This blog is now closed. We have launched a new blog at the link below:
In addition to pro-Palestine protests reported earlier, Jewish communities in the US, France and other countries also held rallies on Friday in solidarity with Israel after the Hamas attack, Reuters reports, while some governments have stepped up security at synagogues and Jewish schools.
In the US, demonstrators have showed solidarity with both sides in the conflict, and major cities from New York City to Los Angeles have reinforced their police presence in Jewish and Muslim neighbourhoods.
In Washington, a rally supporting Israel and the American Jewish community drew about 200 people at the city’s Freedom Plaza, in view of the Capitol complex, where police had erected protective fencing the night before. In New York, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets.
Germany and France had banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations and several western countries said they had stepped up security at synagogues and Jewish schools fearing that protests could lead to violence.
In the Netherlands, Jewish schools were closed for safety reasons, as were two Jewish schools in London.
Police in Britain’s capital said thousands of officers were carrying out extra patrols, visiting schools, synagogues and mosques. At least two Jewish schools closed due to security fears. The boost reflected a significant increase in hate crime, particularly antisemitism, a police statement said.
In Warsaw, the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, was scheduled to lead a multi-confessional prayer for peace. Members of France’s Jewish community were to gather at the largest synagogue in Paris for the Sabbath.
Updated
Tens of thousands of protesters have rallied across the Middle East and in parts of Asia, Europe and the US in support of Palestinians and condemnation of Israel as it intensified its strikes on Gaza in retaliation for Hamas attacks a week ago, according to reports by Reuters.
In Turkey, crowds gathered outside mosques chanting against Israel and saluting Hamas. In the south-eastern city of Diyarbakir, 46-year-old business owner Mikail Bakan said: “All the Muslim world needs to be one against Israel.”
In Baghdad on Friday, tens of thousands of Iraqis rallied in central Tahrir Square, waving Palestinian flags and burning the Israeli flag while chanting anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans.
State-organised rallies were held across Iran – whose government is Hamas’ main backer and one of Israel’s principal foes – in support of the militant group, state TV reported.
Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem told a protest in Lebanon, the group was “fully ready” to contribute to the fighting. The group has already clashed with Israel across the Lebanese border in the past week.
Thousands of Yemeni citizens carried large Palestinian flags and shouted slogans during a demonstration in support of Palestinians in the capital, Sana’a.
In Indonesia, Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the suspected mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, joined dozens of people in a march against Israel in the Javanese city of Solo.
In the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, activists protested against Israel’s actions after Friday prayers at the main mosque. Members of Japan’s Muslim community demonstrated near the Israeli embassy in Tokyo, holding signs and chanting “Israel, terrorist” and “Free Palestine”.
In Sri Lanka, protesters held up signs saying, “Palestine you will never walk alone”. Protesters also took to the streets in Bulgaria, Yemen, Cape Town, India’s Kashmir region, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt.
Updated
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations called for a “humanitarian cease-fire” in the Gaza Strip and Israel on Friday, while blaming the US for the ongoing conflict, according to a report by AFP news agency.
The Russian draft resolution, presented to the Security Council and seen by AFP, calls for an “immediate” ceasefire and the secure release of all hostages, and “strongly condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism.”
The document did not specifically name Hamas.
“We’re convinced that the Security Council must act to put an end to the bloodshed and restart peace negotiations with a view to establishing a Palestinian state as it was supposed to do so long ago,” Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said after the closed-door meeting of the Security Council on Friday.
Nebenzia said there were positive responses to the draft resolution among some member states.
He also blamed the US for bearing “responsibility for the looming war in the Middle East,” and criticized European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen for “turning a blind eye to the Israeli air force attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”
The Security Council is regularly divided on Israeli-Palestinian issues. Members spoke cautiously of the resolution after the meeting.
“The draft resolution appeared just two minutes before we went into the council meeting,” said British Ambassador Barbara Woodward. “I think for something that is as important as this, we’ve already seen how much human life has been destroyed. We need time for consultation, serious consultation.”
Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun said that “there is an emerging consensus on the humanitarian concerns,” adding: “We are open to all efforts which will help cease the fire, help de-escalate the tension.”
Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister Mauro Vieira, whose country chairs the rotating presidency of the Security Council, said that “Brazil will continue to work closely with all delegations aiming for a unified position by the Council on the situation.”
China’s Special Envoy on the Middle East on Friday met with representatives of the Arab League in China for an emergency session on the crisis in Israel and Gaza, according to a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry released on Saturday.
China’s special envoy, Zhai Jun, told the meeting that China supports the 22-member strong Arab League in playing an important role on the “Palestinian issue” and will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.
“The international community should earnestly enhance its sense of urgency to return to the correct basis of the Two State Solution to realise the peaceful coexistence of the two states of Palestine and Israel,” Zhai said, according to the statement.
Here is some more detail about the strikes reported earlier. The Israeli military says it intercepted two unidentified targets above the northern city of Haifa.
“Following the initial report, another unidentified UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] crossed into northern Israel. Additionally, an IDF UAV was fired upon. In response, the IDF struck a Hezbollah terrorist target in southern Lebanon,” Israel Defense Forces said on social media.
The IDF Aerial Defense Array intercepted 2 unidentified targets above the city of Haifa.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 13, 2023
No sirens were activated according to protocol. pic.twitter.com/JdKBEmAzgs
A 25-year-old Thai man who is among 21 Thai citizens killed following Hamas’ attacks has been named as Pongsathorn Khunsri in local media.
A report in the Bangkok Post says that Pongsathorn had been in Israel for a year, and was working on a farm. He moved so that he could earn more money and hoped to build a new house for his mother. He sent money back home regularly to his mother, hoping she could have a better life.
About 30,000 Thais are living in Israel, including many who work in agricultural jobs that offer better salaries than those back home.
An official from the Thai Embassy in Tel Aviv called his mother, Surangkhana, on Wednesday to inform her of his death.
“I never imagined my son would die like this in a faraway land. Many Thais have worked there, but why did it happen to be my son who was captured and killed?” Surangkhana told the Bangkok Post.
She told the paper that she did not have much detail about what had happened to her son.
Updated
The Palestinian United Nations envoy appealed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday to do more to stop a “crime against humanity” by Israel, which has warned nearly half of the population of the Gaza Strip to relocate as it plans an assault, according to a Reuters report.
“He has to do more. Whatever was done is not sufficient. We need all of us to do more to stop this crime against humanity,” Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour told reporters before a meeting of Arab Group ambassadors at the United Nations.
Countries urged Israel on Friday to hold off attacking northern Gaza, where more than a million civilians largely defied Israel’s order to evacuate before it goes after Hamas militants who slaughtered Israeli civilians last weekend.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan said on Friday that Israel’s warning to residents in northern Gaza was “to temporarily move south ... to mitigate civilian harm.” He was speaking at an event Israel hosted at the UN with families of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas and taken to Gaza in the attack.
Guterres briefed the 15-member UN Security Council behind closed doors on Friday.
“The situation in Gaza has reached a dangerous new low,” he told reporters on his way to the briefing, adding that he was in constant contact with the leaders across the region to try and “prevent further dangerous escalation in the West Bank or elsewhere in the region, especially in southern Lebanon.”
Guterres reminded the parties: “Even wars have rules ... Civilians must be protected and also never used as shields.”
Israel’s military said early on Saturday it had struck a Hezbollah target in southern Lebanon in response to the “infiltration of unidentified aerial objects into Israel” and fire on an Israeli drone. The military intercepted the objects and the fire on its drone, it said, according to a Reuters report.
Nearly 240 Australians have landed in London on the first Australian-government backed repatriation flight from Israel, the foreign minister has confirmed.
Penny Wong said on Saturday that the Qantas-operated flight from Tel Aviv landed earlier on Saturday carrying 238 people. Overall, about 825 Australians had departed Israel and the occupied territories, she said.
“My department continues to assist a number of Australians seeking to leave Gaza, numbering about 20,” Wong said.
A second repatriation flight is due to leave on Saturday from Tel Aviv to Dubai. The government announced on Friday it would arrange an extra two charter flights, taking the total number to four.
Tens of thousands of people in Gaza have fled south - UN
Tens of thousands of people in Gaza are believed to have fled their homes and moved south following Israel’s evacuation warning, according to estimates by the UN humanitarian office OCHA. Prior to the evacuation order, more than 400,000 Palestinians were already internally displaced, it said.
Israel’s military has told about 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south ahead of an expected ground invasion. Hamas urged people to stay put and defy the Israeli military order to evacuate homes.
Updated
Reuters has a quick snap that the Israeli military says it has attacked a Hezbollah target in southern Lebanon in response to a launch from Lebanon.
More details on this as it emerges.
Throngs of protesters gathered near Times Square in New York City on Friday, demanding Palestinian independence and condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his government intensified its strikes on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the wave of Hamas attacks.
The protesters, many wearing masks to conceal their identities out of what they said was concern for their own safety, chanted such slogans as “Free Palestine,” and “Netanyahu, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?”, Reuters reported.
The rally came as police in New York and other US cities said they were escalating patrols around synagogues, mosques and other Jewish and Muslim institutions, though authorities said they were unaware of any specific, or credible threats.
US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said he will “meet with Saudi partners to discuss Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and the need to work together to prevent the conflict from spreading.”
Blinken is on a tour of six Arab nations on Friday to try to prevent war sweeping across the Middle East. There are fears that a wider conflict may erupt if Israel’s determination to crush Hamas leads to a slaughter in Gaza or an enforced exit of millions of Palestinians into Egypt.
As my trip through the Middle East continues, I will meet with Saudi partners to discuss Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and the need to work together to prevent the conflict from spreading. pic.twitter.com/sNiorG4Wdr
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) October 13, 2023
The Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour has written about Blinken’s tour here.
Updated
The US president, Joe Biden, has spoken to CBS News’ 60 Minutes. Asked for his message to militants holding American hostages in Gaza, he responded:
“We’re going to do everything in our power to find them. Everything in our power. I’m not going to go into detail about that, but we’re working like hell on it.”
Thousands of people are expected to march in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in central London on Saturday, as police warn that anyone showing support for Hamas or deviating from the route could face arrest, PA home has reported.
The Metropolitan Police Service will deploy more than 1,000 officers to police the demonstration, in which people will be marching in solidarity with Palestine and demanding Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian land.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the UK was doing “everything we can to ensure the security of British citizens” after the Defence Secretary said it seemed “very likely” that there are British hostages in Gaza.
Three Britons are confirmed to have lost their lives during the weekend’s assault on Israel, but reports have suggested at least 17 could be among the casualties.
This is Rebecca Ratcliffe in Bangkok taking over the live blog. I will be bringing you the latest developments as they happen.
Updated
Summary
It’s 2am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s where things stand:
Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing their homes and moving south after Israel’s military delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people earlier on Friday ahead of a feared ground offensive. The UN said it was told by the Israeli military that about 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours. Hamas urged people to stay put and defy the Israeli military order to evacuate homes.
Israeli airstrikes on convoys fleeing Gaza City killed 70 people, mostly women and children, the press office of Hamas said. Hamas said the cars were struck in three places as they headed south from Gaza City on Friday.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “eradicate” Hamas and said Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza “is just the beginning”. Netanyahu, in televised remarks on Friday, said Israel was striking at its enemies “with unprecedented might”. “Our enemies have only started paying the price,” he said.
Israeli troops carried out local raids over the past day in the Gaza Strip, searching for hostages and collecting evidence to find people taken by Hamas, the Israel Defence Forces said on Friday.
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, said the Israeli military’s evacuation order is “extremely dangerous – and in some cases, simply not possible”. The World Health Organization (WHO) said asking vulnerable patients to evacuate hospitals in Gaza amounted to a “death sentence”. Amnesty International said Israel’s evacuation order “cannot be considered an effective warning” and called for it to be rescinded immediately.
At least 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza from Israeli strikes, including 614 children and 370 women, according to Gaza’s health ministry on Friday. At least 16 Palestinians were shot and killed in the West Bank over the course of the day, the Palestinian health ministry said.
A journalist has been killed and six others injured after an Israeli shell landed in a gathering of international journalists covering clashes on the border in south Lebanon on Friday. Reuters confirmed that its videographer Issam Abdallah was killed. Meanwhile, the BBC said its journalists were assaulted and held at gunpoint after they were stopped by Israeli police in Tel Aviv.
The US president, Joe Biden, said he had spoken with the families of Americans held by Hamas in Gaza, and that they were “going through agony” not knowing the fate of their loved ones. He also said he was making a priority of urgently addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Israel Defense Forces ruled out a suspected armed infiltration near the Lebanese border, after warning residents of the village of Hanita earlier on Friday to hole up at home and lock doors.
Violence between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces erupted in several areas of occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In France, the government raised its security alert to the highest level after a suspected radical Islamist killed a teacher and injured three others in the north of the country. Fifteen French nationals have been confirmed to have died from last weekend’s attacks by Hamas in Israel.
A flight chartered by the UK government to evacuate Britons from Israel has left the country.
A statement from a Foreign Office spokesperson said:
A UK Government charter flight has now left Israel, with further flights expected to leave in the coming days while commercial options are limited.
Hamas created detailed plans to target elementary schools and a youth center to “kill as many people as possible”, seize hostages and quickly move them into the Gaza Strip, according to “top secret” plans obtained by NBC News.
The documents were found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists by Israeli first responders and shared with the news outlet.
They appeared to be orders for two Hamas units to surround and infiltrate villages and target places where civilians, including children, gathered in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad, the report said.
Israeli officials told the outlet that the documents show that Hamas had been systematically gathering intelligence on each kibbutz bordering Gaza and creating specific plans of attack for each village that included the intentional targeting of women and children.
Thousands of people have been fleeing to the southern half of Gaza before an expected ground invasion of the blockaded strip.
Many of almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million trapped civilians began to leave northern Gaza after the Israeli army issued mass evacuation orders in the early hours of Friday.
US state department diplomats warned not to call for 'ceasefire' or 'end to violence' - report
The US state department has sent emails to diplomats advising them against making public statements that suggest the US wants to see less violence amid the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, according to a HuffPost report.
High-level officials do not want press materials to include three specific phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm”, the report says.
The emails were sent hours after Israel issued mass evacuation orders to the more than one million residents of northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion of the region.
Updated
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, said the death of a Reuters journalist in southern Lebanon earlier today demonstrates the enormous risk that the conflict will spill over into Lebanon.
Meanwhile, the US state department said officials were working to gather information on reports of journalists killed and injured in Lebanon. A spokesperson said:
Today and every day, we stand with journalists around the world who do critical work that we all rely on every single day, sometimes in dangerous conditions.
Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah holds a kitten while posing for a picture in Saaideh, Lebanon, July 4, 2023. REUTERS/Emilie Madi
— Hümeyra Pamuk (@humeyra_pamuk) October 13, 2023
RIP. Mekanın cennet olsun. pic.twitter.com/JyriWj2n2I
Updated
BBC journalists 'assaulted and held at gunpoint' by Israeli police
The BBC said its journalists were assaulted and held at gunpoint after they were stopped by Israeli police in Tel Aviv.
Muhannad Tutunji, Haitham Abudiab and the BBC Arabic team were driving to a hotel when they were dragged from their car – marked “TV” in red tape – by police, the corporation said.
Tutunji and Abudiab said they identified themselves as BBC journalists and showed police their press ID cards.
Tutunji said while filming the incident, his phone thrown on the ground and he was struck on the neck.
A BBC spokesperson said:
One of our BBC News Arabic teams deployed in Tel Aviv, in a vehicle clearly marked as media, was stopped and assaulted last night by Israeli police. Journalists must be able to report on the conflict in Israel-Gaza freely.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Israel and Palestine.
Updated
Fifteen French nationals have been confirmed to have died from last weekend’s attacks by Hamas in Israel, foreign minister Catherine Colonna said on Friday.
In France, the government raised its security alert to the highest level after a suspected radical Islamist killed a teacher and injured three others in the north of the country.
Dominique Bernard, 57, a father of three, died in the courtyard of a secondary school in Arras from several wounds to the neck as colleagues confronted his attacker, a former pupil.
France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said he believed there was a link between the attack in Arras and the attacks by Hamas terrorists on Israel.
He said the suspect, named as Mohammed M, 20, was being closely monitored by the DGSI, the country’s internal security services, who had tapped his phone.
Updated
Rachel Goldberg last saw her son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, at 11pm the night before the attack, when he left the house with his friend and some camping equipment to go to do “something fun”. Goldberg was at home in Jerusalem when she woke to the sound of rocket-warning sirens. When she turned on her phone, she saw two text messages from him that read “I love you” and “I’m sorry”.
“I immediately know something horrible was happening,” said Goldberg. Her daughter searched online and saw the news that the Supernova music festival had come under attack. “So we knew immediately where he was but we couldn’t reach him,” she said.
In the days since, his mother has tried to piece together some of what happened. Goldberg-Polin, she said, and three friends had got into a car to try to escape the massacre.
Rockets started falling into the street. It was complete chaos. So they stopped and went into a roadside bomb shelter. Hamas terrorists came, threw in hand grenades and spraying it with machine-gun fire. A total horror.
She said her son was trying to throw the grenades out as fast as they came in. After a lull, the terrorists came in and ordered the survivors to stand up. Most people were dead; some were alive but played dead and some were alive but badly wounded. Goldberg-Polin stood up.
“The witness we spoke to said Hersh’s arm below the elbow had been blown off, and he’d taken off his shirt to make a tourniquet. He walked out and they put [him] in a pickup and [he was] taken to the Gaza border,” said Goldberg.
His phone last pinged at 12.45pm on Saturday at the border. “We know nothing about him since, except that he has a critical wound that needs medical assistance immediately, if he is still alive,” said Goldberg. Asked if she was worried that Israel’s bombing of Gaza might diminish her son’s chance of survival, Goldberg said she was not thinking of that.
“Right now, there is such horrible fighting going on down there, so we’re just trying get any help, clarity or answer that we can,” she said. The top floor of her home is filled with families whose children are fighting.
The country is at war. It’s complete chaos and pandemonium, and it’s a terrible situation. I think this country’s life is at stake. My husband and I recognize that Hersh is the most important priority to us – he’s our world – but there’s a larger picture here, and we’re trying to be mindful of that.
Updated
Hayim Katsman, a dual US-Israeli citizen, was initially thought to have been taken to Gaza but was later found killed in his home in Kibbutz Holit. It is understood that Katsman, 32, shielded a neighbor from Hamas bullets, and that neighbor later saved two children.
Katsman, whose grandmother fled Nazi Germany and whose grandfather survived the Holocaust, wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Washington on “Religious nationalism in Israel/Palestine”. Instead of staying in the US, Katsman moved to the kibbutz, where he worked as a landscaper.
His mother, Hanna Katsman, who buried her son on Thursday evening, said:
He was always in a good mood and really enjoyed being with people. It was honorable to me how he did his scholarship but he could also forget about it, hang out and play music.
Katsman was involved in peace initiatives, including Mahsom Watch, which monitors the impact of government activity on Palestinian lives. His sister, Noy, an activist with the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots group Standing Together, told the Jewish Forward that her brother’s death should not be used to justify retribution, a view their mother shared:
She said Hayim wouldn’t have wanted his death to be used against innocent people.
Updated
As US officials work to determine the whereabouts of 14 US citizens unaccounted for since last Saturday’s deadly Hamas assault on Israel, US families of the dead or missing are describing their loss.
At least 22 Americans are known to have died in last Saturday’s attacks, and officials have said they are working to determine whether those missing have been killed or taken hostage.
Jonathan Dekel-Chen has not heard from his 35-year-old son since Saturday morning, when Hamas gunmen stormed the Nir Oz kibbutz. There is currently no information on the whereabouts of Sagui, a dual Israeli-US citizen from Connecticut.
He’s a loving guy, funny and charming, a deep thinker, a loving son and a beautiful father, an imaginative and creative doer of the things that get into his head.
Dekel-Chen said he understands that at about 6am the kibbutz was overrun by around 100 Hamas militants. Sagui, he said, hurried to get families into bomb shelters as the men did their best to repel the attack. The Israeli army did not arrive until mid-afternoon. Of 400 people who lived in the village, 240 were dead or missing.
Dekel-Chen said Hamas used stolen vehicles and tractors to transport a dozen people to Gaza. Some could be tracked on their cellphones but several dozen others have simply disappeared. Dekel-Chen said:
Sagui is one of those people – he didn’t simply evaporate. We’ve had no word from the Israeli or US government.
Updated
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, has also spoken about the Israeli military’s order for more than 1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate.
The evacuation order “defies the rules of war and basic humanity”, Griffiths posted in a statement to X, adding that “there is nowhere safe to go” as roads and homes in Gaza have been “reduced to rubble” because of intense bombardment.
Forcing scared and trauamatised civilians, including women and children, to move from one densely populated area to another, without even a pause in the fighting and without humanitarian support, is dangerous and outrageous.
He warned that such mass displacement of civilians will have “catastrophic humanitarian consequences and long-term implications”.
The order to evacuate 1.1 million people from northern Gaza defies the rules of war and basic humanity. pic.twitter.com/8WlNTKtfaF
— Martin Griffiths (@UNReliefChief) October 13, 2023
Updated
UN chief says Israel's evacuation order is 'simply not possible'
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, warned that the situation in Gaza has reached a “a dangerous new low”, and called for immediate humanitarian access to allow fuel, food and water to reach those in need.
“Even wars have rules,” Guterres told reporters on Friday.
International humanitarian law and human rights law must be respected and upheld; civilians must be protected and never used as shields.
He said the Israeli military’s evacuation order is “extremely dangerous – and in some cases, simply not possible”.
Guterres appealed to all parties “and those with influence over them” to do their utmost to enable humanitarian access to the besieged Gaza Strip, to release all hostages immediately and to protect civilians.
His comments came as the UN security council met behind closed doors on Friday to discuss the Israel-Hamas war.
Updated
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has called for the creation of a humanitarian corridor to allow 2 million civilians – half of them children – out of Gaza.
In a statement posted to social media, he described the attack by Hamas on Israel last week as “abhorrent” and that “our hearts are broken open” by the grief of Israelis and the Jewish people “for whom this trauma and loss stands in the dark and terrible shadow of the worst days of their history”.
But in the face of a ground offensive in Gaza, I plead that the sins of Hamas are not borne by the citizens of Gaza, who themselves have faced such suffering over many decades. The price of evil cannot be paid by the innocent.
Pray for the people of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Pray for the future of the Holy Land.
— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) October 13, 2023
My statement this evening: pic.twitter.com/hgdYzjviM8
Updated
Israeli forces 'postpone evacuation order for Gaza hospital', says MSF
Médecins Sans Frontières said Israeli forces have “postponed” the demand to evacuate Al Awda hospital in the northern Gaza Strip until 6am local time.
🔴UPDATE
— MSF International (@MSF) October 13, 2023
Clarification: Israeli forces have now postponed the demand to evacuate Al Awda Hospital in the Gaza Strip until 6am. The evacuation of patients remains complicated.
Updated
We reported earlier that a hospital in northern Gaza was given just two hours to evacuate staff and patients, according to Médecins Sans Frontières.
ActionAid has released a statement:
Our understanding and fear is that the hospital will be bombed when that deadline expires.
The organisation said it condemns in the strongest terms “any act that puts innocent lives at risk”, adding that threatening a hospital is an “egregious” violation of humanitarian law.
Wounded children, amongst many other civilians, are being treated with life-threatening injuries; they simply cannot leave. We call for the immediate removal of this threat, a ceasefire and the protection of civilians across Gaza.
Updated
Gaza death toll rises to 1,900, including 614 children
At least 1,900 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack on Saturday, the Palestinian ministry of health said.
The network said officials reported that the toll included 614 children and 370 women. An additional 7,696 people have been wounded, according to the ministry.
Updated
Biden says hostages’ families ‘going through agony’
Joe Biden said he had spoken earlier with the families of Americans held by Hamas in Gaza, and that they were “going through agony” not knowing the fate of their loved ones.
The president was speaking just now at an event in Philadelphia, and prefaced comments on the US economy with an update on the escalating conflict in the Middle East, and strong words for Hamas:
The more we learn about the attack, the more horrifying it becomes. With 1,000 innocent lives lost, including at least 27 Americans, these guys … are pure evil. I said from the beginning, the United States, make no mistake about it, stands with Israel.
Biden said visits to the region by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, were “to make sure Israel has everything it needs to defend itself and respond to these attacks”.
He said US teams were working with the governments of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and other Arab nations to address a looming humanitarian crisis. And he said he was on a Zoom call on Friday morning for more than an hour with families of Americans being held by Hamas:
They’re going through agony not knowing what the status of their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, children. You know, it’s gut-wrenching.
I assured them of my personal commitment to do everything possible to return every missing American to their families. We’re working around the clock to secure the release of Americans held by Hamas, in close cooperation with Israel and our partners around the region.
We’re not going to stop until we bring them home.
Updated
Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s account on X, formerly Twitter, has posted a clip of his meeting earlier on Friday with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
He said he was grateful to European nations for standing by his country:
I appreciate the expression of support that you gave now and in the recent days and the fact that so many European countries have stood with us shoulder to shoulder.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met today with Ursula von der Leyen, President of the @EU_Commission:
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 13, 2023
"I appreciate the expression of support that you gave now and in the recent days and the fact that so many European countries have stood with us shoulder to shoulder. pic.twitter.com/Q3Kz0M2ISP
During their meeting, Von der Leyen said Hamas alone was responsible for the suffering in Israel and Gaza. “Hamas’ acts have nothing to do with the legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people. On the contrary, the horror that Hamas has unleashed is only bringing more suffering upon innocent Palestinians. They are threatened, too,” she said.
Updated
Air raid sirens sound in Tel Aviv
Reports say air raid sirens are sounding again in Tel Aviv.
A post on X from the Israel Defense Forces said “hundreds of thousands of Israelis are running from their Shabbat dinner tables to bomb shelters”.
RIGHT NOW: Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are running from their Shabbat dinner tables to bomb shelters as 🚨’s sound across central Israel.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 13, 2023
Another post from journalist Robert Sherman contains video he says is of missiles being intercepted over the city. It’s just after 10.20pm in Tel Aviv.
SOUND ON: Missiles intercepted over Tel Aviv. Loudest one I’ve heard: pic.twitter.com/VYzPI5Q1ik
— Robert Sherman (@RobertShermanTV) October 13, 2023
Amnesty International urges that Israel’s ‘appalling’ Gaza evacuation order be rescinded immediately
Amnesty International said Israel’s order for Palestinian civilians to leave the northern Gaza Strip within 24 hours “cannot be considered an effective warning” and called for it to be rescinded immediately.
The order is an “an impossible demand” that “may amount to forced displacement of the civilian population, a violation of international humanitarian law”, the rights group said in a statement on Friday.
Regardless of timeframe, Israel cannot treat northern Gaza as an open-fire zone based on having issued this order.
Israeli forces must “take all feasible precautions” to minimise harm to civilians wherever they are in Gaza, it said.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, said:
With this order, Israeli forces are setting in motion the mass forced displacement of more than 1.1 million people from Gaza City and the entire northern part of the Gaza Strip. It has sowed panic among the population and left thousands of internally displaced Palestinians now sleeping on the streets, not knowing where to flee to or where they can find safety amid a relentless bombing campaign by Israel and merciless collective punishment measures.
She urged Israel’s allies to call for international humanitarian law to be respected and civilians to be protected.
Civilians in Gaza must not be used as political pawns and their lives cannot be devalued. The international community must also refrain from further legitimizing Israel’s 16-year-long illegal blockade and immediately halt the transfer of arms that could be used to commit unlawful attacks.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires of protests held across the world in support of Israel and Palestine.
Updated
70 people killed in Israeli strikes while fleeing Gaza City, says Hamas
Israeli airstrikes on convoys fleeing Gaza City killed 70 people, mostly women and children, the press office of Hamas said.
Hamas said the cars were struck in three places as they headed south from Gaza City.
It was not immediately clear who the target of the airstrikes was, or whether militants were among the passengers.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza corroborated Hamas’s statement. NBC reported meeting people in hospitals who lost family members from air strikes while fleeing from the north to the south.
Updated
Netanyahu: Israel's counteroffensive in Gaza 'is just the beginning'
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “eradicate” Hamas and said Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza “is just the beginning”.
Netanyahu, in televised remarks on Friday, said Israel was striking at its enemies “with unprecedented might”.
I would like to emphasise: this is just the beginning. Our enemies have only started paying the price I will not detail now what is yet to come, but I would like to tell you this is just the beginning.
He said he had spoken with Joe Biden and other world leaders, and had rallied “tremendous” international support for Israel.
We’re going to eradicate Hamas and we’re going to bring victory. It’s going to take time, but we’re going to come out of this war stronger than ever.
Updated
What are the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict?
As with almost everything to do with this conflict, it depends on whom you ask.
Some will begin with the Romans. Others will start with the late 19th-century Jewish migration to what was then the Ottoman Empire – to escape the pogroms and other persecutions in eastern Europe – and the rise of Zionism. Or the Balfour declaration by the British government in 1917 in support of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine and the ensuing conflicts with Arab communities there.
But the starting point for many people is the United Nations’ vote in 1947 to the partition of land in the British mandate of Palestine into two states – one Jewish, one Arab – in the wake of the destruction of much of European Jewry in the Holocaust.
Neither the Palestinians nor the neighbouring Arab countries accepted the founding of modern Israel. Fighting between Jewish armed groups, which the British regarded as terrorist organisations, and Palestinians escalated until the armies of Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan and Syria invaded after Israel declared independence in May 1948.
With Israel’s new army gaining ground, an armistice agreement in 1949 saw new de facto borders that gave the fledgling Jewish state considerably more territory than it was awarded under the UN partition plan.
Israel did not consult with the US before it issued an evacuation warning to more than a million Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza, the White House said.
Spokesperson John Kirby said:
There was no prior consultation that I’m aware of before the IDF issued that evacuation warning.
The US is working “aggressively” with Israeli and Egyptian officials to try to find safe passage out of southern Gaza, he added.
He told reporters that Joe Biden has spoken with family members of 14 Americans unaccounted for after attacks by Hamas militants on Israel.
He said US authorities were still working to get more information on how many Americans were among the hostages taken by Hamas.
“We still believe it’s a very small number,” he said. “I think I described it as less than a handful.”
The White House has confirmed the deaths of 22 Americans in the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Updated
The first charter flight organised by the US government to get its citizens out of Israel has departed, the White House said.
The flight “is en route right now into Europe”, spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday. He declined to provide an exact destination for the flight.
More flights are planned in coming days, he said.
Updated
Israel gives Gaza hospital just 'two hours to evacuate', says MSF
Médecins Sans Frontières said Israel has given Al Awda hospital in the northern Gaza Strip just two hours to evacuate.
A statement from the organisation reads:
Israel has given Al Awda Hospital just two hours to evacuate. Our staff are still treating patients.
We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza.
We are trying to protect our staff and patients.
🔴BREAKING:
— MSF International (@MSF) October 13, 2023
Israel has given Al Awda Hospital just two hours to evacuate. Our staff are still treating patients.
We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza.
We are trying to protect our staff and patients.
UN chief urges Israel to 'avert a humanitarian catastrophe'
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, is in constant contact with Israeli authorities, urging them to “avert a humanitarian catastrophe”, a UN spokesperson said on Friday.
Stéphane Dujarric, in a briefing, said it was vital that Israeli authorities protect all civilians, including in UN shelters in Gaza.
No aid is currently getting into Gaza as border crossings remain closed, he added.
Dujarric added that the UN considers it “impossible” for 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza to follow Israel’s orders to evacuate to the enclave’s south within 24 hours.
The UN strongly appealed for the order to be rescinded to avoid turning “a tragedy into a calamitous situation”, he said. Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said the UN response to Israel’s early warning was “shameful”.
The UN spokesperson’s remarks came after the Palestinian UN envoy, Riyad Mansour, appealed to Guterres to do more to stop a “crime against humanity” by Israel. He told reporters on Friday:
He has to do more. Whatever was done is not sufficient. We need all of us to do more to stop this crime against humanity.
Updated
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has said Hamas has “taken the entire population of Gaza hostage” during a visit to Israel for talks with her Israeli counterpart, Eli Cohen.
“Hamas is now barricading itself behind more innocent people and is using them as a shield in Gaza,” Baerbock said during a news conference.
Their tunnels, their weapons depots and command centres are deliberately located in residential buildings, supermarkets and universities. Maybe even in hospitals.
Updated
Violent exchanges between Palestinians and Israel Defence Forces (IDF), as well as Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, were reported near Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah by early Friday afternoon. It was not immediately clear how many people were involved, whether live fire had been used, and whether anyone had been injured or killed.
Jerusalem, often a flashpoint for violence on Fridays, the Muslim holy day, had expected an influx of worshippers for this week’s most important prayer session at the flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound following six days of punishing airstrikes on Gaza, a tiny Palestinian enclave home to 2.3 million people.
Turnout was low, however, after the Jordanian Waqf, that administers the complex’s Muslim holy sites, said that Israel had banned access to Palestinians under the age of 60, and the Beyadenu Temple Mount Movement, an extremist Jewish group, threatened to prevent Muslim worshippers from entering the area. Israeli media reported that more than 2,500 officers and volunteers were patrolling the Old City and its vicinity.
Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli border police were also reported inside the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, and in Wadi Joz, a Palestinian neighbourhood just to the north of the dense 1 sq km maze of narrow streets and alleyways.
Updated
Violence between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces has erupted in several areas of occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In the West Bank there were calls for marches across several big towns and cities, but in the chaos across the region, details on what under other circumstances would be described as major incidents were hard to follow. At least 11 Palestinians were shot and killed in the West Bank over the course of the day, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Khaled Mashal, the former leader of Hamas, called for a “global day of rage” in support of Palestinians, demanding governments and people across the Middle East to protest.
“Tribes of Jordan, sons of Jordan, brothers and sisters of Jordan … This is a moment of truth and the borders are close to you, you all know your responsibility,” he said. The Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that thousands gathered in the Jordanian capital, Amman, but did not spread further after a ban on protest near the border areas with the West Bank.
Updated
Summary
It’s nearly 8.30pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s where things stand:
Israeli troops carried out local raids over the past day in the Gaza Strip, searching for hostages and collecting evidence to find people taken by Hamas, the Israel Defence Forces said on Friday.
Thousands of Palestinians have begun fleeing their homes and moving south after Israel’s military delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people earlier on Friday ahead of a feared ground offensive. The UN said it was told by the Israeli military that about 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours. Hamas urged people to stay put and defy the Israeli military order to evacuate homes.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said asking vulnerable patients to evacuate hospitals in Gaza amounted to a “death sentence”, and its director general of the agency called upon Israel to reverse its decision to order an evacuation.
The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said early on Friday that more than 400,000 people had fled their homes in the Gaza Strip. It said 23 aid workers had been killed since the start of Israeli retaliatory strikes in response to the Hamas attack on Saturday.
At least 1,799 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza from Israeli strikes, including 583 children and 351 women, according to Gaza’s health ministry on Friday. Eleven Palestinians were shot and killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces on Friday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Hamas’s armed wing, Al Qassam Brigades, said in a statement that 13 captives were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza in the last 24 hours. The statement said six of the hostages were killed in strikes on two separate locations in the northern district and a further seven died in strikes on three locations in the Gaza district.
It remains unclear how many Israeli hostages Hamas took when it carried out its incursion into Israel’s territory on Saturday. 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, but more than 100 are believed to have been taken. The most recent official death toll from Israel stands at 1,300.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Israel needs to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip through Egypt’s Rafah crossing after a first plane carrying Turkish aid arrived in Egypt.
Israel Defense Forces ruled out a suspected armed infiltration near the Lebanese border, after warning residents of the village of Hanita earlier on Friday to hole up at home and lock doors.
A journalist has been killed and six others injured after an Israeli shell landed in a gathering of international journalists covering clashes on the border in south Lebanon on Friday. Reuters confirmed that its videographer Issam Abdallah was killed.
The European parliament president, Roberta Metsola, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, arrived in Israel on Friday. The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, also confirmed that he arrived in Israel. The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, has also arrived in the country for high-level meetings.
Israel’s military denied a report by Human Rights Watch saying that it had used white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon this week. HRW said the use of such weapons put civilians at risk of serious and long-term injury.
The UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, said the UK supported the decision of the IDF to give advance notice that it is intended to mount an attack. Pressed to say whether the UK government supported the specific order giving more than 1 million people in Gaza 24 hours to leave their homes, Shapps said: “The UK government supports both the right of Israel to defend itself in this way, and that Israel is providing advance warning of military action so people can move themselves out of the way. It’s absolutely right that happens.”
A crackdown on pro-Palestinian rallies in France and Germany has prompted concerns that officials are curtailing freedom of expression in a bid to contain the spillover of tensions from the conflict.
Updated
Qatar is committed to fulfilling an agreement with Iran and the US to unfreeze $6bn of Iranian funds that were part of a prisoner swap deal between the Biden administration and Tehran last month, the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said.
The $6bn will be used in accordance with the agreement struck with US and Iran, he added at a joint press conference with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken.
His remarks came amid reports that the Biden administration has persuaded Qatar to withhold the funds in breach of a previous agreement following the attack by Hamas on Israel.
CBS reported that the US had reached a “quiet understanding” with Qatar – which played a mediating role in last month’s agreement that saw the release of five Americans imprisoned by Iran – to keep the funds locked in a bank account specially set up in the Gulf kingdom.
Updated
Janez Lenarčič, the European commissioner for crisis management, has spoken out about the need to respect international humanitarian law.
Israel “has the right to defend itself”, he said, but “this right must be exercised in compliance with” international humanitarian law.
“Civilians must be protected,” he said, adding that “critical infrastructure must not be targeted” and “safe and unrestricted access for humanitarian aid must be ensured”.
🇮🇱 has the right to defend itself and protect its people from Hamas’s terror.
— Janez Lenarčič (@JanezLenarcic) October 13, 2023
This right must be exercised in compliance with #IHL.
Civilians must be protected.
Critical infrastructure must not be targeted.
Safe and unrestricted access for humanitarian aid must be ensured. https://t.co/Qon0PIxt7e
His comments come as the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, visits Israel, where she said: “I know that how Israel responds will show that it is a democracy.”
Updated
Gaza death toll rises to 1,799, including 583 children
At least 1,799 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza from Israeli strikes, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Among the dead were 583 children and 351 women, the ministry said in its latest update on Friday.
An additional 6,388 had been wounded since Saturday, it said.
Updated
Israeli shelling along Lebanon border kills 1 journalist, wounds 6
A journalist has been killed and six others injured after an Israeli shell landed in a gathering of international journalists covering clashes on the border in south Lebanon.
Al Jazeera said two of its employees, Elie Brakhya and reporter Carmen Joukhadar, were among the wounded.
The shelling occurred during an exchange of fire along the Lebanon-Israel border between Israeli troops and members of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group.
An AP photographer at the scene saw the body of the dead journalist and the six who were wounded, some of whom were rushed to hospitals in ambulances, the news agency reported.
Updated
A Reuters videographer has been killed while working in southern Lebanon, the news agency said.
A Reuters statement said:
We are deeply saddened to learn that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed.
Abdallah was part of the agency’s crew in southern Lebanon “who was providing a live video signal”, Reuters said.
Updated
Israeli troops conducted 'localised raids' in Gaza, says IDF
Israeli troops carried out “localised raids” over the past 24 hours in the Gaza Strip, Israel Defence Forces said, ahead of an expected ground offensive on the Palestinian enclave.
A statement from the IDF said:
Over the past 24 hours, IDF forces carried out localised raids inside the territory of the Gaza Strip to complete the effort to cleanse the area of terrorists and weaponry.
During these operations, there was also an effort to locate missing persons.
Updated
We reported earlier that the Israeli military warned residents of a village of Hanita, near the Lebanese border, that a suspected armed infiltration was under way.
Israel Defence Forces have now ruled out that any incursion had occurred. Residents who had been instructed to hole up at home and lock doors and windows have been told they can again go outdoors.
Updated
ICRC: Hamas attack does not justify 'limitless destruction' of Gaza
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called for the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas during the attacks on Israel last weekend, but said those attacks “cannot in turn justify the limitless destruction of Gaza”.
In a statement on Friday, the ICRC said “nothing can justify the horrific attacks Israel suffered”.
Our hearts go out to people who lost family members or are worried sick about loved ones taken hostage. We reiterate our call for their immediate release and stand ready to conduct humanitarian visits.
But those attacks cannot in turn justify the limitless destruction of Gaza. The parties must not neglect their legal obligations regarding the methods and means used to wage war.
Israel’s army for 1.1million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate within 24 hours, along with the blockade of Gaza denying them food, water, and electricity “are not compatible with international humanitarian law”, the ICRC said.
Gazans had “nowhere safe to go” and it was “impossible” for them to know which areas “will next face attack”, it said.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Gaza City, where thousands are fleeing after Israel’s military told more than a million people to evacuate toward the southern part of the besieged territory ahead of an expected ground invasion.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza have been complicated by the fact that Hamas continues to use innocent civilians “as human shields”.
Hamas had also reportedly blocked roads to prevent Palestinians from moving south, Blinken said.
Hamas has called on Palestinians to stay in their homes after Israel issued sweeping evacuation orders in Gaza.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has been speaking in a press conference during his visit to Qatar.
Blinken said the US is working “intensively” together with its allies to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. He said he met the families of some of these hostages on Thursday. “Their anguish is profound,” he said.
The US would ensure Israeli has “what it needs” to defend itself as it continued to respond to the devastating attack by Hamas on the weekend, he said.
The US was also in constant communication with Israeli officials and international organisations such as the UN agencies and ICRC to get aid to civilians in Gaza, he said.
We continue to discuss with Israel the importance of taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians. We recognise that many Palestinian families in Gaza are suffering through no fault of their own, and that Palestinian civilians have lost their lives.
Updated
Speaking alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said during a visit to Israel that the EU stands with the country.
“This is the time to stand in solidarity with Israel and its people,” the commission chief said.
“Let me also be very clear that Hamas alone is responsible for what is happening,” Von der Leyen said, adding:
Hamas’ acts have nothing to do with the legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people. On the contrary, the horror that Hamas has unleashed is only bringing more suffering upon innocent Palestinians. They are threatened, too.
The commission president also said: “I know that how Israel responds will show that it is a democracy.”
Von der Leyen said she is in touch with the leaders of Jordan and Egypt, and also addressed the issue of antisemitism and hate speech.
“We are deeply concerned by the spread of online hate speech and fake news, which are proliferating at worrying speed and are even difficult to keep track of,” she said, noting that “we are already in contact with social media platforms to remind them of their obligations”.
This is the moment for unity.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) October 13, 2023
This is the moment to join forces against terror.
And Israel can count on the EU ↓
https://t.co/heCYSUsiAe
Updated
Thousands flee to southern Gaza ahead of possible Israeli ground assault
Thousands of Palestinians have begun fleeing their home towns and moving south after an evacuation order for almost half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million population, issued by the Israeli army early this morning.
As of Friday, more than 423,000 people had already been displaced from their homes, the UN said, with about 60% of that number seeking shelter from devastating Israeli bombing in UN-run schools and other official buildings.
Some packed into cars and trucks, and others were walking to the specified Gaza River boundary, even if they had no idea where to go, or where their families were going to sleep tonight. Airstrikes have continued to pound the tiny enclave, and Rafah – the civilian crossing into Egypt – remains shut.
Updated
The former Israeli ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, in an interview with the BBC, spoke about the order for more than 1 million people in and around Gaza City to move to the south of the territory within the next 24 hours,. He said:
I think we want them to leave as quickly as is possible and I am not sure I can be more specific than that. Obviously we do not see the civilian population of Gaza as our targets.
We want to hit Hamas and want to hit Hamas hard but we urge the people who are in the vicinity of future combat zones to evacuate as quickly as possible.
He said if they did not, they may be caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas.
The BBC also reported that the IDF have said they are aware this may take longer than 24 hours.
Updated
Ziad, a 35-year-old Palestinian, recounts the past few days in Gaza, moving with his sister from neighbour to neighbour, trying to stay alive – and save his family’s goldfish:
Monday 9 October
1am Complete darkness, no electricity, where did I put the water bottle? I really need something to drink.
I can hear the neighbours outside arguing. Apparently, one of them still has some bread and was offering it to the other, who was too embarrassed to take it, and offered to pay him for it. Gazans are weird. We would offer you the last bit of food we have. Some bakeries are still working, but everyone is terrified of going into the street to buy essentials. No place is safe, no one is safe.
2:30am I find the bottle of water.
A message from a friend abroad asking if I had enough sleep. I tell her that the bombing keeps us awake. She says how sorry she is, and then shares an idea. I am 100% sure she thinks it is helpful. “Why don’t you wear earpieces? You can sleep then.”
People sympathise, but they cannot relate to what you are going through. My friend does not understand that bombing is not about the noises, it is about the possibility of sudden death. Without saying goodbye to our loved ones, before completing the projects we started, before hugging those we care about and asking for their forgiveness. She knows, but definitely doesn’t realise, the severity of the situation. I choose not to respond to the text.
Israel should take every step to avoid harming civilians in an offensive against Gaza, Rishi Sunak has said, amid pressure over balancing support for the response to Hamas’s attacks with concern about a potential humanitarian catastrophe.
“Of course we should always – and we are always – having concerns of civilians paramount in our minds,” Sunak told broadcasters in Gotland, Sweden, where he was attending a military summit of northern European nations.
Earlier, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, defended Israel’s order for more than 1 million people in and around Gaza City to move to the south of the territory for their safety within the next 24 hours, something the UN said was impossible “without devastating humanitarian consequences”.
However, Shapps would not say whether he thought it feasible for nearly half the entire population of Gaza to move within this timescale, saying only that Israel had a right to take action after the massacre of more than 1,300 people in Israel by Hamas on Saturday.
Charities have urged Israel to reconsider its evacuation order, with the UK aid group Oxfam calling it “both utterly inhumane and impossible”.
Labour has taken a similar line, saying in general terms that Israel should abide by international law, but refusing to condemn specific actions, such as cutting water and food supplies to Gaza.
This has prompted some pushback, with two Oxford city councillors, Shaista Aziz and Amar Latif, resigning the Labour whip over what Aziz called the party leadership’s refusal to condemn “collective punishment” for people in Gaza.
Lubaba Khalid, the black, Asian and minority ethnic officer for Young Labour, said she had resigned from the role, calling Labour “no longer a safe space for Palestinians and Muslims”.
Updated
Putin: Israel is replying 'with quite cruel methods' to Hamas attack
Russian president Vladimir Putin has criticised Israel for using “cruel methods” in its response to the Hamas attacks at the weekend.
Speaking during a visit to Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, Reuters reports Putin said Russia understood the “logic of events” in the Middle East, but “Israel is replying on a large scale and also with quite cruel methods”.
“In my view it is unacceptable,” Putin said. “More than 2 million people live there. Far from all of them support Hamas by the way, far from all. But all of them have to suffer, including women and children. Of course it’s hard for anyone to agree with this.”
Earlier, Putin said that an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would lead to an “absolutely unacceptable” number of civilian casualties, and he reiterated his call for the crisis to be resolved by negotiation, saying Russia could help because it has relations with both sides.
The UN has recorded 27,149 civilian casualties, including 9,614 deaths, inside Ukraine since Putin’s Russia launched its full-scale invasion of in February 2022.
Updated
Eleven Palestinians were shot and killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces on Friday, Reuters reports the Palestinian health ministry said.
Human Rights Watch accused Israel yesterday of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, saying the use of such weapons put civilians at risk of serious and long-term injury.
Reuters reports the Israeli military has denied it today in a statement, saying: “The current accusation made against the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) regarding the use of white phosphorus in Gaza is unequivocally false. The IDF has not deployed the use of the such munitions.”
Reuters notes it was not immediately clear whether the statement also applied to Lebanon.
Human Rights Watch had said it had “verified videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza on 10 October and 11 October, respectively, showing multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border, and interviewed two people who described an attack in Gaza.”
Updated
Amitabh Behar, the Oxfam international executive director, has been critical of the Israeli military order for citizens of Gaza to evacuate. In a statement, he said:
The world can see that this evacuation order is both utterly inhumane and impossible; the Israeli government must rescind it immediately. We implore the international community to use its utmost influence to intervene – there are hospitals full of patients, women, children and elderly people who cannot move. Even for those who could move, there is no food, no water and little shelter. This must be stopped.
The organisation has 33 people on the ground in Gaza, all of whom are accounted for, but Behar highlighted their plight, saying:
Oxfam staff are sending us terrifying messages; they are sheltering in their homes or displaced with their extended families, some trying to find safety in hospitals that have already been damaged by airstrikes. They are in darkness, pleading to know what is happening. One last message received told us “Please pray for us, and forgive us if we don’t end up making it through this tough time.”
It is incumbent upon Israel to obey international humanitarian law; they must distinguish between military and civilian targets. We call on it to immediately recall this order and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Updated
There are some fast-paced developments coming to us across the news wires, with Reuters reporting that the Israeli military has warned residents of a village near the Lebanese border to hole up at home and lock doors and windows, saying a suspected armed infiltration was under way.
The alert took place in Hanita, 500 metres from the border and opposite the Lebanese community of Aalma El-Chaeb.
The military statement said there had been an explosion at the adjacent border fence, which was lightly damaged. At the same time there is an alert that Israeli shelling has hit a Lebanese army observation post in Dhayra, which is across the border.
Updated
Reuters has a quick snap that air alert sirens are sounding in Tel Aviv and neighbouring cities.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the European parliament president, Roberta Metsola, have visited Kfar Azza.
“The horror of what happened here is unspeakable,” Von der Leyen said.
Metsola said: “Hamas are terrorists. They don’t represent the aspirations of the Palestinian people, they hinder it.”
We were in Kfar Azza.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) October 13, 2023
One of the epicenters of the atrocities committed by Hamas last weekend.
The horror of what happened here is unspeakable.
We mourn with the families of the victims. pic.twitter.com/Sy0AXhcBM3
In Kfar Azza, at the scene of the atrocity and murder.
— Roberta Metsola (@EP_President) October 13, 2023
The unspeakable acts committed by Hamas here will go down in global infamy.
Hamas are terrorists. They don't represent the aspirations of the Palestinian people, they hinder it.
Their brutality can never be justified. pic.twitter.com/TDepHzMdLN
Updated
Israel’s public radio is reporting that residents of Hanita in northern Israel have been asked to stay indoors due to fears that militants have crossed into Israeli territory.
The death toll in Gaza has risen to 1,799, with 6,388 wounded, Gaza’s health ministry said today, Reuters reported.
The Dutch leader, Mark Rutte, said that he spoke with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
“It is of great importance that the innocent residents of Gaza can obtain food, water and medical care,” Rutte said, adding: “Israel has every right to defend itself and take action, with due regard for proportionality and international humanitarian law, to counter the appalling terror inflicted by Hamas.”
📞: This afternoon I spoke with @KingAbdullahII of Jordan (@RHCJO) about ongoing developments in neighbouring Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. We discussed the need to prevent regional escalation and the need for humanitarian access to Gaza.
— Mark Rutte (@MinPres) October 13, 2023
It is of great importance that the…
Updated
Erdoğan calls for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza, Turkey calls Israeli military evacuation order 'unacceptable'
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said Israel needs to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip through Egypt’s Rafah crossing after a first plane carrying Turkish aid arrived in Egypt. Turkey also described the Israeli military order to evacuate the north of the Gaza Strip as “unacceptable”.
Reuters reports that in a speech in Istanbul, Erdoğan said Turkey would continue sending aid to Gaza in cooperation with Egypt, and that Turkish authorities were continuing contacts to free hostages and find a solution to the crisis.
Turkey’s foreign ministry said Israel’s call for people in Gaza to move south within 24 hours ahead of its planned ground offensive was “completely unacceptable”, inhumane and a violation of international law.
“Forcing the 2.5 million people of Gaza – who have been subjected to indiscriminate bombing for days and who have been deprived of electricity, water and food – to migrate in an extremely limited area is a clear violation of international law and has no place in humanity,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said.
“We expect Israel to immediately reverse this grave mistake and urgently halt its merciless … acts against civilians in Gaza,” Reuters reports it said in a statement.
Updated
Earlier I mentioned that UK prime minister Rishi Sunak had criticised a “disgusting” rise in antisemitic incidents in the UK [See 13.22 BST]. My colleague Vikram Dodd has more:
The Metropolitan police, which covers London, say they have recorded a huge increase in suspected antisemitic offences compared with this time last year.
Antisemitic incidents reported to police, which may include non-crimes, increased sevenfold year to year, from 14 in the 30 September-13 October period last year, to 105.
Met deputy assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor said police had asked the attorney general, the government’s top law officer, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which authorises criminal prosecutions in England and Wales, for greater clarity about what may constitute an offence.
He said displays of Palestinian flags were not an automatic offence, with context being key. “A lot of it depends on the circumstances,” Taylor said. London tends to be the centre for protest and demonstrations in the UK.
Jewish groups point out that after the massacre in Israel last weekend, displaying a Palestinian flag in central London may be fine, but doing the same in Jewish area may be an act meant to offend, intimidate and show support for the murder of civilians in Israel.
Taylor reiterated that support for the massacre by Hamas, or for the group, would be an offence and that the group is banned under terrorism laws and so displaying its flag or chanting support for it would be a criminal offence.
Rallies and protests are planned this weekend in the British capital including one starting at midday on Saturday in central London.
Taylor said there was “no specific intelligence” of threats to Jewish schools in London, some of which have decided to close.
Taylor said police were investigating claims that posters put up around Camden, north London, appealing for information about those still missing after last weekend’s massacre were torn down. Other incidents include verbal abuse and the alleged playing of German military music, which was meant to intimidate Jewish people.
Updated
Aid group says Israeli plan to relocate 1.2 million Palestinians is a war crime
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which works in Israel and Palestine, has described Israel’s demand that 1.2 million people in Gaza leave their homes as a war crime.
Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, released the below statement
“The Israeli military demand that 1.2 million civilians in northern Gaza relocate to its south within 24 hours, absent of any guarantees of safety or return, would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer. It must be reversed.
“The collective punishment of countless civilians, among them children, women, and the elderly, in retaliation for acts of horrible terror undertaken by armed men is illegal under international law.
“My colleagues inside Gaza confirm that there are countless people in the northern parts who have no means to safely relocate under the constant barrage of fire.
“The loss of civilian lives caused by deliberate or indiscriminate use of force is a war crime for which the perpetrators will have to answer. We fear that Israel may claim that Palestinians who could not flee northern Gaza can be erroneously held as directly participating in hostilities, and targeted.
“The United States, the UK, the European Union, and other Western and Arab Nations who have influence over the Israeli political and military leadership must demand that the illegal and impossible order to relocate is immediately rescinded.”
The Israeli military claims the order to Palestinians “is for your own safety”.
Updated
Vatican offers to mediate on hostage releases, calls for 'proportionality' in Israeli response
The Vatican has offered to mediate between Israel and Hamas militants for the release of hostages in Gaza and to facilitate peace, and said any Israeli response to the “inhuman” Hamas attack must respect “proportionality”.
Reuters reports in an interview with Vatican media, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said the Holy See remains firmly convinced that a two-state solution is the only way to guarantee lasting peace in the region.
“The release of Israeli hostages and the protection of innocent lives in Gaza are at the heart of the problem created by Hamas’ attack and the response of the Israeli army,” said Parolin, who is the pope’s top diplomat.
“They are at the centre of all of our concerns: the pope and the entire international community. The Holy See is ready for any necessary mediation, as always,” he said.
Parolin added: “It is necessary to regain a sense of reason, abandon the blind logic of hatred, and reject violence as a solution. It is the right of those who are attacked to defend themselves, but even legitimate defence must respect the parameter of proportionality.”
The Israeli embassy to the Vatican said Parolin paid a visit to the mission on Friday morning to express his “deep sentiments of pain and solidarity” over the attacks.
Updated
Elizabeth El-Nakla, mother of the Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf wife, Nadia, has made a tearful appeal on social media from Gaza, where she is stranded with her husband after travelling there to visit family.
Speaking from Deir al-Balah, south of Gaza City, Nakla, who said the video would be her last, said: “Everybody from Gaza is moving towards where we are. One million people. No food. No Water. Where are they going to put them?”
Updated
Israel’s economy ministry on Friday said dozens of imported products would be exempt from inspection and other approvals to facilitate their entry into Israel and help to prevent shortages during the war with Hamas.
The exemption from official approval does not exempt the importer from the obligation to comply with the requirements of the standard, but only from the obligation to produce a standard approval upon importation, Reuters reports it added.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino has written to the heads of the Israel and Palestine football associations, offering his condolences over the “horrendous violence” in the past week, Reuters reports.
Israel’s Euro 2024 qualifying matches against Switzerland and Kosovo, scheduled to be played this week and next, have both been postponed after the outbreak of war, and the Palestine football team were forced to pull out of a friendly tournament in Malaysia as the team were unable to travel.
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said on Friday there had been a “disgusting” rise in antisemitic incidents in the UK since last weekend’s attack on Israel by Hamas.
“There’s been a quite frankly disgusting rise in antisemitic incidents over the past few days, that’s not right,” Reuters reports Sunak told the media.
“We will absolutely not tolerate people inciting hatred or violence or racist activity, intimidating or threatening behaviour will not be tolerated. It will be met with the full force of the law.”
London’s Metropolitan police said the number of antisemitic incidents had risen to 105 in the two weeks 30 September-13 October, compared with 14 incidents in the same period a year ago.
Updated
The US Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers will travel to Israel this weekend to meet with its new unity government and discuss US assistance, a spokesperson for Schumer has told Reuters.
Updated
A staffer at the Israeli embassy in Beijing was stabbed in an attack on Friday. Israel’s foreign ministry said the man was in a stable condition and that an investigation was under way. It is unclear if he was targeted specifically for working at the embassy.
In a graphic video posted on social media, a man in a white top and sunglasses can be seen stabbing a man several times in the street, before walking away.
In a separate video, the victim is seen receiving first aid and telling passersby he is from the Israeli embassy. The attack appeared to take place in Xinyuanli, an upmarket area of Beijing near the embassy district.
Earlier on Friday, Israel’s foreign ministry expressed “deep disappointment” with China’s lack of condemnation of Hamas’s attack on Israel.
China has historically supported the Palestinian cause, but in recent months Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for closer ties with Beijing. Since the latest conflict broke out, China has called for a two-state solution but has declined to condemn Hamas.
Updated
Reuters has a quick snap that sirens are again sounding in northern Israel warning of a possible rocket attack.
On that topic of whether Israel’s allies are supporting airstrikes that are knowingly inflicting civilian casualties, and whether the Gaza blockade is legal, my colleague Andrew Sparrow has this report on a similar line of questioning for UK prime minister Rishi Sunak:
Rishi Sunak has recorded a clip for broadcasters from the JEF meeting in Sweden. Echoing the line used by defence secretary Grant Shapps this morning [See 9.12 BST], he offered more or less unequivocal support for Israel. He downplayed the concerns about the legality of the Israeli operation, while saying the UK was aligned with Washington in wanting Israel to protect civilians as far as possible.
Asked if he had any sympathy for innocent Palestinians, “many of whom have no affiliation to Hamas whatsoever who may lose their lives because of this”, and if he had discussed their plight when he spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM last night, Sunak replied:
We’re monitoring the situation very closely. We have formally updated our travel advice. And of course humanitarian concerns, and protecting the civilians, are very important. And this is something that I spoke to prime minister Netanyahu about late last night. It’s also why we’ve moved Royal Navy assets into the Mediterranean over the coming week. They will be able to provide humanitarian support if required.
The reporter then put it to Sunak that, by cutting off supplies of food and water to Gaza, Israel is arguably committing a war crime. Asked if the UK was OK with that, if it would be “providing full moral support regardless”, Sunak replied:
It’s important to remember why we’re in this very difficult situation, and that’s because Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation, committed an appalling act and barbarity and has killed over 1,000 Israelis, including women and children, in scenes that are quite frankly horrific and that we haven’t seen in decades.
It is unequivocally wrong, and there is no moral ambiguity about that.
Israel has every right to defend itself and take the action that is necessary to ensure the protection and security of its citizens and that nothing like this can ever happen again.
But when asked again if the UK would support Israel, “even if some of those actions are not in line with international law”, Sunak replied:
Of course, we should always and we are always having concerns of civilians paramount in our mind, something I’ve discussed with prime minister Netanyahu myself.
And I’m aligned with what the secretary of state from the US and the president have said, that, of course, Israel should take every possible precaution to protect civilians as they exercise their rightful ability to defend themselves.
Updated
The final question in the joint press conference with the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and teh US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, was asking about some confusion over when Israel’s military deadline for Gaza evacuations would pass, and whether it has been extended.
Gallant did not give a particularly clear answer on the timing, instead stressing the nature of the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, and saying that Hamas could not be allowed to live.
Austin at a couple of points during the conference seemed to be emphasising that the US did not condone the targeting of civilians in Israel’s response. He specifically invoked the laws of war as something that separated democracies from other combatants.
But, pressed in a question about how Israel could attack Hamas in Gaza without inevitably striking civilians, and where the moral responsibility would lie, he essentially said the details of the operation were up to Israel.
Updated
Ashifa Kassam is the Guardian’s community affairs correspondent for Europe. She reports:
A crackdown on pro-Palestinian rallies in France and Germany has prompted concerns that officials are curtailing freedom of expression in a bid to contain the spillover of tensions from the conflict.
On Thursday France said it would ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations, citing concerns that the gatherings could disturb the public order, as the country grapples with a rise in antisemitic attacks.
Soon after hundreds of people poured into central Paris as part of an unauthorised rally in support of the Palestinian people. Police broke up the demonstration using teargas and water cannon, arresting 10 people.
The decision to ban the rallies was decried by pro-Palestinian associations and people across France.
“We live in a country of civil law, a country where we have the right to take a stand and to demonstrate,” Charlotte Vautier, 29, an employee at a non-profit who attended the Paris rally, told Reuters. “(It is unfair) to forbid for one side and to authorise for the other.”
France’s National Collective for a Fair and Lasting Peace between Palestinians and Israelis said it ‘’denounces this threat to freedom of expression”.
The sentiment was echoed in Berlin, where a heavy police presence was used to counter plans for a pro-Palestinian rally on Thursday.
“It’s not because we’re all pro-Palestine (and) with Hamas, that’s not what we’re saying,” one man told broadcaster DW. “We want to have the freedom of speech and be able to send our solidarity to the people who cannot speak for themselves.”
Russia urges citizens to leave Israel with 12 missing after Hamas attack
While Lloyd Austin and Yoav Gallant are answering questions, there is some news coming in via the RIA agency in Russia, that the Russian embassy in Israel recommends that its citizens leave on scheduled flights.
Reuters reports RIA cited the embassy as saying that 12 Russian citizens were missing in connection with the Israel-Palestinian conflict and that the number of Russians killed as a result of the violence was continuing to grow, without elaborating further.
Updated
“Hamas attacked at a time of global challenge, but the US is the most powerful country in the world,” the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, says. He says the US is able to project power in multiple theatres. “The US can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he says, saying the US will still support Ukraine as well as Israel.
“The US has Israel’s back, and that is not negotiable, and it never will be.”
He finishes by saying “Shabbat Shalom”
The pair are taking questions now.
Updated
“Democracies like ours are stronger and more secure when we uphold the laws of war,” Lloyd Austin says.
Citing phone calls between Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu, he makes a point that democracies do not target civilians.
“This is no time for neutrality, or false equivalence, or for excuses for the inexcusable. There is never any justification for terroism, and that is especially true after this rampage by Hamas,” Lloyd Austin says.
“Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people,” he says.
“The world has just witnessed a great evil,” he says, comparing Hamas to Islamic state.
“Make no mistake. The US will make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself,” he says.
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, is speaking now, opening by saying: “It is good to be back in Israel even during such terrible days.”
Austin says he is there in person “to make something crystal clear – America’s support for Israel is iron-clad”.
He says he is there in solidarity with the families in the “waking nightmare” of not knowing the fate of their relatives.
He says Israel is a small country, and the intimacy of Israeli society deepens the intimacy of their grief.
Updated
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said the US deployment of assets in the region has sent a strong message. He has described Hamas as “the Isis of Gaza”, and says they are on the Iranian payroll.
“Murder, rape, kidnapping, this is what we face in this war,” he says. He says it is a war on Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, and a war for freedom and common values.
“And we are on the frontline” Gallant says. “We will keep fighting and we will win this war, we will prevail.”
Gallant is now saying a few words in Hebrew.
Updated
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, and his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant are holding a joint press conference. We’ll bring you any key lines that emerge.
Updated
Hezbollah’s deputy chief, sheikh Naim Qassem, said today that the group was “ready” and would “contribute” to confrontations against Israel according to its own plan, Reuters reported.
Updated
The Israel Defence Forces are prohibiting civilians from entering an area near Metula, a town on Israel’s border with Lebanon.
בעקבות הערכת המצב, הוחלט להוציא צו שטח צבאי סגור במרחב הסמוך ליישוב מטולה.
— דובר צה״ל דניאל הגרי - Daniel Hagari (@IDFSpokesperson) October 13, 2023
צה"ל מבהיר כי כניסה למרחב אסורה בהחלט ומבקש מהציבור לגלות עירנות ולא להיכנס למרחב.
Updated
The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, is in the southern Israeli city of Netivot, where he met with his counterpart, Eli Cohen.
A Netivot ho incontrato il Ministro degli Esteri🇮🇱 @elicoh1. Hamas è come l'Isis, uccide come i nazisti. Sono terroristi assassini e vanno fermati. Tutta la mia vicinanza al popolo d'Israele, in particolare alle famiglie che hanno perso i loro cari e che ho potuto abbracciare. pic.twitter.com/23L3oOuXTb
— Antonio Tajani (@Antonio_Tajani) October 13, 2023
Updated
There are reports of clashes in the Wadi Joz area, north of the Old City in Jerusalem. Israeli security forces had been mounting a significant operation in the city as Friday prayer approached.
More details soon …
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
Hamas has urged people to stay put and defy an Israeli military order to evacuate homes. Eyad al-Bozom, spokesperson for the Hamas interior ministry, said. “We tell the people of northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes, and your places. By carrying out massacres against the civilians, the occupation wants to displace us once again from our land. The 1948 displacement will not happen. We will die and we will not leave.”
Israel’s military had delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people earlier on Friday ahead of a feared ground offensive.
The order sent panic through civilians and aid workers already struggling under Israeli airstrikes and a blockade. The UN said it was told by the Israeli military that about 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours.
The UN statement said that they had been informed that the “entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza” must evacuate to southern Gaza. Wadi Gaza is the river that divides Gaza roughly into north and south. The order applied to the Gaza residents sheltering in UN facilities, and to UN staff.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said asking vulnerable patients to evacuate hospitals in Gaza amounted to a “death sentence”, and the director general of the agency called upon Israel to reverse its decision to order an evacuation. “There are severely ill people whose injuries mean their only chances of survival is being on life support, such as mechanical ventilators,” Reuters reports WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said. “So moving those people is a death sentence. Asking health workers to do so is beyond cruel.” The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said hospitals in Gaza are at “breaking point”.
Hamas has claimed to have launched 150 rockets towards the city of Ashkelon in Israel “in response to the displacement and targeting of civilians”.
Hamas’s armed wing, Al Qassam Brigades, said in a statement that 13 captives were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza in the last 24 hours. The statement said six of the hostages were killed in strikes on two separate locations in the northern district and a further seven died in strikes on three locations in the Gaza district.
It remains unclear how many Israeli hostages Hamas took when it carried out its incursion into Israel’s territory on Saturday. 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, but more than 100 are believed to have been taken. The most recent official death toll from Israel stands at 1,300.
The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said early on Friday that more than 400,000 people had fled their homes in the Gaza Strip. It said 23 aid workers had been killed since the start of Israeli retaliatory strikes in response to the Hamas attack on Saturday.
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, it said. A further 6,612 were wounded in Israeli airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave, the ministry said.
Grant Shapps, UK defence secretary, said the UK supported the decision of the IDF to give advance notice that it is intended to mount an attack. Pressed to say whether the UK government supported the specific order giving more than 1 million people in Gaza 24 hours to leave their homes, Shaps said: “The UK government supports both the right of Israel to defend itself in this way, and that Israel is providing advance warning of military action so people can move themselves out of the way. It’s absolutely right that happens.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, warned that if Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip did not stop immediately, the violence could spread to other parts of the Middle East. Visiting Beirutm he said: “America cannot send weapons and bombs to kill women, children and civilians in Gaza and at the same time call on all sides for self-restraint.”
Jordan’s King Abdullah II has met the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken. In a message posted to social media, the king warned against “any attempt to forcibly displace Palestinians from all Palestinian territories or cause their internal displacement”, and called for the prevention of a “spillover” of the crisis into neighbouring countries.
The European parliament president, Roberta Metsola, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, have landed in Israel. The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has also confirmed that he has arrived in Israel. The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, has also arrived in the country for high-level meetings.
The UK’s finance minister, chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt, has said the UK will do “everything we can” to support Israel in its fight against Hamas. He said: “This is the most appalling, brutal, murderous terrorism that I think I can remember seeing in my adult lifetime. It is absolutely gruelling looking at those pictures. And I think we have to make sure as a world that we are absolutely united in our condemnation of what has happened.”
Updated
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires showing Israeli security measures taking place in Jerusalem as residents headed to Friday prayers.
Updated
Iran’s foreign minister warned Friday that if Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip did not stop immediately, the violence could spread to other parts of the Middle East.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke to reporters in Beirut after a meeting with his Lebanese counterpart, during which the two officials called for an end to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. He also met with the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as the caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati and the speaker of parliament.
“What is funny is that at a time when America is calling on parties for self-restraint, it is allowing the criminals in the fake Zionist entity to kill women, children and civilians in Gaza,” Amir-Abdollahian said.
AP reports he warned that “if these organised war crimes that are committed by the Zionist entity don’t stop immediately, then we can imagine any possibility”.
Amir-Abdollahian said: “America cannot send weapons and bombs to kill women, children and civilians in Gaza and at the same time call on all sides for self-restraint.”
After meeting Mikati, Amir-Abdollahian said: “What is important for us is security in Lebanon and how to preserve calm.”
Amir-Abdollahian visited Baghdad before arriving in Beirut, and later today he is scheduled to travel to the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Updated
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has posted a video clip of her arrival in Israel.
I have arrived in Israel with @EP_President to express our solidarity with the Israeli people in the wake of the horrific Hamas terrorist attack. pic.twitter.com/4ktjwabx14
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) October 13, 2023
Updated
European parliament president Roberta Metsola and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen have landed in Israel.
Metsola, a centre-right Maltese politician, is expected to use her visit to call for the immediate release of hostages, while also asking for the creation of a humanitarian corridor and the safeguarding of civilian infrastructure in Gaza.
“We are here with a message of solidarity after the worst terror attack Israel has endured in generations,” the parliament president wrote on social media.
“Terror will not prevail. How we respond matters,” she said, adding: “We can – we must – stop Hamas. And do what we can to mitigate humanitarian consequences.”
Back in Israel.
— Roberta Metsola (@EP_President) October 13, 2023
We are here with a message of solidarity after the worst terror attack #Israel has endured in generations.
Terror will not prevail. How we respond matters.
We can - we must - stop Hamas. And do what we can to mitigate humanitarian consequences.@vonderleyen pic.twitter.com/VxMgnwi0eU
The UK’s finance minister, chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt, has said the UK will do “everything we can” to support Israel in its fight against Hamas.
Speaking to Sky News during his trip to Marrakech, Morocco, for the annual meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund, PA Media reports Hunt said: “Israel has to know that we will do absolutely everything we can and (provide) absolutely everything they need to come to their defence in their hour of need.
“They are an ally of ours, they are a democracy, they share our values and we need to be there for them, just as they would be there for us.”
He added: “This is the most appalling, brutal, murderous terrorism that I think I can remember seeing in my adult lifetime. It is absolutely gruelling looking at those pictures.
“And I think we have to make sure as a world that we are absolutely united in our condemnation of what has happened.
“And I think it reminds us, unfortunately, that all this horror is not something that humanity has put behind us, and we have to think very carefully about that.”
Updated
The European People’s party, Europe’s centre-right political grouping, has issued a statement today underscoring that it stands by Israel and that while it supports continued EU assistance to Palestinians, that must be reviewed.
“We stand by Israel. Our support for Israel will never waiver. It is the sacred responsibility of every state, including Israel, to protect its citizens and defend against terrorism, in line with international law,” it said in the statement.
“We believe that Hamas does not represent or speak for Palestinian people, therefore EU aid must continue. However, it is the responsibility of the EU to carefully review the financial assistance for Palestine and ensure that this funding does not end up in the hands of Hamas or any other terrorist organisation,” it added.
Updated
The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has confirmed that he has arrived in Israel, one of several high-level European visits expected today.
Arrivato in #Israele 🇮🇱
— Antonio Tajani (@Antonio_Tajani) October 13, 2023
Updated
Hamas has urged people everywhere – especially in countries that have borders with Israel – to support the people of Gaza, while calling on Palestinian residents to stay put and defy an Israeli military order to evcuate the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Eyad al-Bozom, spokesperson for the Hamas interior ministry, said:
We tell the people of northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes, and your places. By carrying out massacres against the civilians, the occupation wants to displace us once again from our land. The 1948 displacement will not happen. We will die and we will not leave.
Reuters reports he was addressing a news conference held in Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
The Gaza analyst Talal Okal also spoke to Reuters, describing the Israeli relocation order as an “attempt to push the Palestinian people of Gaza into Nakba”.
“Like they did in 1948 when they pushed people out of historical Palestine by dropping barrels of explosives on their heads, today Israel is repeating this before the eyes of the world and live cameras,” he said.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images from Gaza, Israel and Lebanon.
Updated
The social media account representing Jordan’s King Abdullah II has posted an image of the ruler meeting US secretary of state Antony Blinken.
In the message, it says the king “urges the opening of urgent humanitarian corridors for medical and relief aid to Gaza”, adding that he was “calling for protecting civilians, de-escalating, and ending the war on Gaza”.
His Majesty King Abdullah II, receiving #US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urges opening urgent humanitarian corridors for medical and relief aid to #Gaza, calling for protecting civilians, de-escalating, and ending the war on Gaza#Jordan pic.twitter.com/KUSsvv64VW
— RHC (@RHCJO) October 13, 2023
In a second message, the royal court wrote:
His majesty King Abdullah II warns against any attempt to forcibly displace Palestinians from all Palestinian Territories or cause their internal displacement, calling for preventing a spillover of the crisis into neighbouring countries and the exacerbation of the refugee issue.
Updated
WHO asks Israel to reverse evacuation order, says it amounts to 'death sentence' for vulnerable patients
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said asking vulnerable patients to evacuate hospitals in Gaza amounted to a “death sentence”, and the director general of the agency called upon Israel to reverse its decision to order an evacuation.
WHO said Friday that local health authorities in Gaza had informed it that it was impossible to evacuate vulnerable hospital patients from northern Gaza, after Israel’s military called for civilians to relocate south within 24 hours.
“There are severely ill people whose injuries mean their only chances of survival is being on life support, such as mechanical ventilators,” Reuters reports WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said. “So moving those people is a death sentence. Asking health workers to do so is beyond cruel.”
The WHO director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said that hospitals in Gaza are at “breaking point” and appealed directly to Israel to change its mind.
In a message posted to social media, he said:
Hospitals in Gaza are at a breaking point. Without immediate entry of aid, essential health care services will come to a halt. I visited Gaza in 2018. Access to care was already difficult. I know first-hand that a mass evacuation to the enclave’s south would be disastrous – for patients, health workers and other civilians left behind or caught in a dangerous and maybe a deadly mass movement. We appeal for the reversal of the decision.
Hospitals in Gaza are at a breaking point.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) October 13, 2023
Without immediate entry of aid, essential health care services will come to a halt.
I visited Gaza in 2018. Access to care was already difficult. I know firsthand that a mass evacuation to the enclave's south would be disastrous - for… https://t.co/wZ9gCrN05k
Updated
Reuters has a quick snap that Hamas has claimed to have launched 150 rockets towards the city of Ashkelon in Israel “in response to the displacement and targeting of civilians”.
South Africa’s government is checking information from the Israeli embassy that two of its nationals have been killed in the attacks by Hamas, a spokesperson said on Friday. “We are currently verifying this,” Reuters reports it said.
Updated
A member of staff at the Israeli embassy in Beijing was assaulted on Friday, the Israel foreign ministry said in a statement. The person was in stable condition and is being treated in hospital, Reuters reports the statement said.
Grant Shapps, UK defence secretary, said the UK supported the decision of the Israel Defence Forces to give advance notice that it is intended to mount an attack and that the population of northern Gaza should seek to move.
He said the UK did not know the details of the Israeli plans, and it was wrong to assume that everything would happen instantly within 24 hours.
Pressed repeatedly on the BBC to say whether the UK government supported the specific order giving 1 million people in Gaza 24 hours to leave their homes, Shaps said: “The UK government supports both the right of Israel to defend itself in this way, and that Israel is providing advance warning of military action so people can move themselves out of the way. It’s absolutely right that happens.”
He said Hamas were hiding in the civilian population, using them as human shields, and did not tell their victims before they cut their heads off that they should move.
He added: “From President Biden downwards has made it clear that Israel will need to comply with international law, and I would have thought a good start is to warn people that the area they are in is likely to be part of an attack where the Israelis are trying to get hold of the Hamas terrorists.”
Updated
Hamas claims 13 captives killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza in last 24 hours
Hamas’s armed wing, Al Qassam Brigades, said in a statement that 13 captives were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza in the last 24 hours.
Reuters reports the statement said six of the hostages were killed in strikes on two separate locations in the northern district and seven more died in strikes that hit three locations in the Gaza district.
It remains unclear exactly how many Israeli hostages Hamas took when it carried out its incursion into Israel’s territory on Saturday.
The most recent official death toll from Israel stands at 1,300. 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, but more than 100 are believed to have been taken.
The Israeli air force has dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza since Saturday, it said late on Thursday, and Israel’s military has delivered sweeping evacuation orders. The UN said it was told by the Israeli military that about 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours.
Hamas’s authority for refugee affairs on Friday called on residents of the north of the territory to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation”. The UN humanitarian office said early on Friday that more than 400,000 people had already fled their homes in the Gaza Strip.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Friday met with King Abdullah of Jordan in Amman. Reuters reports Blinken is set to visit three more countries: Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where he will spend the night. Before departing for Doha, he is set to meet with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Amman.
Updated
Reuters has a quick snap that Hamas has claimed that 13 captives have been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza in the last 24 hours.
More details soon …
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, met the head of Hezbollah in Lebanon on Friday, local Lebanese media outlets reported.
Reuters cited Al-Mayadeen television reports that Amirabdollahian, who arrived in Beirut late on Thursday, met Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Updated
Here is a video clip of the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, being greeted upon his arrival in Israel.
United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Tel Aviv. pic.twitter.com/W4isYOD6kH
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 13, 2023
Updated
Th US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, has landed in Israel. Earlier this week, he was in Brussels for two days of Nato meetings.
Updated
Our First Edition newsletter today looks at the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and Rupert Neate has spoken to the Guardian’s foreign correspondent Peter Beaumont, who has covered the region for the past 23 years. Here is some of what he had to say:
Peter says it was an attack that the Israeli government and military has long-feared and warned both locals and international community about, “but failed to anticipate and failed to stop”.
“For a couple of years there has been concern that Hamas might charge Israel’s ‘iron wall’ fence,” Peter says. “But it doesn’t appear to have occurred to the Israeli security force that Hamas had the capability for this very sophisticated multi-domain attack.”
The fence was breached at 29 different points, according to the IDF. “The scale of the attack, which opened with a barrage of 2,500 rockets and involved attempted boat and paraglider landings to the north of Gaza, the use of drones, and breaches along the entire length of the wall, suggests the assault was designed to confuse and overwhelm,” Peter says.
Asked whether an Israeli invasion of Gaza was inevitable, Peter says it was. “I don’t see how an invasion can’t happen,” he says. “I’ve been to this movie before, I was there in 2014. Everyone can see the tank carriers going down the motorways towards the border, it is just a question of when the order is given. If they don’t invade, I don’t see how this government can survive.”
Read more here: One week into a brutal new conflict, what happens next for Israel and Palestine?
Updated
The Philippines has confirmed the death of a third of its citizens in the conflict between Hamas and Israel.
The victim was a 49-year-old woman from Negros Occidental, who was working as a carer, according to the department of foreign affairs undersecretary Eduardo de Vega. She was killed on Saturday, the first day of the Hamas attack, he said. A further four Filipinos are believed missing.
There are about 30,000 Filipinos living in Israel, mostly working as carers.
Earlier this week, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, paid tribute to a Filipina nurse called Angelyn, who was caring for her elderly patient, Nira, on the kibbutz Kfar Gaza. Despite having a chance to flee the Hamas attacks, Angeline stayed by Nira’s side; both were killed, Hassan-Nahoum said.
Updated
Melanie Ward, the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, said the Palestinian history of displacement made it reasonable to fear that the displacement will be permanent and not temporary, in which case it will amount to ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of Palestinians into Sinai.
She said she had warned two days ago that Israel was likely to undertake a mass evacuation, and she was told by British diplomats on Thursday that she was being dramatic.
Ward said: “What is happening are events that are of a terrifying and historic proportion. Given the Palestinian history of displacement, the fear is that any such movement will end up being permanent and not temporary.”
She said she had 15 staff working in the north of Gaza and they were terrified, adding: “There is a lot of confusion, chaos and panic.
“Even if they wanted to go, how are they supposed to move? The roads have been bombed and destroyed. The bombing is continuing. Fuel has been blocked or is under siege so vehicles do not have fuel. Where are they supposed to go and how are they supposed to move? What about elderly people, and the disabled?
“The hospitals are overflowing, the health system is collapsing. The hospitals have so many injured people they are lying on the floor.
“Even if people do not move they remain civilians and they are not legitimate military targets. The international community has no choice but to make an urgent intervention and to stop this.”
Updated
Access to Friday prayers to be restricted to over-60s by Israeli authorities
Authorities in Jerusalem will be restricting access to the area known to Jews as the Temple Mount for Friday prayers to the over-60s today. Our correspondent Bethan McKernan writes:
Good morning from a Friday in Jerusalem, a tense day at the best of times. Islamic Waqf told the Guardian Israel will not allow worshippers under 60 to enter Temple Mount for Friday prayers.
Thousands of Muslim worshippers are expected in the Old City for midday prayer. Rightwing Jewish groups have said they are going to block Palestinian access to site, reached through the narrow streets of the Old City.
Normally calculations at Temple Mount are designed to dampen the potential for escalation. Today, it has already begun, so again a new playbook.
Good morning from a Friday in Jerusalem, a tense day at the best of times
— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) October 13, 2023
-Islamic Waqf told Guardian Israel will not allow worshippers under 60 to enter Temple Mount for Friday prayers
-Thousands of Muslim worshippers expected in the Old City for midday prayer
-Right wing Jewish groups have said they are going to block Palestinian access to site, reached through the narrow streets of the Old City
— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) October 13, 2023
-Normally calculations at Temple Mount designed to dampen potential for escalation. Today, it has already begun, so again a new playbook
Updated
Our correspondent Bethan McKernan reports that in a highly unusual move, trains will be operating during Shabbat in Israel. Services will run from Ben Gurion airport to Tel Aviv and to Beersheba. The Jeruslam Post reports that the transportation ministry has said the trains are in order to aid the war effort, and that journeys will be free.
Israel’s foreign ministry on Friday said it expressed “deep disappointment” in a call with the Chinese envoy to the Middle East over China’s lack of condemnation of Hamas’s weekend attack.
“The ambassador expressed Israel’s deep disappointment with Chinese announcements and statements about the recent events in the south, where there was no clear and unequivocal condemnation of the terrible massacre committed by the terrorist organization Hamas against innocent civilians and the abduction of dozens of them to Gaza,” Reuters reports the statement said.
Meanwhile, at a press conference in Tokyo, the local representative of Palestine’s permanent mission spoke out against the west’s support of Israel, but said Japan could continue to play a neutral role.
“It is really pathetic that we hear many voices from the west, leaders unfortunately … that call on Israel to bombard Gaza more,” Waleed Siam said. “This violence has to stop on both sides.”
Updated
Hamas calls on people to stay home and ignore Israeli evacuation orders
Hamas has called on Palestinians to stay in their homes after Israel issued sweeping evacuation orders in Gaza.
The Hamas authority for refugee affairs on Friday called on residents of the north of the territory to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation”, AP reports.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, home to hundreds of thousands of people. Palestinians would only be able to flee south within Gaza as Israel has completely sealed off the territory. The UN says that 400,000 Palestinians have already been displaced.
Updated
Hungary will not allow any rallies supporting “terrorist organisations”, its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, told public radio on Friday, adding that all Hungarian citizens should feel safe, regardless of their faith or origin.
“It is shocking that there are sympathy rallies supporting the terrorists across Europe,” Reuters reports Orbán said.
“There have been attempts even in Hungary. But we will not allow sympathy rallies supporting terrorist organisations as that would entail a terror threat to Hungarian citizens.”
Updated
The UK’s Foreign Office has updated its advice for British citizens within Gaza, stating:
The Israeli military announced on the morning of 13 October that the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza should relocate to southern Gaza within the next 24 hours. We advise following this advice issued by the Israeli authorities. We recognise this a fast-moving situation that poses significant risks.
UN: 400,000 people displaced and 23 aid workers killed in Gaza since weekend
The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said early on Friday that more than 400,000 people had fled their homes in the Gaza Strip and 23 aid workers had been killed since the start of Israeli retaliatory strikes in response to the Hamas attack on Saturday.
The agency launched an appeal for nearly $294m (£241m/€279m) to help the 1.3 million people in Gaza and the West Bank, of which nearly half was designated for food aid as supplies run out.
“Mass displacement continues. In the Gaza Strip, the cumulative number of internally displaced persons increased by 25% over the past 24 hours, now exceeding 423,000, of whom over two-thirds are taking shelter in UNRWA schools,” Reuters reports OCHA said, referring to the UN Palestinian refugee agency.
It said 23 aid workers had been killed since the weekend, including 11 health workers and 12 UNRWA employees.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images sent over the news wires from inside Gaza and Israel.
This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. I will be with you for the next few hours. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.
Updated
Civilians inside Gaza confused and terrified
Turkey’s Anadolu news agency is already reporting that hundreds of thousands of people have begun moving towards the Al Shifa medical complex in Gaza City, following the news of the evacuation order.
Civilians inside Gaza are confused and terrified, with fears about being unable to flee from what would amount to the largest displacement in the decades, in a tiny enclave that is just 365 sq km in total. An estimated 1.1. million people live in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, which includes Gaza City and its outskirts.
The Al Shifa medical complex is Gaza’s largest, a nerve centre of Gaza city’s medical infrastructure that has often provided shelter for civilians in the city during attacks or in moments of crisis. Thousands were already sheltering there, and the hospital has sustained damage from nearby airstrikes.
Doctor Ghassan Abu-Sittah at Shifa hospital said yesterday: “We are at breaking point. There are wounded patients in the corridors and no beds left. The nearby refugee camp was hit, and all hospitals are beyond, beyond capacity.”
Updated
Summary
It is 9am in Gaza City and in Tel Aviv.
Here is where things stand.
Israel’s military delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people Friday ahead of a feared ground offensive aiming to eradicate the Hamas militant group after its grisly assault into Israel, UN officials said.
The order sent panic through civilians and aid workers already struggling under Israeli airstrikes and a blockade. Israel’s directive charged that Hamas militants were hiding in tunnels under the city. “This evacuation is for your own safety,” the Israeli military said, in a warning it said was sent to Gaza City civilians.
The United Nations said it was told by the Israeli military that some 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours.
The UN statement said that they had been informed that “The entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza” must evacuate to southern Gaza. Wadi Gaza is the river that divides Gaza roughly into north and South. The order applied to the Gazans sheltering in UN facilities, and to UN staff. The spokesperson for the UN Secretary General said that the area included 1.1 million people, and that the task would be “impossible without devastating humanitarian consequences”.
The UN asked that the order be rescinded, saying, “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,” a UN spokesperson said.
The IDF order did not specify a timeframe. In a video update, an IDF spokesperson said only, “we understand that this will take time, it’s not an easy process”.
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said it relocated its central operations centre and international staff to Gaza’s south to continue its humanitarian operations and support its staff and Palestinian refugees. “We urge the Israeli Authorities to protect all civilians in UNRWA shelters including schools,” the agency said on social media platform X.
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.
Israel’s attacks have killed 1,500 Palestinians, a third of them children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. 6,6000 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.
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, 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.
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”.
This has been Helen Sullivan with the latest. I’ll be handing over to my colleague Martin Belam who will take you through the next hours of news.
Updated
Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza City, told the Associated Press there was no way more than 1 million people could be safely moved that fast.
“Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if you make it, if you’re going to live,” Farsakh said, breaking into heaving sobs.
“What will happen to our patients?” she asked. “We have wounded, we have elderly, we have children who are in hospitals.”
Farsakh said many of the medics were refusing to evacuate hospitals and abandon patients. Instead, she said, they called their colleagues to say goodbye.
Updated
It is nearing 9am in Gaza City. If you’re just joining us: Israel’s military delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people on Friday ahead of a feared ground offensive aiming to eradicate the Hamas militant group after its grisly assault into Israel, UN officials said. The order sent panic through civilians and aid workers already struggling under Israeli airstrikes and a blockade.
The Israeli military sent one evacuation order directly on Friday morning, warning the hundreds of thousands of civilians of Gaza City to flee deeper south into the Gaza Strip, a narrow coastal territory. Israel’s directive charged that Hamas militants were hiding in tunnels under the city.
“This evacuation is for your own safety,” the Israeli military said, in a warning it said was sent to Gaza City civilians.
The United Nations said it received a separate directive from the Israeli military shortly before midnight, giving all 1.1 million civilians of northern Gaza 24 hours to flee south, a task it said was impossible without “devastating humanitarian consequences”.
“This is chaos, no one understands what to do,” said Inas Hamdan, an officer at the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza City, while she grabbed whatever she could throw into her bags as the panicked shouts of her relatives could be heard around her. She said all the UN staff in Gaza City and northern Gaza had been told to evacuate south to Rafah.
Updated
The Israeli air force has released an update on X, saying 750 “targets” were struck in Gaza overnight, “including underground Hamas terror tunnels, military compounds and posts, residences of senior terrorist operatives used as military command centres, weapons storage warehouses, comms rooms and targeted senior terrorist operatives”.
Updated
The UN and IDF statements on evacuating Gazans to the south
Here is the full UN statement released before the IDF released the public statement below:
Full statement from UN spox on Israel directing the evacuation of northern Gaza within 24 hours. UN says it would impact 1.1 million, impossible without "devastating humanitarian consequences" and "strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded." pic.twitter.com/vfIpw12rrG
— Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford) October 13, 2023
The IDF statement:
IDF releases statement ordering all civilians to leave Gaza City. pic.twitter.com/PUcahGcGv8
— Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford) October 13, 2023
Another UN official told the Associated Press that the UN is trying to get clarity from Israeli officials at the most senior political level, after the UN was issued with a broader evacuation order than the order the IDF announced publicly a short while later.
“It’s completely unprecedented” the official said, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly.
Panicked rumours of an evacuation had begun to spread in north Gaza in the early morning Friday, AP reports.
Updated
“This is chaos, no one understands what to do,” said Inas Hamdan, an officer at the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza City told an Associated Press reporter while she grabbed whatever she could throw into her bags as the panicked shouts of her relatives could be heard around her.
She said all the UN staff in Gaza City and northern Gaza had been told to evacuate south to Rafah.
IDF evacuation order: what we know
The United Nations said late on Thursday evening in New York that it had received an evacuation order from the Israeli Defence Forces saying that everyone in northern Gaza should leave within the next 24 hours and go to the south.
The UN statement said that they had been informed that “The entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza” must evacuate to southern Gaza. Wadi Gaza is the river that divides Gaza roughly into north and South.
The order applied to the Gazans sheltering in UN facilities, and to UN staff.
The spokesperson for the UN Secretary General said that the area included 1.1 million people, and that the task would be “impossible without devastating humanitarian consequences”.
A short while later, at 7,30 am in Tel Aviv, an IDF spokesperson released a daily video update in which he read out a statement from the IDF directed at residents of Gaza City calling for them to evacuate south of the Gaza river.
Reuters reports that the population of Gaza city is one million people. Al Jazeera reports that it is 700,000 people.
The update did not indicate how much time Palestinians would be given to evacuate. Conricus said only, “we understand that this will take time, it’s not an easy process”.
The IDF evacuation statement reads, in full:
The IDF calls for the evacuation of all civilians from Gaza city, from their homes, southwards, for their own safety and protection, and to move to the area south of wadi Gaza, the river Gaza, as shown on the map.
The Hamas terrorist organisation waged a war against the state of Israel, and Gaza City is an area where military operations are taking place. This evacuation is for your own safety. You will be able to return to Gaza city only when another announcement permitting it is made. Do not approach the area of the security fence of Israel. Hamas terrorists are hiding in Gaza city, inside tunnels, underneath houses and inside buildings populated with innocent civilians who are using you as human shields.
In the following days the IDF will continue to operate with significant force in Gaza city and will make extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians.”
Updated
UN Palestinian refugee agency relocates operations, staff, south
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said it relocated its central operations centre and international staff to Gaza’s south to continue its humanitarian operations and support its staff and Palestinian refugees.
“We urge the Israeli Authorities to protect all civilians in UNRWA shelters including schools,” the agency said on social media platform X.
“Our aim is to take all of Hamas’s military abilities and strip them away,” IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said.
Conricus said, “we understand that this will take time, it’s not an easy process”.
He said that the evacuation message was communicated to the UN.
He did not indicate how long the IDF would give Gazans to evacuate.
The UN has said it has been told the evacuations must take place in 24 hours, a task it called “impossible without devastating humanitarian consequences”.
Updated
The message from the IDF to Gazans continued:
“The Hamas terrorist organisation waged a war against the state of Israel, and Gaza City is an area where military operations are taking place. This evacuation is for your own safety. You will be able to return to Gaza city only when another announcement permitting it is made. Do not approach the area of the security fence of Israel. Hamas terrorists are hiding in Gaza city, inside tunnels, underneath houses and inside buildings populated with innocent civilians who are using you as human shields.
In the following dys the IDF will continue to operate with significant force in Gaza city and will make extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians.”
Conricus gestured towards a map, showing that Gazans must travel south, rather than towards the fence. The fence is a far shorter distance from Gaza city than the river they have been told to cross.
The IDF spokesperson said the warning was “distributed” in Arabic with a map accompanying it.
IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus has shared the evacuation order in a daily situational update.
This is the message he shared:
“The IDF calls for the evacuation of all civilians from Gaza city, from their homes, southwards, for their own safety and protection, and to move to the area south of wadi Gaza, the river Gaza, as shown on the map,” Conricus said.
EXCLUSIVE: Operational update by IDF Spokesperson @jconricus as the war against Hamas continues. https://t.co/MFAOiCSssH
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 13, 2023
Updated
IDF issues evacuation order for Gaza City
The IDF has announced that it is calling for the evacuation of all civilians of Gaza City from their homes “southwards”.
The IDF said, “will operate significantly in Gaza City in the coming days” and that Gazans, “will only be able to return to Gaza City when another announcement permitting”.
“This evacuation is for your own safety,” the IDF said.
It also warned Gazans “not to approach the area of fence with Israel”.
From what we can tell, the order, which appears to apply only to Gaza city, differs from what the UN said it had been told, which was that everyone in northern Gaza must evacuate to the south. The UN said this was “impossible without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
The population of Gaza municipality, which includes part of Gaza city, is about 677,000 people, according to NBC.
Opening summary
This is the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israeli-Hamas war. I’m Helen Sullivan and I will be bringing you the latest developments as they happen.
A short while ago, the spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general released a statement saying that the Israeli Defence Forces had warned UN 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.
We hope to have more detail soon.
Here is where things stand elsewhere in the conflict:
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. 6,6000 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”.
