The U.S. and several other countries are sending warships to the southern Red Sea to protect shipping routes. Several shipping vessels have come under fire from Iran-backed Houthi rebels since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Ramy Inocencio has the latest.
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An American destroyer on Saturday shot down more than a dozen drones in the Red Sea launched from Huthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the U.S. Central Command said.
“The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS CARNEY… operating in the Red Sea, successfully engaged 14 unmanned aerial systems launched as a drone wave from Huthi-controlled areas of Yemen,” CENTCOM said social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The aerial vehicles were “assessed to be one-way attack drones and were shot down with no damage to ships in the area or reported injuries,” according to the statement.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels have launched a series of drone and missile strikes targeting Israel since Hamas militants poured over the border into Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures. Around 240 people were kidnapped in the attacks.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages, Israel launched a massive military offensive that the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry says has killed at least 18,800 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest toll from the Hamas government in Gaza.
The Huthi rebels have threatened to attack any vessels heading to Israeli ports unless food and medicine are allowed into the besieged Gaza Strip.
Mediterranean Shipping Company announced in a news release on Saturday that their ships “will not transit the Suez Canal Eastbound and Westbound,” after a container ship transiting the Red Sea on Friday was attacked. After suffering limited fire damage, the container ship was taken out of service.
MSC said their shipping services will be rerouted to go through the Cape of Good Hope.
The latest attacks mark a significant escalation in the threat to shipping in the area.
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A U.S. Navy warship shot down several drones launched toward commercial ships in the Red Sea. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attacks. David Martin reports.
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Tel Aviv — Israel’s military said Friday its ground forces were “expanding their activity” in Gaza in what may be the beginning of a new phase in Israel’s war with Hamas, which started nearly three weeks ago.
Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said a statement the Israel Defense Forces increased attacks in the Gaza Strip in recent hours.
“In addition to the attacks that we carried out in recent days, ground forces are expanding their activity this evening,” Hagari said. “The IDF is acting with great force … to achieve the objectives of the war.”
The extent of the expanded activity was unclear, but two U.S. officials tell CBS News this appears to be a rolling start to the ground invasion.
It comes as internet and phone services collapsed inside Gaza under heavy bombardment, the Associated Press reported. Paltel, the Palestine Telecommunications Company, said there was “a complete disruption of all communication and internet services” because of bombardment, the AP reported.
The country’s military said earlier Friday Israeli forces conducted a ground raid into Gaza for the second consecutive night. The small raid was backed by fighter jets and drones, with the IDF saying it had struck dozens of targets on the outskirts of Gaza City. The IDF said the small incursion had resulted in no Israeli casualties.
The Israeli army conducts intense air attacks on the Gaza Strip on the 21st day of its war with Hamas, Oct. 27, 2023. Gaza was plunged into darkness without electricity or fuel supplies.
Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images
The previous ground raid, early Thursday morning, lasted a few hours, struck rocket launching positions and involved battles with militants, according to the IDF. Hagari said Thursday that the ground raids were intended to “uncover the enemy” and destroy launch pads and explosives to “prepare the ground for the next stages of the war.”
The Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers, along with other Palestinian militants, opened their bloody Oct. 7 terror attack on southern Israel with a salvo of thousands of rockets, and they have continued firing them from the enclave for the nearly three weeks since.
Most of Hamas’ rockets are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, but at least one got through Friday and hit Tel Aviv, causing “significant destruction,” according to the civilian emergency response agency United Hatzalah, which said three people were lightly wounded.
Israel has responded to the unprecedented terror attack and ongoing rocket fire — which it says has killed more than 1,400 people and left Hamas holding almost 230 hostages — with an overwhelming barrage of artillery and airstrikes on Gaza.
Health officials in the densely populated, Hamas-controlled strip of land say more than 7,000 people have been killed. The Israeli military disputes that figure, but entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, sometimes crushing entire families under the ruins of residential buildings.
What a rolling start to Israel’s ground incursion might look like
While Israeli ground forces have crossed into Gaza on night raids over the past few days, a rolling start is different, according to retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, a former commander of U.S. Central Command.
“A rolling start will be an operation where you put in reconnaissance forces, you sort of gain a feel for the battlefield, and then pull your main forces in behind them,” McKenzie told CBS News Friday.
The Pentagon sent a Marine general experienced in special operations and urban combat to advise the Israelis on how to do it. He has since left Israel.
“They’ll probably have several lines of advance going into Gaza, and Israeli commanders will see where they’re having success,” McKenzie said. “The axiom is, you reinforce success. Where you’re gaining ground, you put more forces in behind it.”
“You should think of it as multiple beachheads … all across the front,” he added.
Civilian deaths mount in Gaza
Raw, overwhelming grief is everywhere in Gaza.
“What did he do?” cried one man as he rocked the body of his son, just two and a half months old, in his arms. He lost his wife and four children in an Israeli strike Wednesday on a house in the Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza. “Did he kill anyone? Did he kidnap someone? There were just innocent children inside this house.”
Deaths have been soaring at a staggering rate in Gaza, and while Israel and Hamas disagree on the toll — and who’s to blame for it — it is believed to far exceed the number of people killed during the four previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas combined.
People search through buildings destroyed during Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 27, 2023, in Khan Younis, Gaza.
Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty
Every day, shrouded bodies pile up outside Gaza’s beleaguered hospitals and morgues as more seriously wounded are rushed in, many in need of urgent medical attention. But Palestinian doctors are often able to offer little more than words of comfort, as fuel for generators and medical supplies have all run short.
The United Nations, along with a growing number of nations and aid organizations, have warned that Israel’s long-expected ground invasion of Gaza, if and when it happens, would cause even more civilian casualties and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
The U.N. General Assembly voted Friday to approve a nonbinding resolution, sponsored by Jordan, calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities. The U.S. voted against the resolution, after an amendment that would have condemned Hamas’ terror attack on Israel and demanded the release of hostages was defeated.
On Thursday, the U.N. echoed international law experts and humanitarian groups to warn that Israel may be responding to Hamas’ atrocious war crimes with war crimes of its own.
“We are concerned that war crimes are being committed,” U.N. human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told journalists Friday in Geneva. “We are concerned about the collective punishment of Gazans in response to the atrocious attacks by Hamas, which also amounted to war crimes.”
Iran’s allies and fear of a widening war
There is also significant and mounting concern that a full-scale invasion could see the war expand beyond Gaza and Israel’s borders.
Austen said the strikes were distinct from the war between Israel and Hamas and meant to communicate that President Biden “will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel and its interests.”
Iran is a primary backer for a number of Muslim extremist groups across the region, including the Sunni Muslim Hamas in Gaza, and the powerful Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement, based just across Israel’s northern border in Lebanon. Hezbollah militants have exchanged sporadic deadly fire with Israeli forces since Hamas launched its attack on October 7, and the group has said it’s prepared to join Hamas in the war with Israel if required.
The U.S. Treasury on Friday announced further sanctions against a handful of individuals and entities it accuses of facilitating funding for Hamas, including Khaled Qaddoumi, whom the Treasury describes as a “longtime Hamas member who currently lives in Tehran serving as Hamas’s representative to Iran, and acting as a liaison between Hamas and the Iranian government.”
Iran has also long supported Shiite groups that operate across parts of northern Iraq and neighboring Syria, and it’s those proxy forces that have fired rockets and explosive drones at U.S. forces based in the two countries for years.
Another powerful Iran-backed group, the Shiite Muslim Houthi movement, is fighting a civil war against Yemen’s Western-backed government. The U.S. military said it shot down a handful of missiles and drones fired by the Houthis on Oct. 19 over the Red Sea, which it said could have been aimed at Israel.
Iran’s army launched a large-scale military exercise on Friday, meanwhile, meant to last two days in the central province of Isfahan. A military spokesman told Iranian state media that the war game would involve troops from all units of the Army Ground Force, including an airborne division, drone squads, electronic warfare units and support teams from Iran’s air force.
President Biden has warned Iran repeatedly not to get directly involved in the Israel-Hamas war.
On Friday, an Egyptian military spokesman said a drone had struck a building near a medical facility in the town of Taba, very close to the Israeli border, wounding six people. It was not immediately clear who launched the drone.
Family and friends of Kibbutz Kfar Aza residents who were kidnapped by Hamas militants during the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel rally outside The Kirya, the Tel Aviv headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces, on Oct. 26, 2023 in Israel.
Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty
There is also mounting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the families of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Many of the family members gathered Thursday night in Tel Aviv to voice their demand that Israel’s government rescue their loved ones, amid unverified claims by Hamas that Israel’s airstrikes have already killed more than 50 of the captives.
As the families gathered, air raid sirens blared yet again, warning of more incoming rockets and forcing the demonstrators to run for cover.
–David Martin and Pamela Falk contributed reporting.
Israel said its ongoing airstrikes hit more Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip Friday, as it began evacuating a town near its northern border with Lebanon, where almost daily exchanges of fire with the other major Iran-backed group in the region, Hezbollah, have fueled fear of new fronts opening almost two weeks into the war sparked by Hamas’ deadly terror attack.
Israel’s military has accused Hamas of killing about 1,400 people in that attack and seizing at least 203 hostages during the rampage. The military said Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldiers, but also dozens of civilians, including as many as 20 people over the age of 60 and more than 20 under 18. One Israeli family shared their heartache with CBS News on Friday as they waited desperately for any word on a 10-month-old baby among the captives.
A senior Israeli military leader told soldiers Thursday they would soon “see Gaza from the inside,” suggesting a long-expected ground invasion was still looming, but fear the conflict could spread beyond Israel’s borders and the decimated Palestinian territory were only growing Friday.
Hezbollah has exchanged deadly fire with Israeli forces for more than a week, but it has so far been relatively limited cross-border shelling. The powerful Iran-backed group is based in Lebanon, and it has a large arsenal of long-range rockets.
With tension along the northern border soaring, Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced Friday that the roughly 20,000 residents of the town of Kiryat Shmona, near that Lebanese border, would be evacuated.
A map shows Israel, with Jerusalem and other major cities labeled, along with the Palestinian territories of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Getty/iStockphoto
Another militant force in the region that’s considered by the U.S. and Israel to be an Iranian proxy group is the Houthi movement, which has fought Yemen’s Western-backed government in a brutal civil war for almost a decade. On Thursday, the Pentagon said a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea had shot down cruise missiles and drones launched by the Houthis, which may have been aimed at Israel.
Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the U.S. was still completing its assessment of where the three intercepted ballistic missiles were headed, but if they were intended for Israel, it would be the first direct U.S. military intervention to protect Israel from its regional foes since Hamas’ unprecedented attack.
A U.S. defense official confirmed to CBS News, meanwhile, that an American military base near Baghdad, Iraq, was targeted in a new rocket attack. Reports of U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria being targeted by drones have increased since the Israel-Hamas war erupted, and Iran-backed militias in northern Iraq and Syria have long targeted American forces in the region.
President Biden has warned Iran and its regional allies repeatedly and clearly not to get involved in Israel’s war with Hamas.
Speaking Friday to journalists at the Iranian Embassy in London, charge d’affaires Mehdi Hosseini Matin said Iran’s “first priority is stopping the war, not escalation.”
He was dismissive of the level of influence Iran could exert over allied groups in the region, claiming the Islamic republic was “not in a position to control any group effectively in the Middle East or in border countries with Gaza.”
The Iranian regime has said Hamas’ brutal terror attack on southern Israel was a justifiable response to “the establishment of an open air prison in Gaza for more than two decades,” which Matin said Friday was “absolutelyunacceptable according to international law.”
Calling the situation in the region “very volatile and dangerous,” Matin said any further “escalation is not in the interest of anyone, including the United States.”
Anger in the West Bank and Egypt
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, clashes between Israelis and Palestinians had been increasing for a year even before Hamas’ terror attack. Palestinian officials in the Israeli-occupied territory, which is not controlled by Hamas like Gaza, say more than 70 people have died in confrontations with Israeli forces and armed Jewish settlers since Oct. 7.
Palestinian officials said a rare Israeli airstrike in the region, reportedly hitting a refugee camp near the West Bank-Israel border, killed 13 people on Friday, and anger was growing over that strike and the ongoing bombing of the Gaza Strip.
“It was horrible for all the Palestinians. Not just for Palestinians but I think for everybody in the world who saw this horror of what’s going on in the Gaza Strip,” Jamal Joumaa, a Palestinian activist who joined a demonstration in central Ramallah on Friday, told CBS News.
Hundreds protest against Israel’s airstrikes in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Ramallah, West Bank, Oct. 20, 2023.
CBS News/Haley Ott
The protest swelled as Palestinians poured out of mosques following Friday prayers, with many chanting support for Hamas. Palestinian and Hamas flags could be seen in the crowd of a few hundred people.
“Give me a two state solution tomorrow, I will accept it. But this became impossible because of the American policies, because of the American backing of the colonial state,” Joumaa told CBS News, referring to Israel.
“I want the Americans first to know that they are supporting a crime of genocide in Gaza,” he said, adding that the leaders of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah, had failed the people.
Another protester, 18-year-old Abeer Iyad Hassan al-Bezzary, told CBS News she was angry, “but what can we do here? We just pray for them [Gazans] to be safe.”
“We feel President Biden is taking one side… the ones who have force, the power. They [Israelis] have the weapons, they have everything,” Ahmad abu Dukhan told CBS News at the protest.
In Egypt, the only country to share a border with Gaza apart from Israel, the authoritarian government has made protests of any kind illegal, but there was a significant one Friday in the very heart of Cairo, in Tahrir Square. Elsewhere in the city, the government has not only allowed pro-Palestinian protests, it’s encouraging them, journalist and opposition activist Khaled Dawoud told CBS News on Friday.
“The anger is like, so widespread,” he said. “You can’t control it… We see the pictures, we see the Palestinian children, we identify with them… So, we get angry, and we go in the street and demonstrate and protest.”
People march from Tahrir Square to the downtown district of Cairo, Oct. 20, 2023, during a protest supporting the Palestinian people following Friday Noon prayers.
KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty
Asked if he believed the Egyptian government, by allowing the protests, was trying to send a warning that the Hamas-Israel could spread, Dawoud acknowledged that the demonstrations could help leaders in Cairo, who worry an escalation could send thousands of Palestinian refugees pouring over the Gaza border.
But, he stressed that he and the other protesters were “not acting by remote control. These feelings are genuine.”
Gaza airstrikes and the Rafah border crossing
The Israeli military said Friday that it had struck more than 100 Hamas targets in Gaza overnight, including command centers, warehouses full of weapons and an underground tunnel.
Palestinians in Gaza reported airstrikes in the south, where many civilians have relocated after being told by Israel’s military that the northern part of the small, densely populated enclave would not be safe. The United Nations has said more than one million people have been displaced within Gaza since Israel started striking the region in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Nobody has been able to flee Gaza, however, and there are as many as 600 U.S. nationals among the roughly 2.3 million people trapped there under a complete Israeli blockade of the strip.
That blockade has cut off supplies of food, energy and medicine to the decimated Palestinian territory, fueling an already monumental humanitarian crisis amid the shelling and drawing warnings from experts that Israel could be answering Hamas’ war crimes with war crimes of its own.
Israeli leaders have consistently dismissed such warnings, insisting the country is only targeting Hamas militants and blaming the group itself — which has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and most European nations — for all deaths in the Palestinian territory that it controls and that it used as a launch pad for its brutal attack.
President Biden, during his visit earlier in the week, got Israel to commit to halting its strikes near the only border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, at Rafah, to enable aid to get in, but it remained unclear Friday when the gates might actually open. Crews were working to repair the Rafah crossing, with about 20 trucks full of humanitarian aid waiting on the Egyptian side.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing Friday and, surrounded by food and medical supplies waiting to be shipped out, he urged all sides to open humanitarian routes into Gaza.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (center) inspects aid materials waiting to be moved across the Rafah crossing from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, Oct. 20, 2023.
Handout/UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
“On this side, we have seen so many trucks loaded with water, with fuel, with medicines, with food. They are a lifeline. They are the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza,” Guterres said. “What we need is to make them move, to make them move to the other side of this wall, to make them move as quickly as possible and as many as possible.”
The Egyptian Sinai for Human Rights group posted video of what it said were aid workers lined up Friday with vehicles on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, saying in a tweet that they were, “awaiting the opening of the crossing in the coming hours to bring humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the beginning of the war.”
What is Israel’s plan in Gaza?
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of his country’s legislature, the Knesset, on Friday that the war Hamas started with its Oct. 7 terror attack would end with group’s destruction.
“We are at war, we have been left no choice. October 7th will be remembered as the day that started the destruction of Hamas,” Gallant told the lawmakers, laying out for the first time a vague outline of Israel’s planned military operation — which leaders have said could take months or even years.
He said the objectives of Israel’s three-phase operation included the elimination of Hamas as a power in Gaza, with both its military and governing capabilities destroyed, followed eventually by the establishment of a new “security reality” in the Palestinian territory.
Gallant said Israel was still in the first of the three stages: “A military campaign that currently includes strikes, and will later include maneuvering, with the objective of neutralizing terrorists and destroying Hamas infrastructure,” which he said would be followed by a second phase focused on “eliminating pockets of resistance” in Gaza.
“The third phase,” Gallant said, “will require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel.”
In an interview with 60 Minutes last week, President Biden said “Israel has to respond. They have to go after Hamas,” but the U.S. leader warned that an Israeli occupation of Gaza would be “a big mistake.”
NOTE: The original version of this article incorrectly described Hezbollah is a Palestinian group. It has been updated to reflect that it is a Shiite Muslim group based in Lebanon.
CBS News’ Pamela Falk at the United Nations and Emmet Lyons in London contributed to this report.
Sanaa, Yemen — A crowd apparently panicked by gunfire and an electrical explosion stampeded at an event to distribute financial aid during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Yemen’s capital late Wednesday, killing about 80 people and injuring scores more, according to witnesses and officials from the Houthi rebel group which controls the city. It was the deadliest incident in Yemen in years that was not related directly to the country’s long-running civil war, and it came ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan later this week.
An image released by the Ansar Allah Houthi Media Office shows the aftermath of a deadly stampede in Sanna, Yemen, April 19, 2023.
ANSAR ALLAH HOUTHI MEDIA OFFICE/AP
Armed Houthis fired into the air in an attempt at crowd control, apparently striking an electrical wire and causing it to explode, according to two witnesses, Abdel-Rahman Ahmed and Yahia Mohsen. That sparked a panic, and people, including many women and children, began stampeding, they said.
Motaher al-Marouni, a senior health official, said Thursday that at least 87 people were killed, according to the rebels’ Al-Masirah satellite TV channel, but that figure was later retracted amid conflicting information from Houthi officials. The head of the Houthi-controlled Ministry of Health was quoted as saying at least 80 were dead, and al-Marouni had earlier put the death toll at 78. At least 73 others were injured and taken to a Sanaa hospital, according to the hospital’s deputy director Hamdan Bagheri.
Video posted on social media showed dozens of bodies, some motionless, and others screaming as people tried to help. Separate video of the aftermath released by Houthi officials showed bloodstains, shoes and victims’ clothing scattered on the ground. Investigators were seen examining the area.
The crush took place in the Old City in the center of Sanaa, where hundreds of poor people had gathered for a charity event organized by merchants, according to the Houthi-run Interior Ministry. People had gathered to receive less than $10 each from a charity funded by local businessmen, witnesses said. Wealthy people and businessmen often hand out cash and food, especially to the poor, during Ramadan.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Brig. Abdel-Khaleq al-Aghri, blamed the crush on the “random distribution” of funds without coordination with local authorities.
Yemenis wait outside a hospital in Sanaa, early on April 20, 2023, after a stampede during a Ramadan charity event left about 80 people dead and dozens more injured.
AFP/Getty
The political leader of the Houthi rebels, who have controlled much of the country since a civil war broke out almost a decade ago, Prime Minister Abdulaziz bin Habtour, said the group’s interior, health and prosecutorial authorities would “examine this unfortunate event to find a serious solution for this to never happen again.”
“We are experiencing a great tragedy, a large number of our citizens have died during this stampede,” Habtour told people at the scene on Wednesday evening.
The rebels quickly sealed off a school where the event was being held and barred people, including journalists, from approaching. The Interior Ministry said it had detained two organizers and confirmed that an investigation was under way.
The Houthis said they would pay some $2,000 in compensation to each family who lost a relative, while the injured would get around $400.
Yemen’s capital has been under the control of the Iranian-backed Houthis since they descended from their northern stronghold in 2014 and removed the internationally recognized government. That prompted a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in 2015 to try to restore the government.
The conflict has left more than two-thirds of Yemen’s population — or about 21 million people — in need of help and protection, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Among those in need, more than 17 million are considered particularly vulnerable.
In February the United Nations said it had raised only $1.2 billion out of a target of $4.3 billion at a conference aimed at generating funds to ease the humanitarian crisis.
