Israeli ground forces are attacking Hamas militants and infrastructure in northern Gaza as warplanes strike across the sealed-off territory. Buoyed by the first successful rescue of a captive held by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for a cease-fire and again vowed to crush the militant group’s ability to govern Gaza or threaten Israel.
More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have fled their homes, with hundreds of thousands sheltering in packed U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters or in hospitals alongside thousands of wounded patients.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 8,525, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 122 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them civilians slain in the initial Hamas rampage that started the fighting Oct. 7. In addition, 240 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group. One of the captives, a female Israeli soldier, was rescued in a special forces operation.
Currently:
1. A UN envoy says the Israel-Hamas war is spilling into Syria, adding to instability there
2. UN agency in Gaza says urgent cease-fire is a matter of life and death for Palestinians
3. An Israeli ministry proposes transferring Gaza civilians to Egypt’s Sinai
4. This war might hit Israel’s economy harder than past wars with Hamas
5. Biden’s Cabinet secretaries will push Congress to send aid to Israel and Ukraine
6. Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Here’s what is happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
CAIRO — Gaza’s Hamas-run Interior Ministry said a number of Israeli airstrikes hit apartment blocks in a residential area of Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, leaving around 400 people either dead or injured. Ministry spokesperson Ayed al-Bazm said at a news conference that six bombs hit the residential area on Tuesday.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus is working out logistics with partners in the European Union and the Middle East to establish a sea corridor to deliver a stream of vital humanitarian aid to Gaza from the island’s main port of Limassol once the situation on the ground permits it, authorities said Tuesday.
A senior government official — who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to publicly discuss details of the proposal — said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “wasn’t opposed” to the idea pitched by Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides last week.
Gaza’s humanitarian needs have escalated after the Israel-Hamas war erupted following the Palestinian militant group’s surprise Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, which left nearly 1,400 Israelis dead and at least 240 taken hostage. Israel retaliated with a military operation that has so far left over 8,300 Palestinians dead.
The underlying premise of Cyprus’ proposal is to have a constant flow of large quantities of assistance delivered by sea during what the official called “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting to enable aid to reach those in need.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday said that Iran, Hezbollah and other groups must not abuse the current situation and escalate the tensions in the Middle East.
“It is also important that this war does not escalate into a major regional conflict,” Stoltenberg said in Oslo, where he attended the annual meeting of the Nordic Council.
“The suffering we have seen in recent weeks reminds us once again that we must not give up the work for a lasting, peaceful political solution to the conflict.”
The eight-member regional grouping includes Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, as well as the autonomous areas of the Aland islands, the Faeroe Islands and Greenland.
ASHKELON, Israel — The soldiers guarding Avi Chivivian’s organic vegetable farm in southern Israel must first scour every corner of his fields for militants before they give him the all clear: He has six hours to work.
It’s potato planting season for the farms of southern Israel, a region near the Gaza border that the Agriculture Ministry calls the country’s “vegetable barn” because it supplies at least a third of Israel’s vegetables. But Chivivian — one of the few remaining farmers in the area since the brutal Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants — no longer lives by the harvest cycle. He’s on the military’s timetable.
The Israel-Hamas war has plunged Israel’s agricultural heartlands, located around the Gaza Strip and in the north near the Lebanese and Syrian borders, into crisis. Israeli airstrikes, ground operations and a siege have also upendedall manner of lifein Gaza.
Near Gaza, the military has banned all farming within 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) of the border fence and tightly monitors farmers whose lands lie just outside the no-go zone.
In the north, entire communities have been evacuated because of rocket fire from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group. As foreign laborers flee and farming towns have emptied out, the country has begun importing more vegetables. The few remaining farmers fret for the future of Israeli agriculture.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen issued a video statement on Tuesday claiming to have fired ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, saying it was the third such operation. They threatened to carry out more strikes “until the Israeli aggression stops.”
The claims by the Houthis draw Iran closer into the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as Tehran remains a main sponsor.
Earlier this month, a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea intercepted three cruise missiles and several drones launched toward Israel by the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, including its capital, Sanaa. Mysterious projectiles have also struck inside Egypt, near the Israeli border.
Iran has long denied arming the Houthis even as it has been transferring rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and other weaponry to the Yemeni militia using sea routes. Independent experts, Western nations and United Nations experts have traced components seized aboard other detained vessels back to Iran.
A U.N. arms embargo has prohibited weapons transfers to the Houthis since 2014, when Yemen’s civil war erupted.
There also has been at least one attack that the Houthis claimed where suspicion later fell fully on Iran. In 2019, cruise missiles and drones successfully penetrated Saudi Arabia and struck the heart of its oil industry in Abqaiq. That attack temporarily halved the kingdom’s production and spiked global energy prices by the biggest percentage since the 1991 Gulf War.
While the Houthis claimed the Abqaiq attack, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and analysts blamed Iran. U.N. experts similarly said it was “unlikely” the Houthis carried out the assault, though Tehran denied being involved.
CAIRO — The World Health Organization said services have been “severely reduced” at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the main facility treating cancer patients in Gaza, due to a lack of power and dwindling supplies.
Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, the agency said reports of airstrikes in the hospital’s vicinity over the past two days were “extremely concerning.”
“Services have been severely reduced because of cut-off of electricity and restricted entry of medicines, other medical supplies, fuel and water,” the agency said.
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group says its fighters have fired anti-tank missiles toward an Israeli force along the border of the two countries.
Hezbollah said its fighters scored direct hits Tuesday on the Israeli force that was laying an ambush along the border.
Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been exchanging fire along the border following the Oct. 7 attack by the militant Hamas group on southern Israel.
CAIRO — The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said Tuesday it registered the deaths of at least 219 people in the past day, bringing the death toll to 8,525 since the war began.
Spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said in a televised news conference that the fatalities include 3,542 children and 2,187 women.
He said the main power generator in the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, north of Gaza, has stopped working due to a lack of fuel.
He warned that more hospitals could go out of service in the coming days if fuel isn’t allowed into the besieged territory.
JERUSALEM — The chairman of Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, derided Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations for putting on a yellow Star of David patch during his address to the Security Council on Monday, saying it “belittles both the victims of the Holocaust and the State of Israel.”
“The yellow patch symbolizes the helplessness of the Jewish people when it was at the mercy of others,” Dayan posted on X, formerly called Twitter. “Today we have an independent state and a strong army. We are masters of our fate. Today we put on our lapels the blue and white flag (of Israel), not a yellow patch.”
Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow six-pointed Star of David patches during the Holocaust.
Ambassador Gilad Erdan donned the patch during a council meeting on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, where more than 8,300 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and food and basic supplies have dwindled sharply since Israel went to war against the Palestinian territory’s Hamas rulers.
Erdan told the Security Council that he would wear the patch, inscribed with the words “Never Again,” until the council condemns Hamas’s bloody Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel, which touched off the war. More than 1,400 people were killed and about 240 taken hostage during the attack.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will make the case Tuesday that the United States should immediately send aid to Israel and Ukraine, testifying at a Senate hearing as the administration’s massive $105 billion emergency aid request for conflicts in those countries and others has already hit roadblocks in the divided Congress.
President Joe Biden’s Cabinet secretaries will be advocating for the foreign aid to a mostly friendly audience in the Senate, where majority Democrats and many Republicans support tying aid for the two countries together. But it faces much deeper problems in the Republican-led House, where new Speaker Mike Johnson has proposed cutting out the Ukraine aid and focusing on Israel alone, and cutting money for the Internal Revenue Service to pay for it.
The drastically narrowed House proposal, which would cost more than $14 billion, faced immediate resistance among Senate Democrats — and put pressure on Senate Republicans who support the Ukraine aid but are conscious of growing concerns about it within their party. The differing approaches signal problems ahead for the aid as both countries engage in long-simmering, defining conflicts that Biden and many U.S. lawmakers say could have fundamental ramifications for the rest of the world.
UNITED NATIONS — The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is warning that “an immediate humanitarian cease-fire has become a matter of life and death for millions,” stressing that “the present and future of Palestinians and Israelis depend on it.”
Philippe Lazzarini warned during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Monday that a further breakdown of civil order, following the recent break-ins at the agency’s warehouses by panicked Palestinians searching for food and other aid, will make it extremely difficult for the largest U.N. agency in Gaza to continue operating.
He said in a virtual briefing that he is worried about a spillover of the conflict and urged all 193 U.N. member nations “to change the trajectory of this crisis.”
The commissioner-general of the agency known as UNRWA, also said 64 of its staff have been killed in just over three weeks — the latest only two hours prior when UNRWA’s head of security in mid-Gaza was killed with his wife and eight children.
Lazzarini said most Palestinians in Gaza “feel trapped in a war they have nothing to do with” and “they feel the world is equating all of them to Hamas.” He stressed that the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocities in Israel don’t absolve Israel from its obligations under international humanitarian law, starting with the protection of civilians.
