into a larger war, involving Israel’s neighbours, Syria and Lebanon.
Updated
The press conference has finished with no questions taken.
How Israel responds to the Hamas attack matters, says Blinken
Blinken says “Israel has the right to defend itself”, but adds: “How Israel does this matters.”
Without mentioning it directly, this is a reference to the Israeli airstrikes that are killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Updated
“We know Hamas doesn’t represent the Palestinian people,” says Blinken, adding that the militant group rules repressively.
Blinken says more US arms “on the way”.
Blinken agrees with Netanyahu that Hamas is “like Isis”.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says he came to Israel as a US official but also “as a Jew”.
“I understand on a personal level,” the Hamas massacres, he said.
Updated
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is speaking.
He says President Biden was correct when he called what Hamas did “sheer evil”.
He says Hamas’s crimes include the “butchering of entire families”, the “burning of people alive”, and “beheadings”.
They should be treated in the same as Islamic State, he said.
Updated
US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s press conference with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just started.
Summary
Here is where things stand:
Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, has landed in Tel Aviv. He will meet Israeli leaders today.
An Israel minister has said there will be no power, water, fuel to Gaza until the hostages held by Hamas are freed. United Nations experts have condemned the Israeli bombardment as “collective punishment”, which is a war crime.
Gaza’s death toll has risen to over 1,300, the Palestinian health ministry said. The most recent death toll in Israel stands at 1,200.
More than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.
Israel’s military spokesperson has said the government has been able to confirm the identities of 97 people taken hostage into Gaza during the attack by Hamas. More than 100 are believed to have been taken.
The Red Cross has been in contact with Hamas and Israel over hostages but negotiations are not believed to be ongoing.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he was working with “full force” to free all hostages, in close coordination with Israel, and would work with regional powers in an attempt to stop violence spreading further.
Biden also said the US was “working on every aspect” of the hostage crisis in Israel, but that “the idea that I’m going to stand here before you and tell you what I’m doing is bizarre”.
Israeli settlers have killed two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
China’s envoy for Middle East affairs says its government is willing to work with Egypt to promote an “immediate ceasefire and cessation of violence”.
A ground offensive will be launched on Gaza ‘when opportune and fit for our purposes’, the IDF spokesperson, Jonathan Conricus, said in an update early on Thursday.
Updated
At least 100 people are believed to have travelled from the UK to Israel to join the Israeli military as it mounts a retaliatory campaign against Hamas.
The Israeli embassy in the UK said it was understood those who travelled were “reservists and active duty soldiers” in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
A statement said: “The embassy of Israel understands that at least 100 reservists and active duty soldiers have gone back to Israel from the UK to serve in the IDF.”
The announcement came as family members of some of those held hostage by Hamas in Gaza gave an emotional press conference in London.
Updated
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has offered Egypt UK support to keep the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza Strip open for humanitarian and consular reasons, including for British nationals.
The prime minister spoke to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, this morning, Downing Street said, and acknowledged “the challenging security situation at the Rafah border crossing”.
The Rafah crossing between Sinai and Gaza remains open, the Egyptian government has said in a separate statement. But it added that Egypt had asked Israel to avoid targeting the Palestinian side of the crossing after strikes that prevented normal operations there.
A No 10 spokesperson said: “He expressed his condolences for the Egyptians who have lost their lives, along with so many others. The prime minister said that terrorism is an evil which must be confronted, wherever we find it. It was also important that the conflict did not spread further. He noted the importance of Egypt’s historic role in the region, including in seeking de-escalation.
“The prime minister acknowledged the challenging security situation at the Rafah border crossing. He offered the UK’s support to try to manage this situation and keep the route open for humanitarian and consular reasons, including for British nationals.
“The leaders agreed to remain in contact as the situation develops.”
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is about to begin a press conference with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Tel Aviv.
Updated
The Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue in the Portuguese city of Porto, which is the largest Jewish place of worship on the Iberian peninsula, has been vandalised in the wake of Hamas’s attacks on Israel.
In a statement to Portugal’s Lusa news agency, the Jewish Community of Porto said the synagogue had been daubed with graffiti including the slogans “Free Palestine” and “End Israel Apartheid” on Wednesday.
“The biggest Jewish synagogue in the Iberian peninsula was vandalised today,” the statement said. “Those who hate Jews have expressed their hatred against the local Jews.”
The graffiti was later removed.
Portugal, like other European countries, has stepped up security around potential Jewish targets following the atrocities in Israel.
A synagogue in Spain was also defaced with the words “Free Palestine” over the weekend.
Updated
The British Metropolitan police, which covers London, says it will not see the holding of a Palestinian flag as a criminal offence.
In a letter to London’s Jewish community, the Met deputy commissioner Dame Lynne Owens said: “What we cannot do is interpret support for the Palestinian cause more broadly as automatically being support for Hamas or any other proscribed group, even when it follows so soon after an attack carried out by that group and when to many the link seems indisputable.
“An expression of support for the Palestinian people more broadly, including flying the Palestinian flag, does not, alone, constitute a criminal offence.
“Of course, behaviour at protests goes beyond what is and isn’t seen as support for proscribed groups. I know that in the past we have seen people use these opportunities to make statements that are quite clearly antisemitic and a hate crime.
“Abuse or intimidation that is religiously motivated will not be accepted and officers will act when they see it. “
On Tuesday, the British home secretary, Suella Braverman, pressed police to take tougher action against Palestinian flags, in certain circumstances, and against what is seen by some as pro-Palestinian chants.
Owens stressed that support for Hamas is an offence and Met officers would take action.
London is expected to see protests this week triggered by the crisis and is home to a Jewish community which in the past has felt under-protected by police.
Updated
Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health ministry says
Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Witnesses told Reuters that the father and son were shot when settlers opened fire at the funeral of four Palestinians who were killed by armed settlers and Israeli soldiers in the village of Qusra, near the northern city of Nablus, on Wednesday.
Updated
Here is a selection of images we are seeing on the wires this morning.
Updated
The Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, has spoken with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak about the need to ensure regularity of humanitarian relief services and aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel has imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza, blocking all movement of civilians, as well as cutting off supplies of food, fuel, water and power.
Egypt has a border crossing with Gaza but it remains closed after accusations that Israeli airstrikes hit the area. The Israeli military said it could “neither confirm or deny” any attack on the crossing.
Egypt has not said whether it will allow Palestinians to flee into its territory.
Updated
The family of Kim Damti, a 22-year-old Irish-Israeli woman who went missing during the Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival, has announced that she is dead.
Laura Damti said in a social media post on Wednesday night that her sister had been killed and would be buried on Thursday in the Israeli town of Gedera. “With great sorrow and gloomy grief, I announce the killing of our angel, our flower, Kim my blood, who was murdered by the cursed terrorists,” she said.
In a statement to RTÉ News Damti’s family in Ireland thanked people for their support and asked for privacy.
Damti had lived in Gedera, in central Israel, and spent summer holidays in Ireland, where her mother is from. She was one of hundreds of people massacred when Hamas militants attacked the music festival and surrounding communities.
Ireland’s president, Michael D Higgins, paid tribute to Damti and expressed condolences to the family. “Kim’s death once again reminds us what an outrageous breach of fundamental international law in conditions of conflict it is to target civilians in this way.”
The taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said Ireland was united in mourning. “Her death, and the deaths of more than a thousand other citizens of Israel and from around the world, was senseless and barbaric.”
Updated
Israel confirms identity of 97 hostages held in Gaza
Israel’s military spokesperson has said that the government has been able to confirm the identities of 97 people taken hostage into Gaza during the attack by Hamas on Saturday.
“The military is preparing for the next stage of the war,” Daniel Hagari said in a televised press briefing, adding that 222 soldiers had been killed since Saturday.
More than 100 people are believed to have been taken.
Updated
Guardian journalist Lili Bayer has spoken to Israel’s ambassador to the EU and Nato, Haim Regev, at the Nato headquarters.
They spoke after the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, briefed his Nato counterparts via videoconference this morning.
“The main message of the minister was that it was a savage attack, brutal attack by terrorists – Hamas is Isis – and we are expecting full support,” the ambassador said.
“We do not ask specific things from Nato as Nato,” he added.
“The idea,” the ambassador said, “was to share with Nato what Israel faces since the beginning, since Saturday morning – and the minister focused on that, because it’s important to understand against whom we are standing.”
“It’s black and white,” he added. “Israel is fighting against a terror group – not against anybody else.”
Regev said Israel’s defence minister did mention to his Nato counterparts that Iran is backing and financing Hamas, but that the focus of the short discussion was Gaza.
Ministers were shown a video showing atrocities, he said.
Regev said he felt there was strong backing for Israel in the meeting.
“We would like to see a statement by Nato – strong statement, strong support,” he said.
“For us, it was extremely important that the defence ministers will hear from firsthand what happened,” he added.
Asked whether Israel had asked any specific Nato members – besides the US – for equipment or ammunition, the ambassador said: “Israel is a strong country.”
“We have all the means right now that we need,” he said, noting that with the exception of the US, Israel is not asking for specific assistance.
Updated
UK minister says Hamas responsible for Israeli attacks on Gaza
Hamas is responsible for the Israeli attacks being launched on Gaza, the British health secretary, Steve Barclay, has said.
He signalled “strong support” for Israel while calling for international rules of war to be “adhered” to, in a series of broadcast interviews this morning.
Asked what sympathy he had with the people of Gaza who are facing bombardment, Barclay told Sky News: “The UK does have sympathy. That’s why we contribute about 10% of the aid that is distributed in the region through the United Nations.
However, Barclay added: “Israel has a right to defend itself but also to deter future attacks from Gaza. So Hamas are responsible for what we’re seeing in Gaza.”
He added: “We agree that international law, international rules of war should be adhered to. And those are the sort of conversations I’m sure the foreign secretary [James Cleverly] was having in Israel yesterday. But we should also be very clear: it is Israel that has been attacked here.”
Gaza authorities say more than 1,200 people have been killed and more than 5,000 people have been wounded in the bombing.
Updated
Elon Musk’s social media firm, X, formerly known as Twitter, has responded to the EU’s warning over the alleged spread of illegal content and disinformation in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, insisting it removes fake news and accounts from the platform.
In a three-page letter from its chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, X said it had “taken action to remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content” since the attack and “removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts on the platform”.
Yaccarino added it had “responded to 80 requests to take down content from the EU within the required timelines”.
Hinting at a greater scale of illegal content sweeping social media, Cybara, an Israeli threat intelligence firm, identified “tens of thousands of fake profiles” on X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok in the 48 hours after the Hamas attack.
Of 162,000 profiles it found, 40,695 were fake.
X’s Yaccarino was responding to a demand by Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for internal market, that X report back within 24 hours on the measures in place to prevent illegal content.
The EU has sweeping new powers to force tech companies, for the first time, to be responsible for the legality of their own content under the Digital Services Act.
He cited reports of “fake and manipulated images and facts” circulating on the platform including “repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts” and “military footage that actually originated from video games”.
Updated
US secretary of state Antony Blinken lands in Tel Aviv
Washington’s top diplomat will meet Israeli officials today.
Blinken is expected to meet Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday.
Updated
Israeli minister says no power, water, fuel to Gaza until hostages freed
Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, has just tweeted:
“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one will preach us morality.”
Updated
Hamas fighters still making attempts to enter Israel but have been blocked, IDF says
A spokesperson for the Israeli forces, Lt Col Richard Hecht, has just been speaking to the media. Here are the key points.
Hecht stated that strikes on Gaza last night targeted members of Hamas’s elite Nakhba force. He also said Israeli intelligence is focusing on identifying the fighters who staged the incursion “after interrogating people captured”.
Hecht said the IDF intends to target Hamas senior leadership, beyond its military wing but also political figures that operate in government institutions.
Hamas fighters are still attempting to enter Israeli territory by sea, he said. “We’ve intercepted a few maritime targets.”
The IDF is still securing the border area around Gaza, “building little barricades with tanks and cover to slowly secure the border. It’s not hermetic,” but the IDF has “overflowed the area” with soldiers.
Anyone who approaches the Gaza border, said Hecht, “will be shot. Anyone. No one’s coming in, no one’s coming out.”
The IDF is “preparing ourselves for the next stages of war”, but any decision regarding a ground invasion comes from the government.
Regarding suggestions of an incursion by air that occurred last night from Lebanon, Hecht described reports that gliders or drones had entered Israeli airspace as a result of a “human mistake”.
The IDF has widened and intensified the scope of its bombing campaign in Gaza, Hecht said “we are not just doing carpet bombing, although there are some people who would like to see that. We are not going for any target which is not based on intelligence. Yes, it is bigger than they have seen before, If there’s a person hiding somewhere we will notify them and people who want to leave will leave. The scale and scope of this is going to be very severe.”
Asked how the IDF can notify people in Gaza when the area has no power and very little telephone connectivity, Hecht replied: “The notification is through phone calls, social media, and that’s how we’re doing it right now. There is also an option of sending (firing) a small munition on to the roof or perimeter, then people know it’s a sign for them to move.”
Updated
German chancellor Scholz confirms suspending development aid
Scholz has confirmed Germany will suspend all development aid to the Palestinian Territories pending the completion of a review to ensure it best serves regional peace and Israel’s security.
“Our yardstick will be whether and how these projects best serve peace in the region and the security of Israel,” he said. “Until that review is complete we will not make available any new development cooperation resources.”
He added: “Sadly, we can foresee the suffering of the civilian population in the Gaza strip likely growing further – but that too is the fault of Hamas and its attack on Israel.”
Updated
German chancellor Scholz says working to free all hostages
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he was working with “full force” to free all hostages, in close coordination with Israel, and would work with regional powers in a bid to stop violence spreading further.
“I am in close contact with Egypt’s President Sisi, who has channels to Gaza. I will speak with Turkey’s President Erdoğan today and receive the Emir of Qatar,” he said. “All three can play an important role in de-escalating the situation.”
Updated
On Thais in Israel, my colleague in Bangkok, Navaon Siradapuvadol, has spoken to a survivor of the Hamas attack who just returned to Thailand.
Katchakorn Pudtason, who was among the first group of 15 Thais to be repatriated, landed at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport on Thursday morning.
Katchakorn was sitting alone in the back of his employer’s truck as he and colleagues made their way to the cherry farm where they worked near Gaza on Saturday. There had been conflict earlier that morning – gunfire had broken out, and a missile landed, not far away. But, after having gone to their employer’s house as a precaution, they felt it was safe to return to the farm. Things seemed to have quietened down, he said.
They were not far from the farm when Katchakorn realised something wasn’t right. He heard a loud noise, like a firecracker, on the left towards the main road. He ducked down, and warned a friend that he thought they were being shot at. “Then the gun shots kept firing, bang bang.”
It isn’t clear who was firing. “I think there weren’t any terrorists around, it was only soldiers who were stationed all around,” he said. He wondered if his group had been mistaken for militants.
Still ducked down, he felt a sharp pain in his knee; a bullet had hit him from the left side of the car. “That moment, when I got shot, it was not as scary as the firing that came after. It was like they were firing after us. Bang, bang, bang. It was more intense than in a war movie.”
Gunshots were fired across their camp at the farm where he and other workers stayed. None were taken hostage, but four were shot. One person remains in hospital
Katchakorn, who is from Phayao province in northern Thailand, had worked in Israel for a year and three months, and is one of many Thais who have moved to the country to work in agriculture, drawn by salaries that are much higher than back home. He lived in Moshav Mavki’im.
He would earn as much as 70,000 baht (£1,575) with overtime, working on a cucumber and cherry farm – far more than the minimum wage in Thailand, which is about 10,620 baht a month.
His family, he said, have cried a lot, waiting for him to return. “I told them I’m OK; I didn’t have any internal injuries,” he said. “But I can’t work. I was a breadwinner to the family.” He took on debt in order to travel to Israel, he added. He would return if it was safe and his injury is healed, he said.
He felt sadness, he said, for those killed.
Katchakorn’s employer was eventually able to drive him to a safe place, and then on to hospital, which was in a state of chaos. “I saw so many people crying,” he said. Soldiers kept rushing into the emergency room.
The bullet had gone through his knee, but had avoided the bone and cut the tendons. He wasn’t given any pills or injections. “I guess it’s just a little wound compared to others. So I went home and took paracetamol,” he says.
The Thai government says it believes 21 of its citizens have been killed, and 14 taken hostage.
“I didn’t know how I actually survived this ... I can’t believe I survived this.”
Updated
A total of 16 Thai nationals have been taken hostage following the unrest in Israel, the country’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, adding two more people to the list.
Berlin will allow Israel to use two Heron drones the German air force has in use in the country, Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said on Thursday ahead of a Nato meeting in Brussels.
“We will provide two drones the Israelis had asked for. In addition, there are first requests for ammunition and for ships that we will now discuss with the Israelis,” Pistorius said, adding: “We stand by Israel’s side.”
Updated
Norwegian Air cancels evacuation flight over lack of insurance
Norwegian Air cancelled a planned evacuation flight from Tel Aviv to Oslo on Thursday due to a lack of insurance cover, the carrier said.
The airline had been due to fly Norwegians and other Nordic citizens stranded in Israel out of the country on Thursday evening. The flight had already been postponed from Wednesday.
“The reason is that the insurance company that Norwegian and a number of other airlines use no longer cover flights to Tel Aviv,” Norwegian said in a statement.
The airline industry in recent days faced a warning over insurance cover in the wake of the weekend attacks.
Norwegian said it was working with Norway’s foreign ministry to find other solutions.
On Tuesday it cancelled regular flights from the Swedish and Danish capitals to Tel Aviv until 19 December.
Updated
Summary
It is 9am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here is where thing stand:
Israel conducts ‘large-scale’ strike on Gaza. At around 4.30am on Thursday, Israel’s military said it was conducting a “large-scale strike” on targets belonging to Hamas in Gaza. It did not provide details. Hamas media said 15 Palestinians had been killed and several wounded in Israeli air strikes.
Gaza death toll rises to over 1,200. The death toll in Gaza rose to 1,200 early Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said, including 51 people killed in what the Israeli military called a large-scale attack in the hours before daylight. The most recent Israeli death toll stands at 1,200.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will meet US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Friday, a Palestinian official said early on Thursday. Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, also said on messaging platform X that Abbas will meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman on Thursday.
More than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue to hit the Palestinian enclave. “Mass displacement across the Gaza Strip continues,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement sent on Thursday. By late Wednesday, the number of displaced people in Gaza had risen by an additional 75,000 people from the figure given 24 hours earlier, reaching 338,934, it said.
Red Cross says in contact with Hamas, Israel over hostages. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is in contact with Hamas and Israel to try to negotiate the release of hostages taken into Gaza, the group said Thursday. “As a neutral intermediary we stand ready to conduct humanitarian visits; facilitate communication between hostages and family members; and to facilitate any eventual release,” Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East, said in a statement.
Biden decries Hamas ‘campaign of pure cruelty’. Joe Biden addressed a round table of Jewish leaders in Washington on Wednesday, where he said, “This attack was a campaign of pure cruelty, not just hate, but pure cruelty against the Jewish people, and I would argue it is the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”.
Biden warned Iran to ‘be careful’. During his speech to a group of Jewish community leaders in Washington, adding that the US is sending more military assistance to help Israel fight Hamas militants. Biden’s remarks marked the first time he connected the US deployment of a carrier fleet near to Israel to concerns Iran might seek to become involved, Reuters reported.
Twenty-one Thai nationals have been killed in the conflict between Israel and militant group Hamas, the prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, said Thursday, up from the previous toll of 20. “The update from last night is bad news that one more Thai died, the number rises to 21,” he said. There are approximately 30,000 Thais in Israel, mostly working in the agriculture sector, according to Thailand’s labour ministry. Fears are mounting over the fate of 14 Thai citizens who have been taken hostage.
Biden also said the US was “working on every aspect” of the hostage crisis in Israel, but that “the idea that I’m going to stand here before you and tell you what I’m doing is bizarre”.
The Israeli air force said that it killed a senior Hamas operative overnight. In a pair of tweets, the IAF wrote on X: “Air Force aircraft killed Muhammad Abu Shamla, a senior operative from the Hamas naval formation in the Rafah Brigade. Abu Shamla’s house was also used to store naval weapons intended to carry out terrorist operations against Israel.”
China’s envoy for Middle East affairs says its government is willing to work with Egypt to promote an “immediate ceasefire and cessation of violence”. According to China’s foreign ministry (Mofa), special envoy Zhai Jun spoke to Egypt’s assistant minister of the Palestine department on Tuesday. A statement from Mofa said Zhai reiterated China’s position for a two-state solution as “the fundamental solution” to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine.
Israel’s ambassador to Japan said on Thursday that his host country should be “vigilant” and look at what Hamas was doing with the aid it extends to Palestinians. “Japan should be vigilant and look at what Hamas is doing with the aid,” Gilan Cohen said at a press conference. He commended Japan for acknowledging the Hamas attacks as “terrorism” and for saying Israel had a right to defend itself.
A ground offensive will be launched on Gaza ‘when opportune and fit for our purposes’, the IDF spokesperson, Jonathan Conricus, said in an update early on Thursday.
Turkey is carrying out negotiations aimed at securing the release of Israeli civilians held by Hamas, according to reports. Talks were being carried out by Turkish officials after instructions from the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, according to a senior Turkish official.
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has called for essential “life-saving” supplies of fuel, food and water to be allowed into Gaza. Guterres, in remarks to the press on Wednesday, said he will never forget the images of the “supercharged cycle of violence and horror”. He said he was in continuous contact with leaders in the region, and warned against any “spillover” of the conflict.
That is it from me, Helen Sullivan. My colleagues in London will take you through the rest of the day’s developments.
Updated
The IDF says sirens are sounding in central Israel:
🚨Sirens sounding in central Israel🚨
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 12, 2023
Red Cross says ready to help 'facilitate' the release of hostages
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is in contact with Hamas and Israel to try to negotiate the release of hostages taken into Gaza, the group said on Thursday.
At least 150 Israelis and foreigners – including soldiers, civilians, children and women – have been held hostage in the Gaza Strip since Hamas’s surprise Saturday attack on Israel. Hamas has not announced an intention to negotiate.
“As a neutral intermediary we stand ready to conduct humanitarian visits; facilitate communication between hostages and family members; and to facilitate any eventual release,” Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East, said in a statement.
Hostage-taking is forbidden under international humanitarian law, and anyone detained must be released immediately, Carboni added.
The ICRC urged “both sides to reduce the suffering of civilians”.
“The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent,” Carboni said.
As Gaza is deprived of electricity, “hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken”, he added.
“Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues.”
Drinking water, already difficult to access, has also become more scarce.
“No parent wants to be forced to give a thirsty child dirty water,” he said.
Updated
Israel conducts 'large-scale' strike on Gaza
At around 4.30am on Thursday, Israel’s military said it was conducting a “large-scale strike” on targets belonging to Hamas in Gaza. It did not provide details.
Hamas media said 15 Palestinians had been killed and several wounded in Israeli air strikes.
Eyewitnesses reported Israeli aircraft heavily bombarding Gaza City and Gazan authorities also reported an air strike on the Jabalia refuge camp in northern Gaza, Reuters reports.
The death toll in Gaza has risen to 1,200, with around 5,600 wounded, Palestinian media reported earlier, citing Gaza‘s health ministry.
Updated
Israeli ambassador says Japan should be 'vigilant' on Palestinian aid
Israel’s ambassador to Japan said on Thursday that his host country should be “vigilant” and look at what Hamas was doing with the aid it extends to Palestinians.
“Japan should be vigilant and look at what Hamas is doing with the aid,” Gilan Cohen said at a press conference. He commended Japan for acknowledging the Hamas attacks as “terrorism” and for saying Israel had a right to defend itself.
Updated
Egypt has been a key mediator in the region, and has been in contact with the United States and others since the surprise attack by Hamas on Saturday. Citing Egyptian security sources, Reuters reported today that it had discussed plans with the US to provide humanitarian aid through its border with the Gaza Strip, but had rejected any move to set up safe corridors for refugees fleeing the enclave.
China’s Zhai is expected to have a telephone conversation with Israeli officials today, Israel’s ambassador to China, Irit Ben-Abba, told Bloomberg News.
Beijing has sought to maintain a neutral position on the conflict, and more generally across the Middle East, but is under increased pressure since the conflict escalated this week. China’s government was criticised by the US Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who was visiting China this week, for not supporting Israel sufficiently. After Schumer’s criticisms, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, released a stronger statement condemning “all violence and attacks on civilians”.
Updated
China envoy willing to work with Egypt to promote immediate ceasefire
China’s envoy for Middle East affairs says its government is willing to work with Egypt to promote an “immediate ceasefire and cessation of violence”.
According to China’s foreign ministry (Mofa), special envoy Zhai Jun spoke to Egypt’s assistant minister of the Palestine department on Tuesday. A statement from Mofa said Zhai reiterated China’s position for a two-state solution as “the fundamental solution” to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine.
“The international community should make practical efforts with the utmost sense of urgency to promote it,” Zhai was quoted as saying. He also said China was willing to provide humanitarian support to Palestinian people.
Updated
15 Palestinians killed, several wounded in Israeli strikes, says Hamas
Fifteen Palestinians were killed and several wounded in an Israeli air strike in Gaza, Hamas Aqsa radio said on Thursday.
The death toll in Gaza stands at over 1,200 people.
Updated
In an update early on Thursday, IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus has said the military “can say with relative confidence” that infants were beheaded by Hamas militants who attacked kibbutz Be’eri on Saturday.
Reports of infants and other civilians being beheaded by Hamas have been repeated by Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson and at least one IDF serviceman, however these reports have so far been related to the attacks in another kibbutz, Kfar Aza.
The claims were repeated by the US president, Joe Biden, in remarks made to Jewish community leaders on Wednesday, but in comments reported later by the Washington Post, a White House spokesperson clarified that neither US officials nor Biden had seen photographs or confirmed such reports independently and that Biden had “based his comments about the alleged atrocities on the claims from Netanyahu’s spokesman”.
“I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” Biden said.
Claims of beheadings have also been reported in Israeli and international media, but have not been independently verified by the Guardian.
On Wednesday, Yossi Landau, the head of operations for the southern region of Zaka, Israel’s volunteer civilian emergency response organization, reportedly told CBS news that he saw children and babies who had been beheaded. The location was not specified in the report.
Delivering an IDF situational update early on Thursday, Conricus, who was speaking about kibbutz Be’eri said:
Out of 1,000 Israelis who lived in this beautiful community, 100 were killed. Today, body bags, many body bags, were evacuated from that kibbutz, including those of children, and including those of babies.
We got very, very disturbing reports that came from the ground that there were babies that had been beheaded. And I admit it took us some time to really understand and to verify that report and it was hard to believe that even Hamas could perform such a barbaric act.
But after eyewitnesses came forward, and after a senior official in the Israeli coronary service Zaka came forward on record on CBS news and said ‘yes, I saw the bodies of beheaded babies’, I think we can now say with relative confidence that this is unfortunately what happened in Be’eri. This is what Hamas did to Israeli citizens.”
Hamas has not commented on the claims.
Updated
'Senior Hamas operative' killed, says Israeli air force
The Israeli air force has announced on X that it killed a senior Hamas operative overnight. In a pair of tweets, the IAF wrote:
During the night (Thursday) the air force launched a wave of attacks with the aim of continuing to damage the commando force of the terrorist organization Hamas known as ‘Nachaba’, by attacking operational headquarters which were used by operatives who infiltrated the Otaf settlements last Saturday.
Also, air force aircraft killed Muhammad Abu Shamla, a senior operative from the Hamas naval formation in the Rafah Brigade. Abu Shamla’s house was also used to store naval weapons intended to carry out terrorist operations against Israel.
Updated
Donald Trump used the war in Israel to test new lines of attack against Joe Biden at a Republican event on Wednesday in Palm Beach, as his campaign sought to weaponize for political gain the deepening conflict that could still be raging around the time of the 2024 presidential election.
The former president’s extended remarks on Israel, at an event hosted by the longtime pro-Trump group Club 47, provided a clear insight into Trump’s intention to wield the war as a cudgel against Biden on touchstone foreign policy issues.
They also marked his most substantial remarks on the war since Hamas militants launched attacks against Israeli civilians over the weekend.
What is Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza?
As the movement’s founding charter made clear, Hamas was dedicated from the start to extinguishing the existence of the state of Israel. It saw armed violence as part of that struggle, modelling its early armed wing on the fedayeen, Palestinian armed groups that emerged in the 1950s after the establishment of the state of Israel.
That armed wing would come to be known as the Izz ad-Din al Qassam brigades [al-Qassam brigades] who from their very beginning embraced the use of terror tactics against Israel, carrying out their first suicide bombing in 1993 in conjunction with Islamic Jihad.
But the movement attracts substantial popular support, and also incorporates teachers, surgeons, urban planners and police in its civil administration of Gaza.
The reality is Hamas is many things. While it runs Gaza’s health service, it is also a sinister organisation committed to the mass murder of Israelis. It administers the education service while its police have broken the bones of children caught wearing scarfs signalling family affiliation with the rival Fatah movement.
It runs the courts while, during the 2014 Gaza war, its forces abducted, tortured and murdered Palestinians accused of “collaborating” with Israel and others. It is unavoidably part of the fabric of the life in Gaza.
Sydney pro-Palestine march replaced with ‘static demonstration’
In Australia a planned pro-Palestine march through the streets of Sydney on Sunday has been scrapped in favour of a “static demonstration” at Hyde Park after the state premier, Chris Minns, vowed to stop any protests.
Event co-organiser Amal Naser said the decision had been made to avoid dealing with legal issues related to obtaining police protection for a march.
“We’ll be holding a static demonstration. We’re going to be out, loud and proud and we’re not going to bow down to the pressures that we’ve been experiencing from police and the premier,” she said on Thursday.
“We have full intention to march next week and every week after that as long as we need.”
Minns on Wednesday vowed to stop further pro-Palestinian marches after he’d earlier apologised for allowing Monday night’s event that ended with antisemitic slurs being hurled on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.
Report: desperation inside Gaza’s hospitals as casualties mount
In previous encounters, says Nebal Farsakh, there would always be some time without airstrikes.
“But now, there is not a single minute. That’s why the casualties keep going up and up,” says Farsakh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent.
At Shifa hospital in Gaza City, reporters from the Associated Press witnessed wounded people streaming through the doors as lifeless bodies arrived under bedsheets. As workers mopped up blood, and relatives rushed children with shrapnel wounds into surgery, explosions continued to thunder around the hospital.
Over five days, Israeli warplanes have pummelled Gaza with an intensity that its war-weary residents had never experienced. The airstrikes have killed more than 1,100 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. Officials have not said how many civilians are among the dead, but aid workers warn that Israel’s decision to impose a “complete siege” on the crowded enclave of 2.3 million people is spawning a humanitarian catastrophe that touches nearly every one of them.
There is no clean water, and after the territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel on Wednesday, electricity has become a precious commodity, while the enclave sits in near-total darkness during the night.
“This is an unprecedented scope of destruction,” says Miriam Marmur, a spokesperson for Gisha, an Israeli human rights group. “Israeli decisions to cut electricity, fuel, food and medicine supplies severely compound the risks to Palestinians and threaten to greatly increase the toll in human life.”
Updated
The Australian government is planning a third repatriation flight from Israel, anticipating “quite large demand” to flee a conflict with ramifications for “months or years to come”.
The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, has insisted “safety and security of Australians” is the top priority, as the government faces questions about why Qantas is conducting the flights while some other nations send their military because commercial operators will not fly.
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the decision was based on “availability” and arranging flights “as quickly as we could”.
Blinken expected to meet Palestinian president Abbas
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will meet the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Friday, a Palestinian official said early on Thursday.
Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, also said on messaging platform X that Abbas will meet Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman on Thursday.
Updated
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long portrayed himself as a friend of Vladimir Putin. In a memoir published during Russia’s war on Ukraine, Netanyahu repeatedly lauded the Russian leader for his intellect and his “particularly friendly attitude” toward the Jewish people.
Putin, too, has over the years cast himself as a loyal ally of the Israeli state, promoting cultural ties and visa-free travel between the two countries.
But after the worst attack on Israel in decades, the much-touted friendship appears to have vanished.
Four days after the start of Hamas’s surprise attack, Putin is yet to call Netanyahu, while the Kremlin has not published a message of condolence to the country, a diplomatic gesture of goodwill that Russia routinely sends out to global leaders following deadly incidents on their soil:
Gaza death toll rises to 1,200
The death toll in Gaza rose to 1,200 early on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said, including 51 people killed in what the Israeli military called a large-scale attack in the hours before daylight.
The most recent Israeli death toll stands at 1,200.
Updated
Thai death toll in Israel-Gaza conflict rises to 21
AFP: Twenty-one Thai nationals have been killed in the conflict between Israel and militant group Hamas, the prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, said on Thursday, up from the previous toll of 20.
“The update from last night is bad news that one more Thai died, the number rises to 21,” he said.
There are approximately 30,000 Thais in Israel, mostly working in the agriculture sector, according to Thailand’s labour ministry.
Fears are mounting over the fate of 14 Thai citizens who have been taken hostage.
Worried families gathered on Thursday morning at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi international airport to await the arrival of a commercial flight carrying 15 Thais, including many wounded.
Yanisa Thaweekaew, whose son Supipat Kongkaew has worked on an Israeli avocado farm since last year, said she hadn’t slept in days.
“My son is everything to me. I was worried. He is the only son I have,” she told AFP.
“I cried every day knowing that he lived in the red zone.”
Updated
At Biden’s address to Jewish community leaders in Washington he also said": “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”
Shortly afterwards, the White House clarified the comments, with a spokesperson telling the Washington Post that neither US officials nor Biden had seen photographs or confirmed such reports independently and that Biden had “based his comments about the alleged atrocities on the claims from Netanyahu’s spokesman,” the Washington Post reports.
Reports of infants being decapitated by Hamas have been repeated by the Israeli government and defence forces, but have not been verified independently by the Guardian.
Updated
More than 338,000 people displaced in Gaza: UN
More than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.
“Mass displacement across the Gaza Strip continues,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement sent on Thursday.
By late Wednesday, the number of displaced people in Gaza had risen by an additional 75,000 people from the figure given 24 hours earlier, reaching 338,934, it said.
Israeli forces said 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the onslaught - the worst in the country’s history.
In Gaza, officials reported more than 1,100 people have been killed in Israel’s sustained campaign of air and artillery strikes.
OCHA said nearly 220,000 people, or two-thirds of the displaced people, had sought shelter in schools run by the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Another nearly 15,000 people fled to schools run by the Palestinian Authority, while more than 100,000 were being sheltered by relatives, neighbours and a church and other facilities in Gaza City.
Updated
Biden decries Hamas ‘campaign of pure cruelty’
Joe Biden addressed a roundtable of Jewish leaders in Washington on Wednesday, where he described the bloody assault on Israel by Hamas as “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”.
“This attack was a campaign of pure cruelty, not just hate, but pure cruelty against the Jewish people, and I would argue it is the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” he said.
“Silence is complicity,” Biden said. “I refuse to be silent.” He said he had spoken again today with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and that the US is “surging” additional military assistance to the Israel Defence Forces.
He said the US was “working on every aspect” of the hostage crisis in Israel, but that “the idea that I’m going to stand here before you and tell you what I’m doing is bizarre”.
Updated
Opening summary
This is the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war with me, Helen Sullivan.
Top developments this morning: US President Joe Biden has said that the Hamas attack on Israel was the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”.
Speaking to Jewish community leaders in Washington, Biden said: “This attack was a campaign of pure cruelty, not just hate, but pure cruelty against the Jewish people, and I would argue it is the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.”
Meanwhile in Gaza, more than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, the United Nations said, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.
“Mass displacement across the Gaza Strip continues,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement sent on Thursday.
By late Wednesday, the number of displaced people in Gaza had risen by an additional 75,000 people from the figure given 24 hours earlier, reaching 338,934, it said.
The Gaza ?Strip’s sole power station has run out of fuel and, amid continuing strikes by Israel, hundreds of terrified people are seeking shelter in the entrance of the enclave’s largest hospital.
Gaza’s hospitals are running dangerously low on supplies. There is a shortage of everything from bandages to intravenous fluids, beds to essential drugs, said Richard Brennan, regional director of the World Health Organization.
“It’s almost as bad as it gets,” Brennan said. “It’s not just the damage, the destruction. It’s that psychological pressure. The constant shelling ... the loss of one’s colleagues.”
More shortly. Here are the other key recent developments in the conflict:
Biden warned Iran to ‘be careful’. During his speech to a group of Jewish community leaders in Washington, adding that the US is sending more military assistance to help Israel fight Hamas militants. Biden’s remarks marked the first time he connected the US deployment of a carrier fleet near to Israel to concerns Iran might seek to become involved, Reuters reported.
Biden also said the US was “working on every aspect” of the hostage crisis in Israel, but that “the idea that I’m going to stand here before you and tell you what I’m doing is bizarre”.
A ground offensive will come “when opportune and fit for our purposes”, IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said in an update early on Thursday.
Turkey is carrying out negotiations aimed at securing the release of Israeli civilians held by Hamas, according to reports. Talks were being carried out by Turkish officials after instructions from the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, according to a senior Turkish official.
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has called for essential “life-saving” supplies of fuel, food and water to be allowed into Gaza. Guterres, in remarks to the press on Wednesday, said he will never forget the images of the “supercharged cycle of violence and horror”. He said he was in continuous contact with leaders in the region, and warned against any “spillover” of the conflict. “I appeal to all parties – and those who have an influence over those parties – to avoid any further escalation,” he said. Guterres called for the immediate release of all Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and urged that international humanitarian law to be upheld and civilians to “be protected at all times”.
Israel’s new war cabinet vowed to “wipe Hamas off the face of the earth”. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the nation alongside the opposition party leader, Benny Gantz, after the pair agreed to form an emergency government to direct war against Hamas. The cabinet consists of Netanyahu, Gantz, and Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant. During the fighting with Hamas, the emergency government will not take up any unrelated policy or laws, Netanyahu and Gantz said in a joint statement.
The US has confirmed the deaths of at least 22 American citizens, a state department spokesperson said. They said. We extend our deepest condolences to the victims and to the families of all those affected. The number is up from 14 on Tuesday.
17 Britons missing and feared dead in Hamas attacks. Seventeen British nationals, including children, are feared dead or missing in Israel after attacks by Hamas, the Guardian understands. The atrocities have so far claimed at least 2,100 lives.
The Palestinian death toll since Saturday stands at 1,100, including 326 children, and there are 5,339 injured. At least 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded as Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with hundreds of airstrikes overnight, a Hamas government official said. More than 260,000 people have fled their homes in the Gaza Strip as heavy Israeli bombardments from the air, land and sea continued, the UN said.
The Israeli death toll stands at 1,200. More than 2,700 are wounded. The jump in the death toll (up by 200) is “not because there is ongoing fighting,” an IDF spokesperson said, but because “now as the time has gone by we are discovering bodies of dead Israelis in the various communities that Hamas infiltrated and where they conducted their massacres”.
Updated
