Tag: hostage negotiations

Shelling along the Lebanon-Israel border continued Thursday, as Lebanese officials spent the day in meetings with counterparts from France and Britain about the growing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed paramilitary group.

Hezbollah claimed it carried out simultaneous attacks around 4 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET) — targeting multiple “barracks” across northern Israel. 

The Israel Defense Forces told CNN that approximately 20 launches were detected on Thursday that were aimed at Kiryat Shmona, a northern Israeli municipality that has been the target of Hezbollah strikes over the past several days. 

The municipality claimed two anti-tank missiles were fired at the town earlier in the day.

Hezbollah made six direct missile hits on Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday.

Diplomatic efforts: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati met with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron in Beirut on Thursday and also spoke with French Foreign and European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna on a call to discuss the growing clashes in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. 

Mikati called for “maximum pressure to stop the Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon” during his meeting with Cameron, according to a social media post from the Lebanese government.

Cameron said in a post on X that an “escalation of the conflict in Gaza to Lebanon, the Red Sea or across the wider region, would add to the extremely high level of danger and insecurity in the world.”

The fighting is among various incidents involving Iran and its proxies that have raised global concerns that Israel’s war in Gaza could widen into a greater regional conflict.

Peacekeeper wounded: As the threat of greater violence between Hezbollah and Israel rises, evidence of the growing tensions on the ground in Lebanon is appearing.  

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNFIL) on Thursday called on Lebanese authorities to investigate after an attack on a patrol unit.

The UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said the attack “by a group of young men” in the southern city of Taybeh left a peacekeeper wounded and a vehicle damaged, according to an X account run by UNIFIL.

A resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council last week that called for increased aid to Gaza has “yet to have an impact,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday. 

The UN resolution approved last Friday calls for humanitarian pauses between Israel and Hamas, increased aid to Gaza and the creation of conditions that will allow for a sustainable end to fighting, ending days of closed-door negotiations.

But it was yet to become reality in the war-torn strip, Tedros said.

“UN Security Council members must urgently turn their recent resolution — to create pauses in hostilities and humanitarian corridors — into reality in Gaza. Actions, not words, are what Gaza’s people need today,” Tedros said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

WHO warnings: Tedros’ remarks come after WHO teams carried out “high-risk” missions to deliver supplies to two hospitals in Gaza.

In the north, UN teams brought medical items and fuel to the Al-Shifa Hospital, where a reported 50,000 people are seeking shelter, to keep essential health services running at the hospital, WHO said.

Teams in the south visited Al-Amal hospital, where WHO staff said they found it impossible to walk inside “without stepping over patients and those seeking refuge.”

While transiting through Gaza, teams also witnessed “tens of thousands of people fleeing heavy strikes in the Khan Younis and Middle Area — on foot, riding on donkeys or in cars.”

WHO representative Rik Peeperkorn said the agency was concerned the new displacement of people would strain medical facilities in the south even further. 

“This forced mass movement of people will also lead to more overcrowding, increased risk of infectious diseases and make it even harder to deliver humanitarian aid,” Peeperkorn said.

Tedros echoed his concerns. 

Sigrid Kaag, a Dutch politician and veteran United Nations diplomat, will take charge of the international body’s effort to bring humanitarian relief to war-ravaged Gaza, the UN Secretary General announced Tuesday, filling a position created this month in a breakthrough UN Security Council resolution.

In a post on X, Kaag said she would resign her position as finance minister and deputy prime minister of the Netherlands to take on the role of UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza.

The appointment, which is set to take effect on January 8, comes as conditions in the besieged Palestinian enclave reach “nightmare” levels, as the chief of the World Health Organization put it after a recent visit. Shortages of power and medicine have stripped hospitals of most functioning, and the risk of famine looms over Gaza’s population, humanitarian organizations have said.

Since war began on October 7 following Hamas’ terror attacks, Israel has allowed a limited number of trucks to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza through Egypt’s Rafah crossing. The UN has described this amount as a trickle that fails to come close to meeting the needs of the population of over 2 million.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has also accused Israel’s tactics in Gaza, which include intensive aerial bombardment, of “creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside the strip.

Kaag will now be responsible for creating a mechanism to accelerate the movement of aid into Gaza and for “facilitating, coordinating, monitoring, and verifying” the relief effort, according to the UN, including the complex process of ensuring aid trucks are screened before they enter the enclave to ensure they’re not carrying non-humanitarian material.

The Security Council resolution creating the position, which called for immediate, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza, passed last week with the abstention of the US after several days of negotiations and delays.

Read more about Kaag.

Officials from the World Health Organization visited Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza on Monday, where scores of people are being treated, including many from reported airstrikes on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp.

In response to a CNN inquiry Sunday, the IDF said it had received reports of an incident in the Al-Maghazi camp and was “reviewing the incident.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X on Monday that staff at Al-Aqsa had reported receiving around 100 casualties. He said the WHO team at the facility had heard “harrowing accounts shared by health workers and victims of the suffering caused by the explosions.”

Tedros emphasized that the hospital is above capacity and warned that “many will not survive the wait.”

Sean Casey, a WHO emergency medical teams coordinator, described in a video posted by Tedros watching a 9-year-old boy die due to brain damage he suffered after being wounded by shrapnel in a building explosion. Casey said the only way Al-Aqsa hospital workers could help the child was to sedate him “to ease his suffering as he dies,” because the facility didn’t have the capacity to treat complex neurological cases. Casey said the operating theaters at Al-Aqsa were working 24 hours a day, yet people were still waiting hours and even days for treatment.

Dozens reported dead: At least 70 were killed in Al-Maghazi, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reported on Monday. At least 250 were killed and 500 injured in the past 24 hours in the central Gaza areas of Bureij, Nuseirat and Al Maghazi, the Hamas-run ministry added. CNN cannot independently verify the numbers released by the ministry in Gaza, as access to the enclave is limited and reliable numbers are hard to confirm amid the fighting. 

Responding to a CNN inquiry about the deaths, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Monday: “In response to Hamas’ barbaric attacks, the IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities.” 

Visits across the strip: WHO and its humanitarian partners visited several hospitals across Gaza over the weekend. Among them was the Al-Shifa hospital in the north, which Tedros called Sunday “a microcosm of the nightmare playing out across Gaza, where drastic shortages of medicines, food, power, water and – above all – safety imperil the population.”

Israel has focused a huge amount of attention on Gaza’s hospitals since it began its offensive in Gaza in October, claiming Hamas uses medical facilities for military purposes and showing what it says are underground Hamas tunnels below them, claims CNN cannot verify.

Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, has been heavily damaged during the fighting. Israel alleged that Hamas had built a large-scale command and control center under the facility, a charge the militant group has denied. CNN last month visited an exposed tunnel shaft in the Al-Shifa hospital compound under IDF media escort. The tunnel shaft extended down farther than CNN’s reporter could see, especially in the meager light of headlamps.

Church bells echo through the labyrinth-like streets of Bethlehem. With Christmas approaching, the city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank should be teeming with visitors. But this year, it is almost deserted.

Local leaders made the decision last month to scale back festivities in solidarity with the Palestinian population, as heavy fighting raged between Israel and Hamas in the devastated Gaza Strip.

More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s air and ground offensive, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza and nearly 85% of the strip’s total population has been displaced.

The war was sparked by Hamas’ terror attack on October 7 on southern Israel in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 others taken hostage.

Many here have ties to Gaza through loved ones and friends, and a sense of misery has fallen upon the city revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Decorations that once adorned neighborhoods have been removed. The parades and religious celebrations have been canceled. In the city center, the traditional enormous Christmas tree of Manger Square is conspicuously absent.

Traveling into Bethlehem, about 8 kilometers south of Jerusalem, isn’t ordinarily an easy journey. The Israeli-built West Bank barrier restricts movement, as do the various checkpoints leading in and out of the city. It’s only got worse since Hamas’ brazen attack.

Since October 7, Israel has restricted movement in Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns in the West Bank, with military checkpoints allowing access in and out, impacting Palestinians trying to get to work.

The occupied territory has also experienced a surge in violence, with at least 300 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

He and his family live in Al Shawawra, a Palestinian village near Bethlehem, and visit each Christmas “because our relationship with our Christian brothers is a strong relationship.”

He explains: “We join them in their celebrations, and they also join us in our celebrations. But this year’s holiday season is very bad.”

Read more.

A chemical tanker operating in the Indian Ocean Saturday was struck by an Iranian attack drone, a US defense official says. 

“The motor vessel CHEM PLUTO, a Liberia-flagged, Japanese-owned, and Netherlands-operated chemical tanker was struck at approximately 10 a.m. local time (6 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time) today in the Indian Ocean, 200 nautical miles from the coast of India, by a one-way attack drone fired from Iran,” the official said in a statement. 

A one-way drone is designed to impact its target rather than return to its origin.

“No US Navy vessels were in the vicinity,” the official said, adding that Naval Forces Central Command is communicating with the struck vessel which is making its way toward India.

The Indian Coast Guard posted on social media that there are 21 crew members on board and that “the vessel has started making (its) way toward Mumbai.” 

Context: The strike comes after a series of attacks on shipping interests in the Red Sea by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels operating in Yemen, which have occurred since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

On Saturday, US Central Command reported more such incidents in a statement on social media. A crude oil tanker was hit by “a one-way attack drone” Saturday. There were no injuries, Central Command said. A separate chemical tanker operating in the southern Red Sea reported a “near miss” Saturday from a one-way drone, the command said.

Two “anti-ship ballistic missiles” were also fired into the southern Red Sea from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen but did not hit any vessels, according to the statement. 

It also said the USS Laboon, a Navy destroyer, shot down four aerial drones that were heading toward it. 

While the incidents originating from Yemen have been regular, Saturday’s strike in the Indian Ocean may mark a new escalation in tensions. 

The Israel Defense Forces has demolished a tunnel network in the Issa area of southern Gaza City, it claimed in a statement Friday.

The network served as an “underground post,” the IDF said, and “numerous buildings used as Hamas headquarters were destroyed” as part of its operations in recent days.

The statement claimed that “many Hamas terrorists were eliminated, along with many buildings used for terrorist activities and weapons that were destroyed.”  

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the tunnel network was targeted using “13 tons of explosives, which simultaneously detonated 30 tunnel shafts in a secured manner.”

The network, according to the IDF, was also “used for storage, hideouts, command and control, and movement of operatives between different areas.”  

The IDF said video footage captured by a canine unit revealed that the tunnel network was “hundreds of meters long.”

Some background: Colloquially referred to as the “Gaza metro,” a vast labyrinth of tunnels beneath Gaza is used to transport people and goods, to store rockets and ammunition caches, and house Hamas command and control centers — all away from the prying eyes of the IDF’s aircraft and surveillance drones.

During its offensive in the territory, the IDF claims it has exposed “hundreds of terror tunnel shafts throughout the Gaza Strip,” and says it is operating “to locate and destroy dozens of attack tunnel routes.”

Recently, it has tested methods for flooding the Hamas tunnels.

CNN’s Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting to this post.

Israel’s most recent proposal to Hamas is a one-week pause in the war for the return of around 35 hostages, including the remaining women, elderly, wounded and sick men held in Gaza, a senior US official told CNN. 

This group would include the three elderly men abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz near the Gaza border who were recently featured in a video released by the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, in which they are pleading to be released.

CNN was unable to independently verify when or where the footage was shot or the condition of the captives. 

And despite Hamas stating on its Telegram channel on Thursday that it would not agree to any discussions about prisoner swaps until after Israel ends its military operation, US officials continue to believe that there is a pathway to secure the release of more hostages, that official said. 

The senior US official declined to say whether Hamas’ most senior leader in Gaza, Yayha Sinwar, had responded to Israel’s latest proposal on the hostages. Sinwar is Israel’s primary target in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces has called him a “dead man walking.”

Both Israeli and American officials have indicated they believe Sinwar could be in the network of tunnels below his hometown of Khan Younis.

While Israel has returned to the negotiating table to get more of the hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7 attack, both Israeli and US officials have made clear that a deal does not appear imminent, CNN previously reported.

Eight Americans remain unaccounted for since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Four Americans — three women and a toddler — have been successfully released since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. 

The US and Qatar have continued to push Israel to get back to the negotiating table, ever since a seven-day truce ended three weeks ago and efforts to get hostages released stalled.

If Ramallah has a center, it is Al-Manara Square. Six roads meet here, and pedestrians weave their way confidently across the tight roundabout, forcing cars to make way. It is always busy.

Demonstrators will rally here to protest, but when CNN visited on a Sunday morning, people were going about their business. All the same, photos from the war in Gaza posted in the square and hung on banners and fences remind anyone who needs reminding of the horrors unfolding not far away.

“This destruction resembles the conscience of the world,” reads one poster, under a picture of rescue workers clearing rubble.

Another photograph shows ambulances outside a hospital with the text, “Medical Heroes demand action: Stop the Massacre in Gaza!”

At his office about a mile away, where desks and shelves groan under piles of paperwork, Khalil Shikaki is thinking about the conflict.

Palestinians, he says, overwhelmingly support the Hamas decision to go to war with Israel.

His research company, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), has just published the findings of its latest survey into Palestinian attitudes.

Seven hundred and fifty adults were interviewed face to face in the West Bank, and 481 were interviewed in Gaza, also in person. The Gaza data collection was done during the recent truce, when it was safer for researchers to move about.

The survey, which has a four-point margin of error (rather than the usual three-point), found that almost three-quarters (72%) of all respondents believe Hamas’s decision to launch its attack on Israel on October 7 was “correct.”

Less than a quarter (22%) said it was “incorrect.”

But that doesn’t mean support for atrocities, he adds. “No one should see this as support for any atrocities that might have been committed by Hamas on that day.”

Read more about the poll.

The Israel Defense Forces claims to have discovered “the biggest Hamas tunnel” in Gaza, spanning a length of 4 kilometers (about 2.5 miles).

The IDF said the tunnel, secured “a few weeks ago” but revealed to the public Sunday, is wide enough to drive a large vehicle through, reaches up to 50 meters (over 160 feet) underground and is equipped with electricity, ventilation and communication systems.

It does not cross into Israel but ends 400 meters before the now-closed Erez crossing on the northern Israel-Gaza border, according to the IDF.

The tunnel is part of Hamas’ “strategic infrastructure” and would be destroyed, the IDF said.

In a video shared by the IDF, the Israeli military claimed the tunnel was created for Hamas troop movements and as a launching point for attacks. 

Footage shared by the IDF and allegedly filmed by Hamas to show the construction of the tunnel shows a large vehicle driving into the tunnel and a makeshift railroad inside it.

CNN could not independently verify the footage or the IDF’s claims.

In a statement Sunday, the IDF alleged that the tunnel system was a project of the brother of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Sinwar. The IDF did not provide any evidence to support the claim.

What to know about Gaza’s tunnels: The myriad tunnels under Gaza are best known as passageways used to smuggle goods from Egypt and launch attacks into Israel.

Colloquially referred to as the “Gaza metro,” the vast labyrinth of tunnels is also used to transport people and goods, to store rockets and ammunition caches, and house Hamas command and control centers — all away from the prying eyes of the IDF’s aircraft and surveillance drones.

Hamas in 2021 claimed to have built 500 kilometers (311 miles) of tunnels under Gaza, though it is unclear if that figure was accurate or posturing. If true, Hamas’ underground tunnels would be a little less than half the length of the New York City subway system.

During its offensive in the territory, the IDF claims it has exposed “hundreds of terror tunnel shafts throughout the Gaza Strip,” and says it is operating “to locate and destroy dozens of attack tunnel routes.”

Recently, it has tested methods for flooding the Hamas tunnels.

CNN’s Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting to this post.